The Belgian Contribution to the Repression War Crimes: The Historical Construction of a Legal Discourse

This project is focused on the Belgian contribution to international justice and more specifically to the penal repression of war crimes. Indeed, from the trials of German war criminals after WW2 to the current Belgian policy of co-operation with international criminal jurisdictions, including the so called “Universal Jurisdiction Act” of 1993, the Belgian experience in that field is quite substantial. Building upon a conception of international law as a social discursive practice, this project seeks to understand the nature, aims and uses of the legal discourses that were produced by Belgian actors between the aftermath of WW1 and the turn of the 21^st century. Focusing on the discourse over the question of jurisdiction and the trans-national character of the repression of war crimes, this study tries to explore two main intuitions, a sociological one and a theoretical one:

• this discourse does not follow a linear progression determined by an inevitable movement of the human spirit towards civilisation, but is rather the result of some specific circumstances ;
• the centrality and the variability of this discourse does reflect a structuring tension of the international legal system between State sovereignty and universality.

In order to do so, this project will be based on a methodological framework combining a critical approach of international law and some elements of history of ideas.

Supervisors : Vaios Koutroulis - Pieter Lagrou.

Alexandre Faudon stopped his research on 31 August 2014.