Anyone interested in understanding the history of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and prosecuting war crimes should take a look at the new documentary “The Reckoning.” This film can currently be viewed on-line here [Warning: contains extremely graphic scenes of violence].
The movie explains the court’s history, its foundations in international criminal law that began with the Nuremburg trials following WWII, the ICTY and ICTR ad hoc Tribunals, and negotiations over the Rome Statute.
It is also a fantastic backgrounder into the ICC’s ongoing investigations in the DRC, Uganda, Sudan and Colombia, including how the threat of an ICC investigation affects governments’ and militias’ actions on the ground.
A particularly interesting portion also describes the US’s history with the court. Interviews and testimony of former US Ambassador to the UN John R. Bolton are used to show Bush-era opposition to the court, un-signing the underlying treaty in 2002, and the belief that without the US the ICC would fail. These are contrasted with interviews of former US Ambassador for War Crimes Issues David J. Scheffer who helped negotiate the Rome Statute for the Clinton Administration.
Bolton’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee explaining the Bush administration’s desire to “isolate and ignore the ICC” in order to protect the American soldier and leaders from prosecution is followed by Scheffer explaining the ICC’s complementarity principle, that is, “if in fact [the US has] a government that does plot and plan crimes against humanity or war crimes, it is US courts which have first take on that.”
Essentially, only if the US justice system was insufficient to prosecute in a case concerning US soldiers would the ICC be able to step in.
But the documentary’s real strength lies in it’s lack of sensationalism in its visual description of pursuing accountability for war crimes – something which recent tv shows describing similar issues, such as “The Philanthropist” and “The Wanted”, fail to do. “The Reckoning” moves back and forth seamlessly between sterile meetings at the offices of the ICC Prosecutor, scenes of on the ground horrors, and moving interviews with victims.
Frankly, this emphasizes that the crimes alleged are so horrific that there really is no need for Hollywood-style sensationalism. While this point might otherwise be lost in the tedium of court room procedures and abstract prosecution discussions, following these portions with real life scenes and on the ground interviews reminds the viewer what the ultimate purpose of this court is.
A particularly good example is intermingling scenes of the ICC’s opening case against Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, alleged former leader of the Congolese UPC and FPLC party and militia, with a rather surreal interview of two young women in the DRC who cannot be more than 18 years old. One of these women, her friend nodding and smiling in the background, bounces her young child on her lap while stating, almost off-handedly “I killed people. I killed a lot of people” – and goes on to describe her kidnapping, forced “marriage” (often a euphemism for rape) and use as a child soldier in Lubanga’s militia. Lubanga is then shown fidgeting in the ICC courtroom as a description of charges against him are read out.
At times both extremely disturbing and extremely sanitized, “The Reckoning” is really a fantastic description of the reality of today’s international criminal justice system – which likewise varies between the horrifically shocking nature of on the ground atrocities and the tedium of a courtroom’s legal minutiae.
It is at heart a visual portrayal of what academics and legal debates cannot ever hope to accurately describe in words, and should be viewed by anyone with an interest in the ICC or the nature of conflict.
