The chapter situates the class of institutions variously referred to as internationalized, hybrid, mixed or special tribunals in the system of international criminal justice and highlights their main rationales and features. It addresses the known strengths and weaknesses of the hybrid institutional model as compared to purely international criminal jurisdictions. Using the classification based on these courts’ legal nature as defined by the primary basis for their establishment and functioning, the chapter surveys the main hybrid courts (including some which are yet to be established), including but not limited to the Special Court for Sierra Leone, Special Tribunal for Lebanon, Extraordinary African Chambers, the African Criminal Court, the UNTAET and UNMIK Special Panels (in East Timor and in Kosovo, respectively), the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, and the Special Criminal Court in the Central African Republic. It outlines the factual background to these courts’ emergence and addresses their subject-matter jurisdiction and applicable law, institutional and procedural features, and noteworthy contributions to international criminal jurisprudence. This overview is followed by the discussion of the issues raised by the hybrid courts’ (potential) relationship with the ICC and reflections on their achievements, deficiencies, and (the prospects of) wider impact.

This chapter considers ICL’s applicability to a variety of real-world situations involving the production of mass suffering and/or death through relatively slow, unspectacular forms of harm causation. It identifies various examples of situations that, upon careful analysis, appear to have involved the commission of one or more international crimes, yet failed to conform to the atrocity aesthetic. These potential crimes have also been afforded comparatively scant attention, especially in comparison to more spectacular forms of atrocity, despite often being massive in scale and gravity, suggesting that their aesthetic unfamiliarity has contributed to, or at least facilitated their relative invisibility, socially and legally, as potential international crimes.

In the aftermath of Democratic Kampuchea and the civil wars that preceded and succeeded it, victims have rebuilt their lives, demonstrating a desire and capacity to survive in the face of extreme hardship. This chapter explores resilience in post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia. Using a social ecological lens, it examines how various systems – and in particular political, legal and economic systems – interact to provide resources that enable and foster resilience among victim populations. It also demonstrates, however, that these systems, individually and in interaction with each other, often remove resources or even undermine resilience. Within this systemic structure, the chapter analyses how transitional justice work in Cambodia has affected resilience. Focused specifically on the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, it argues that while the tribunal has the potential to contribute to resilience (and does for some victims), its design and procedures constrain it in this regard, even inadvertently reinforcing broader marginalising systemic dynamics. The key point is that national actors in Cambodia recognise that they can gain significant advantages through corrupt practices and autocratic power, and thus they have used transitional justice strategically to undermine peacebuilding.

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) was established under Cambodian law in 2004, but also operates pursuant to an agreement with the UN. The ECCC has convicted defendants for charges including genocide, crimes against humanity, and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. This may appear to indicate that Cambodia’s leaders have accepted the norm of international criminal justice, at least for historic crimes. Yet the reality is more complex. This chapter examines the history of international crimes trials in Cambodia. It shows that Cambodia does not provide an example of linear progression towards acceptance of the norm of international criminal justice, but neither is there only stalling or complete rejection of this norm. It then demonstrates how international and Cambodian government actors and civil society have sought to influence Cambodia’s laws and institutions for investigating and prosecuting international crimes, before examining each of these mechanisms. This chapter argues that Cambodia’s interaction with international criminal justice disturbs any assumption that international law norms are diffused over time and from certain locations outside Cambodia (spaces) to within the country (direction).