Reparation for Victims of Armed Conflict: Impulses from the Max Planck Trialogues

Abstract

The international law on reparation for victims of armed conflict is complex. Numerous subfields of international law are involved, among them international human rights law, international criminal law, international humanitarian law, and the law on State responsibility. In addition to this complexity, reparation-related questions are often highly politically charged. They are focal points of contestation about moral values, different conceptions of justice, and approaches to international law, including the status of the individual human being in this order. Against this backdrop, the collection of short essays explores whether and under which circumstances individuals have a right to reparation under international law. The introduction unpacks the legal dimensions and identifies the currently most controversial issues. One set of essays then analyses, from different angles, whether a right to reparation for individuals exists as a matter of law. Another set recounts experiences with the implementation of reparation mechanisms and discusses the challenges. A third group of essays addresses the role of domestic courts. The essays (‘impulses’) are one outcome of the Max Planck Trialogue workshop on reparation for victims of armed conflict, held in November 2017 in Berlin.

Keywords: Right to reparation, the individual in international law, international humanitarian law, international human rights law, international criminal law, State responsibility