International criminal law: an essential practice for all humankind

International criminal law strives to provide some form of Justice to victims of the most horrific crimes really that the world unanimously has decided are the most severe crimes.

Over the course of my career, I’ve met with and interviewed and just spoken with dozens and dozens of victims of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. I do think that international criminal law is a form to provide some accountability.

My name is Nadia Zed, I’m the Deputy Director of the Crimes against humanity and War crime section at the Department of Justice in Canada. We fulfill the mandate of the war crimes program for Canada and what the mandate is to ensure that Canada is not a safe haven for war criminals and that speaks primarily to the immigration context to ensure that individuals who are alleged to have perpetrated war crimes, crimes against humanity genocide cannot actually come to Canada and reside in Canada and become citizens of Canada and if they are they are removed.

The second piece to the mandate is that there is accountability for individuals who violated the crimes against humanity and war crimes act by committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

I would qualify myself mostly as an international criminal law lawyer and I developed that expertise in working in various international courts and tribunals throughout my career, so I did spend some time in the Hague working in the international criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia as well as at the Kosovo specialist prosecutor’s office. I also worked in Geneva on the UN fact finding mission for Myanmar.

My main tasks in my previous work experience have actually all been similar and that really has entailed building cases against individuals who are alleged to have perpetrated war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. In the course of building those cases, it’s really interviewing witnesses, it’s collecting documents, speaking to internationals who were on the ground at the time and who would have knowledge of what events transpired and how they transpired.

We work a lot with investigators and with analysts who have specific expertise in a geographic area or the history of that area but together we’re able to build a case that will ultimately be presented in a criminal court proceeding whether it be in an international court or tribunal or what I’m doing now is building cases in a domestic context.

But, from a person to person like people do feel that they’re being heard, that there is attention being drawn to their situation and that’s the role that I see international criminal law is really having the biggest impact.

I think the best advice that I could give a student who’s looking at going into to international criminal law or international law generally: really demonstrating in every facet of your academic life and that you have an interest in that ultimate goal so you know taking every single course that you possibly can that touches upon international criminal law, taking part either maybe in clinic work or in moots that touch upon the area. You’re also expanding your network of people that you know in that field already and you’re learning the subject matter you’re learning how even that field works and operates.

When I was in law school it didn’t really exist so I was very curious about it and there are a number of summer courses primarily in Europe that are essentially an introduction to international criminal law and I decided to take all my vacation time and do these three weeks of ICL to see if it was an area that I really wanted to explore more fully and I fell in love with it really during those three weeks.

Another thing to consider is location of employment so many jobs in international criminal law take place in countries that are not necessarily in the western hemisphere. The positions and opportunities in those countries might be perhaps a little bit less competitive than in headquarters type roles. In the international context it’s wonderful to be exposed to new cultures, new history, new people, new languages and so that is always really appealing in the work as well.

For any students interested in a career in international criminal law I would really encourage them. There are many different ways to practice international criminal law, obviously there’s the international courts and tribunals that we’re all aware of such as the international criminal court in the Hague. There’re also military lawyers that deal with international humanitarian law and they touch upon war crimes. There’s also a number of really excellent International non-governmental organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the international committee for the Red Cross the ICRC.

A more and more what we’re seeing are NGOS embarking on investigative work in documenting and collecting evidence to support investigations and so there’s an organization called TRIAL, and they have collected evidence and given it to various National authorities who then conduct domestic criminal cases that involve war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. I would really encourage students to really look at the area of Law and not just think of international courts and tribunals there’s a whole world of and host of places where you can work with this area of law.