Rights and fairness are both widely considered to be central to international criminal trials. In this chapter, I examine this centrality and why it is that rights and fairness are so important in these trials. This centrality can be seen in both the stated law and in the potential uses of rights and fairness. In this way, I show the centrality of rights and fairness as something that is both accepted and important for international criminal proceedings.

This chapter starts with an analysis of the idea of ‘rights’ in international criminal trials – what they are, who they attach to, and why they matter. Placing the individual, and the determination of their forensic guilt (or otherwise), properly at the heart of the trial also has implications for how we view the rights of the accused. It is difficult to conceive of a trial process that emphasises the individual and a determination of their culpability, without affording them rights as part of that trial process. If the accused is to be the central subject of a trial, they must be ensured rights as a core element of that process. The rights of the accused are an important aspect of the trial, linked to both the central aim of the trial (determination of the accused's culpability) and the placement of that trial within a system that is galvanised by other aims (ending impunity and meaningful victim participation).

In this chapter, I examine the ‘rights’ of other trial parties and participants (the prosecution and the victims), arguing that these trial participants do not have rights in the same way the accused does. Rather, they have interests, competencies, some duties – and some limited rights. I also examine the question of how rights are positioned in relation to truth-seeking in international criminal procedure, particularly with regards to the hybrid, sui generis structure of the international criminal procedural model.

I then move on to the idea of ‘fairness’ in international criminal trials. Fairness is widely considered to be at the heart of these trials, but the multitude of different views regarding what fairness is and how it manifests in trial proceedings has led to the concept being incoherent and ultimately unstable.