ADJUDICATING TRAUMA IN INTERNATIONAL COURTS

A DUTY TO THE VICTIMS OF CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss, using an interdisciplinary point of view, how international courts build, through judicial proceedings, the memories of victims of crimes against humanity, symbolically regaining their human condition. Firstly, it defines the concept of trauma as described by Caruth, Felman and Edkins and addresses the issue of recognition and its relation with the overcoming of violent experiences. Authors such as Friedlander, Lacapra and Seligman-Silva are brought to the theoretic framework of analysis to explain how political violence and grave human rights violations limit the possibilities of representation and narrative in traumatic contexts. This paper argues that trials work as a symbolic space for victims to interact and confront the political violence and their perpetrators. The judicial procedure builds an official narrative of the traumatic experience, inserting victims in a bigger context that helps make sense of their suffering, therefore, restoring them from their isolation into a broader political community. International Criminal trials have, in that sense, not only an obligation with punishing perpetrators, but also an obligation towards victims and the political communities destroyed by violence.