Prosecuting Crimes Against Humanity: Complementarity, Victims’ Rights and Domestic Courts

In this paper I argue that when states commit, assist, or culpably fail to prevent crimes against humanity against their own people, they should, subsequently, have primacy in prosecuting those crimes. They have a presumptive right (and duty) to punish perpetrators, and so a claim against third parties not to do so. In contrast to those who emphasise the importance of national sovereignty, I set out a victim-centred justification for this claim. I argue that victims of crimes against humanity, and members of groups that have been targeted for these crimes, have a special interest in having their status as members of their political community re-affirmed. Punishment by their state of war-related crimes against them has the expressive function of re-affirming their status as equal members of their national community, and the state’s commitment to protecting their rights. I set out some reasons to think that this is valuable for victims and members of targeted groups. These interests, I argue, are weighty enough to ground the primacy of states in prosecution.