JUSTICE
I consider the years of my professional life during which I devoted myself to issues of human rights and international criminal law (fifteen years in all) to be the highlights of my career. Between 2001 and 2005, working in New York, I had a chance to contribute in various ways to the establishment of the International Criminal Court. In 2007, on my initiative, an international conference on the tension between peace and justice was held in Nuremberg. In 2017, I was the acting director of the International Nuremberg Principles Academy for four months, an institution that organizes information and training events to support the fight against impunity for universally recognised international core crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression.
From: Goin' Home and Far Away
“Isn't it true that forgiveness is more important than punishment? Isn’t grace a core value of Christianity and, correct me if I’m wrong, also of Islam?” asked López.
“I’m glad you asked,” said Bukar. “That’s a topic that can be confusing. An individual can forgive. Your religion and mine, and probably many others, ask us to. But what does that mean? Nothing more than setting aside your hate and your desire for revenge. But in the judicial system, it’s not about an individual coming to terms with a horrible past, rather about a community reinforcing its views of right and wrong and taking action to prevent future infringements. As an individual you cannot have the common interest at your disposal, neither with your forgiveness nor with your unwillingness to forgive. In other words, justice is not a private matter.”
(Asked whether it might not be a good idea to ask victims about their expectations towards justice, Bukar says:)
(Such) surveys have already been conducted in a few towns in Nigeria. The results, it seemed, were quite ambiguous. In Bama in 2014, Boko Haram murdered in cold blood civilians lying on the ground and then burned down the town. A large majority of the people surveyed there said that compensation was important, but that it was more important to punish those responsible for the crimes. But, in the interest of peace, they said, they were willing to forgo punishment and grant amnesty. Pretty confusing, isn’t it? My interpretation is that the survey participants differentiated between their short-term and long-term expectations. In the short term, everyone obviously wants the violence to stop. But in the long term, they felt it was important to punish the perpetrators. Without punishment, no deterrence, they believed, no guarantee that the violence wouldn’t flare up again.”
“I’m Gladys. I’m a musician with a flute degree, but I’m currently unemployed. No, not really. I’m an intern because I’m unemployed. And that’s my point. I lost my job as a musician because I was cataloged as a Black woman. And you want to deny something to López—her right to advocate for a good cause (accountabilty for Boko Haram crimes)—because she cannot be cataloged as Black? Did I miss something here? Music and justice—are they not universal? Can we just stop cataloging people? Who the hell should care about my or López’s DNA when universal issues are at stake?”