This book challenges the prevailing assumption that the International Criminal Court (ICC) can deliver meaningful reparations to victims of international crimes. Rather than focusing on technical reforms to the existing reparations regime, it engages with a more fundamental question: can the ICC fulfil its promise of reparations?
The book offers a systematic critique of the ICC's reparations regime by unpacking four largely unchallenged assumptions.
First, it interrogates the belief that international criminal law is an adequate vehicle for addressing victims' reparations. By examining the goals of international criminal law and the concept of reparation embedded in the Rome Statute of the ICC, it argues that the field is structurally ill-suited to fulfil the reparations promise. Second, it contests the portrayal of the ICC's reparations regime as genuine step forward in recognising victims' right to reparation within international criminal proceedings. Third, this volume challenges the assumption that ICC judges can remedy systemic shortcomings through interpretation and normative development. Despite the elaboration of reparations principles in ICC's case law, judicial practice is marked by inconsistent orders that have failed to elaborate stable reparations criteria. Finally, it questions the assumption that reparations primarily serve victims' interests, highlighting how the ICC's reparations mandate also advances institutional, professional, and political agendas. Overall, Niki Siampakou argues that the promise of reparations at the ICC is overly ambitious and has become a source of frustration and disappointment for victims.
This book offers practical tools for academics, postgraduate students, practitioners, and policymakers to assess what the ICC's reparations system can - and cannot - achieve.
