Faced with massive human rights violations, one reaction available is to gather information about what is happening and attempt to determine who is responsible. Carefully processed information can guide multiple efforts to bring atrocities to an end and contribute to ensuring some sort of accountability. A special role is being played by international Commissions of Inquiry which are mandated by the United Nations and other organizations to examine and report on situations of mass atrocities.
Any fact-finding mechanism is faced with an avalanche of dilemmas and questions. How should we collect information, and from whom? How should we go about assessing the veracity of that information? How much corroboration is needed before one can claim that one has ‘reason to believe’ that certain events occurred and certain entities or people were responsible? With limited resources, how does one protect victims and witnesses at risk who have agreed to provide information? What legal frameworks should be applied to determine responsibility for violations of international law? Should suspected individual perpetrators and those likely responsible as commanders be identified in the reports? How might information or evidence be preserved for use in criminal proceedings? And are there limits to assisting other institutions who may also be working, in their own ways, to end the violations and punish those involved?
In recent years, manuals and guidelines have been developed by various organizations and think-tanks, in particular by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. These provide a dizzying array of advice and best practices, but the time has come for a scholarly study of how these Commissions work in the contemporary environment. International Commissions, whether established by the UN or regional organizations such as the African Union, present an array of practice that is deserving of study, not just to find ways of improving efficiency, but also to understand the science of fact-finding by such bodies and understand the common challenges encountered by them.
Adopting such an approach, Dr Harwood takes us through the key stages in the life of an international Commission of Inquiry: establishment, interpretation and implementation of the mandate, the reaching of findings of fact and law, and the issuance of recommendations. As these Commissions are frequently tasked with qualifying human rights violations as giving rise to responsibility, including criminal responsibility, international law is often the primary legal framework. Dr Harwood’s book examines the approaches taken by different Commissions to thorny legal issues of contemporary relevance such as: the relationship between international humanitarian law and human rights law, the elements of international crimes and the international obligations of armed non-state actors. Moreover, the book engages with current controversies such as the relationship of Commissions to the International Criminal Court and the fear that we may be distorting reports so that Commissions look less at the human rights situation and more exclusively at those who might be held criminally accountable.
Dr Harwood’s insights will be of considerable value to practitioners and scholars alike. Although the idea of using Commissions of Inquiry to resolve tensions by revealing the facts and making recommendations has been around for some time, it is only now that we are starting to see this as a field of study. We must be grateful to Dr Harwood for helping to lay the foundations with such insight for a better understanding of the challenges facing Commissions and how to overcome them.
Andrew Clapham
Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies
Geneva