International Cooperation in Dealing with International Crimes under International Criminal Law: The Case of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2009 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Peace and Conflict Studies, Security, grade: A, University for Peace (United Nations-mandated University for Peace), language: English, abstract: Traditional international law considered the sovereignty of state as the core principle and

state cannot be interfered by other states or international community even though it is failed to

protect its people. The modern international law developed when the Peace of Westphalia was

signed in 1648. With this development, the principle of sovereignty of state has been gradually

replaced with the principle of international community as every state more or less is dependent,

particularly in terms of economics and politics, in order to survive in the world community. In

this regard, each state came into agreement on trade, diplomacy and so on with the others. So

each is bound by international law either treaty, customary international law, or other sources of

international law. Regarding the international crimes under international criminal law such as

genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, most of the states more or less are bound by

them, significantly under the 1948-Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime

of Genocide, 1968-Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes

and Crimes against Humanity, and the 2002-Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court

(ICC).

Throughout the history, a number of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes

happened, but only were four ad hoc tribunals right away created to prosecute the criminals

before the ICC came into being in 2002. Those are the 1945-Nuremberg Tribunal, the 1946-

Tokyo Tribunal, the 1993-International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and the

1994-International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. However, such a thing was not undertaken in

Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge regime collapse in 1979. The Khmer Rouge Tribunal is

selected to study because it is the only tribunal established very late after the carelessness of the

international community and the prolonged and often acrimonious cooperation and negotiation

between the Cambodian government and the UN, unlike the others. [...]