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2019 | Book

Introduction Read chapter Read first chapter

Human Rights Prosecutions in Democracies at War

Author: Dr. Moira Lynch

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Book Series : Human Rights Interventions

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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About this book

Though many of the longest and most devastating internal armed conflicts have been fought within the boundaries of democratic states, these countries employ some of the highest numbers of human rights prosecutions. What conditions prompt this outcome and what explains the variable patterns of prosecutions in democracies at war? Prosecutions may be enabled by existing democratic norms and institutions, but given their role in a violent conflict, democratic governments may go to great lengths to avoid judicial accountability. Through qualitative and quantitative research of four cases, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, Spain and Colombia, this book argues that emergency and anti-terrorism laws issued during the conflict created barriers to the investigation and prosecution of state human rights violations. The extent to which state actors were held accountable was shaped by citizens, NGOs and political actors who challenged or upheld impunity provisions within emergency legislation.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. Introduction
Abstract
This chapter poses the central research question of the book: what conditions shape the variable patterns of human rights prosecutions in democracies at war? The chapter evaluates relevant scholarship and it discusses the universe of cases, the book’s argument, data, and methodology and implications of the book’s findings. The book argues that human rights prosecutions in democracies at war were shaped by the extent to which agents of change, including citizens, human rights NGOs, and political actors, were able to challenge, alter, or eliminate the logic of impunity embedded in emergency and anti-terrorism laws. Challenges to these laws were possible through independent oversight of executive emergency powers, judicial review of emergency laws, judicial independence, and access to regional human rights courts.
Moira Lynch
Chapter 2. Human Rights Prosecutions and Institutional Continuity in Sri Lanka
Abstract
This chapter details the highly constraining power of emergency laws in Sri Lanka and the conditions that produced a handful of human rights prosecutions midway through the conflict. Emergency and anti-terrorism laws in Sri Lanka include explicit immunity and inquest clauses that encourage and facilitate impunity regarding state violations. Very few prosecutions were held in Sri Lanka as a result, and the handful of prosecutions that occurred largely emerged through the temporary political will of one political leader.
Moira Lynch
Chapter 3. Conversion, Layering, and Human Rights Prosecutions in Northern Ireland
Abstract
This chapter demonstrates how aspects of the design and implementation of emergency laws in Northern Ireland produced constraints on the ability for investigations to move forward in state violence cases and for the courts to issue fair judgments. Controls on the inquest process originally placed within emergency provisions were shielded from oversight and judicial scrutiny after they were folded into ordinary criminal law. Additionally, state violence cases were determined by a largely biased community of judges in juryless courts, a feature of emergency laws created at the start of the conflict. Patterns of human rights prosecutions reflect these conditions as well as amendments made to emergency laws, brought about through independent oversight of executive emergency powers and rulings by a regional human rights court.
Moira Lynch
Chapter 4. “Resorting to Authoritarian Habits”: Anti-terrorism Laws, State Violence, and Human Rights Prosecutions in Democratic Spain
Abstract
This chapter examines the violence between Euskadi Ta Askatasuna and the Spanish government during the early years of Spanish democracy. Protections for state actors who engaged in torture were built into anti-terrorism laws through the legalization of lengthy, unmonitored detention periods, known as incommunicado detention. While legal reforms established during Spain’s democratic transition helped to facilitate prosecutions for state-sponsored killings during the 1980s and early 1990s, investigations and prosecutions of torture allegations were crippled by anti-terrorism laws that normalized and legitimized ill-treatment at the hands of the state.
Moira Lynch
Chapter 5. The Constitutional Court, Military Jurisdiction, and Human Rights Prosecutions in Colombia
Abstract
This chapter discusses the origin of Colombia’s military criminal code in emergency decrees and the decades-long military jurisdiction over human rights cases that followed. This chapter traces a shift from prior years of government impunity to a period in the mid-late 1990s when human rights prosecutions emerged and steadily increased over time. As a result of two key factors, judicial review of emergency legislation and judicial independence among judges on the Constitutional Court, the military criminal code was altered, prosecutions were steadily transferred from military courts to ordinary courts, and the number of prosecutions increased.
Moira Lynch
Chapter 6. Human Rights Prosecutions and Democracies at War in Comparative Perspective
Abstract
This chapter puts the four empirical cases into comparative perspective, and it provides an analysis of the theoretical and substantive implications of the book’s central findings.
Moira Lynch
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Human Rights Prosecutions in Democracies at War
Author
Dr. Moira Lynch
Copyright Year
2019
Electronic ISBN
978-3-319-96908-4
Print ISBN
978-3-319-96907-7
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96908-4

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