Abstract
There is an enduring tension in the distribution of international criminal reparations. On the one hand, awards for reparations are at heart a form of recognition that entails including certain people and excluding others. On the other hand, this is very hard to do in contexts of mass atrocity with a system limited to individual criminal responsibility. With its reparations award in The Prosecutor v. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo (Lubanga), Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court (ICC) acknowledged this tightrope and attempted to walk it through principles of flexibility and inclusivity.Footnote1 These principles alone, however, are not sufficient, as was underlined by the Appeals Chamber’s judgment of March 2015.Footnote2 The provision of international criminal reparations is an inherently political act through which the ICC will necessarily become a player in local power relations. In this chapter, I seek to unpack one key dimension of these relations – the ‘politics of recognition’ – and offer strategies to navigate them.