In this chapter, James Mehigan focuses on the contribution of international criminal law (ICL) to the peaceful settlement of international disputes. More specifically, this chapter looks at the aims of ICL and analyses how effective it has been at achieving its international law and criminal law objectives. It argues that ICL does not make the broader contribution to dispute settlement that many commentators hope for because it provides a form of retributive justice that does not necessarily engender a sense of justice for victims, nor contribute to reconciliation or fact-finding. After looking at the impact of ICL in the Former Yugoslavia, this chapter concludes that there is little evidence to show that ICL achieves any of its aims other than individualising guilt and punishing offenders – in other words, ICL’s contribution to the settlement of international disputes is minimal and should not be overstated.

This chapter explores the tensions between resilience models of recovery, adaptive peacebuilding and transitional justice by examining the 1994 genocide of Tutsi in Rwanda, its aftermath and the country’s recovery processes. Rwanda has been lauded as a success story for post-genocide recovery, peacebuilding and transitional justice. Yet, a closer look demonstrates that its recovery and peacebuilding reinforced a centralised state and the ruling party’s dominance. These processes produced the appearance of stability and resilience while hiding new hierarchies and social divides that risk generating conflict in the future. Adaptive peacebuilding efforts led by local non-governmental organisations, on the other hand, responded directly to ordinary people’s immediate needs without promoting political agendas. Government-led transitional justice efforts often disrupted these local successes and ultimately benefitted the nation-state at the expense of community healing. The lessons learned from the Rwanda case point to the importance of tending to local-level concerns in recovery processes and of employing peacebuilding approaches that focus on broad notions of positive peace instead of only state-building. In addition, resilience models of recovery must consider micro- and macro-level concerns and pay attention to the impact of political power on outcomes.