Schabas, William A. --- "National amnesties, truth commissions and international criminal tribunals" [2011] ELECD 108; in Brown, S. Bartram (ed), "Research Handbook on International Criminal Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Research Handbook on International Criminal Law

Editor(s): Brown, S. Bartram

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847202789

Section: Chapter 16

Section Title: National amnesties, truth commissions and international criminal tribunals

Author(s): Schabas, William A.

Number of pages: 18

Extract:

16 National amnesties, truth commissions and
international criminal tribunals
William A. Schabas



Amnesty is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as `an act of forgetfulness, an inten-
tional overlooking, a general pardon, esp. for a political offence'. The word is used in many
languages, apparently derived from the same word in both Greek and Latin, amnestia, which
means `forgetfulness'. The profound suspicion of criminal justice systems manifested at an
early stage in the development of human rights law is reflected in the name chosen by one of
the premier human rights non-governmental organizations, Amnesty International. But
Amnesty International no longer looks very favourably on amnesties, as a general rule.
Moreover, there is a growing body of authority indicating that amnesties are not only frowned
upon by human rights law, they may even be prohibited.1
Often amnesties are explicitly set out in peace agreements. Such conventions make up a
long list, going back to the mother of all international treaties, the 1848 Peace of Westphalia.2
The Lomé Agreement that ended the civil war in Sierra Leone provides a recent example,
although amnesty provisions in peace treaties are as old as international law itself. Another
comes from the dawn of international criminal justice, at the end of the First World War. The
Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, which ended the war and determined the consequences of its
aftermath with respect to Turkey, contained a `Declaration of Amnesty' for all offences
committed between 1 August 1914 and 20 November 1922. ...