Funding flows and mission creeps: International criminal justice as development aid

• In Event: Rethink and Reboot: Reimagining the Logos of International Criminal Justice

Abstract

The sociology of international criminal justice has been concerned with its ‘identity’ for some time now, viewing the identification of its characteristics as fundamental to questions of social function and legitimacy. Bourdieusian approaches to international criminal justice have shown how the field is crafted at the intersections of human rights advocacy, diplomacy, and criminal justice, and have focused on the role of transnational elites, professionals, and networks as part of ‘making’ the global through their competing strategies and practices. This paper explores constitutive elements of the field of international criminal justice from a different angle. Rather than focusing on its laws, institutions, practitioners, and advocates, the paper aims to shed light on how the field of international criminal justice is intimately connected to the field of international development aid. The study is based on a systematic review of international development aid in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden between 1990 and 2022, with the aim to identify projects of relevance to the ‘fight against impunity’ for international crimes. What types of aid are, in fact, justice interventions; what types of actors carry out these various forms of penal aid; and how do these forms of penal aid change over the course of the three past decades? By probing such questions, we provide insights into the practical and discursive connections between different forms of international interventions and pursuits of global justice-making, facilitating a further understanding of the contemporary seismic shifts impacting international criminal justice and international development aid alike.

Authors

• Mikkel Jarle Christensen, University of Copenhagen

• Kjersti Lohne, University of Oslo