Translating Gender Diversity In International Criminal Law: An Impossible But Necessary Goal

Abstract

The day-to-day practice of international criminal law typically requires that concepts from diverse countries and cultures be communicated in certain languages, often including French and English, the working languages of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and most United Nations (UN) courts. This article explores one challenge associated with this multilingual legal process, namely, the challenge of describing gender identities, including non-binary identities, that have no precise equivalent in English and French. It does so through a case study of Sou Sotheavy, a gender non-conforming person who gave evidence at the UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Cambodia, and by considering past cases in which international criminal courts have made foreign terms intelligible to French and English speakers without being limited by the lexicon of those languages. I conclude that diverse gender identities can and should be expressed in terms from the culture from which they originate, in order to broaden and enrich existing conceptions of gender in international criminal law.