ECCC Reparations Inside and Out: Unpacking Rhetorics on Reparative Justice for Victims of Mass Crimes

In a significant step for international criminal law, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC or the Court) enabled victims to participate in proceedings as civil parties and claim reparations, which in practice materialised in several reparation measures. To explore whether and how these measures contributed to reparative justice for their beneficiaries, this chapter combines a top-down legal approach with a bottom-up empirical one. The premise of our exploration was that an understanding of reparative justice as both procedural and substantive justice is crucial to understanding the contribution of the ECCC’s reparations towards reparative justice for victims. We took the Court, its legal framework, and case-law as our starting point. After the top-down legal analysis, we focused on findings resulting from our empirical study based on narratives from 55 victims about the actual changes in their lives due to the reparations. We noticed that reparative justice is influenced by three considerations. First, the legal framework of international courts, the rights pertaining to their reparations’ regime, and the opportunities and limitations embedded therein. Second, the capacity of courts and the multitude of actors involved in materialising the victims’ rights as well as the quality of their work. Third, what were thought to be clear tangible benefits for victims failed to be perceived as such, mainly because of their actual limited impact, while what were thought to be by-products of the reparations’ projects brought about meaningful and tangible benefits to victims. We consider that our analysis and findings have important implications for international courts featuring reparations regimes that aim to provide reparative justice to victims.