Thijs B Bouwknegt
Biographic Data
| ID | 4051167 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thijs B Bouwknegt |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thijs B |
| FAMILY NAME | Bouwknegt |
| SIGNATURE | BOUWKNEGT T B |
| AFFILIATIONS | NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 7 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 7 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The past is a foreign country
International criminal investigations are not only legal exercises but epistemological and cultural ones. Drawing on the author’s work across human rights practice, international tribunals, journalism and historical scholarship, this essay observes that the investigation of mass violence is embedded in cultural and historical frameworks that often sit uneasily with internationalised institutions. It questions the assumed universality of internati…
A Cage Went in Search of a Bird
What happens to people who are accused of atrocity crimes at the bar of public opinion, are publicly indicted, prosecuted, tried, acquitted of criminal charges and then released? Does the mud stick? Or can the dirt also turn into gold, after legal exoneration and possible compensation? This article seeks to trigger a conversation on the international justice community’s stance on condemnation, compensation and convalescence. Through several versa…
Jáchymov’s Hell’
This article treks through the timeworn remnants of Czechoslovakia’s Communist forced and correctional labour uranium camps in the Ore Mountains in the northwest Bohemian region of Jáchymov. These camps held tens of thousands of detainees, largely political prisoners convicted in sham trials or individuals sent there for re-education. Conditions were deplorable. Throughout the 1950s, the young Czechoslovak Communist regime compelled detainees to …
Genocide Never Sleeps. Living Law at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
International tribunals come and go. By the 2020s, it became clear that the international community had less appetite for international justice than in the early 1990s. Against the background of the permanent International Criminal Court (ICC), the United Nations’ (UN) International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) — one of the only ever two fully powered UN tribunals — was a unique past phenomenon. Its unfinished business lives on in the UN’s…
The path to genocide in Rwanda
Young men at a roadblock check crossers’ scruffy papers. ‘Your ID’, yells a youngster. ‘I am not a Tutsi’, ripostes a woman with a baby on her back. ‘Have you seen your nose?’, demands a boy. Seconds later, a gang batters the lady to the ground, with machetes and sticks, because ‘she is a Tutsi warrior’. The next scene in Netflix’s ‘The World’s Most Wanted’ displays an avenue littered with corpses. Episode two of the series, about Rwandan busines…
Beyond ‘African Solutions to African Problems’ at the Extraordinary African Chambers and ‘Distant Justice’ at the International Criminal Court
The trial of Chad’s former President Hissène Habré in 2015 was heartily anticipated and then heralded as an ‘African solution to African problems’. In myriad ways, the Extraordinary African Chambers (EAC) in Senegal’s court system indeed picketed a momentous transitional justice experience. It was simultaneously international, regional and local. It applied the universal jurisdiction principle. It judged a former and foreign head of state. It dea…
Eshetu Alemu
In a fully packed courtroom in The Hague District Court, on 15 December 2017, the International Crimes Chamber convicted Eshetu Alemu for war crimes committed between 1978 and 1981 in Ethiopia. Absent at the judgment hearing, Alemu was sentenced to life imprisonment for these historical injustices. Five of his torture survivors received damages. During the short yet intense trial, Alemu testified at large, while victims came to the Netherlands to…
Jáchymov’s Hell’
This article treks through the timeworn remnants of Czechoslovakia’s Communist forced and correctional labour uranium camps in the Ore Mountains in the northwest Bohemian region of Jáchymov. These camps held tens of thousands of detainees, largely political prisoners convicted in sham trials or individuals sent there for re-education. Conditions were deplorable. Throughout the 1950s, the young Czechoslovak Communist regime compelled detainees to …
Eshetu Alemu
In a fully packed courtroom in The Hague District Court, on 15 December 2017, the International Crimes Chamber convicted Eshetu Alemu for war crimes committed between 1978 and 1981 in Ethiopia. Absent at the judgment hearing, Alemu was sentenced to life imprisonment for these historical injustices. Five of his torture survivors received damages. During the short yet intense trial, Alemu testified at large, while victims came to the Netherlands to…
Beyond ‘African Solutions to African Problems’ at the Extraordinary African Chambers and ‘Distant Justice’ at the International Criminal Court
The trial of Chad’s former President Hissène Habré in 2015 was heartily anticipated and then heralded as an ‘African solution to African problems’. In myriad ways, the Extraordinary African Chambers (EAC) in Senegal’s court system indeed picketed a momentous transitional justice experience. It was simultaneously international, regional and local. It applied the universal jurisdiction principle. It judged a former and foreign head of state. It dea…
Jáchymov’s Hell’
This article treks through the timeworn remnants of Czechoslovakia’s Communist forced and correctional labour uranium camps in the Ore Mountains in the northwest Bohemian region of Jáchymov. These camps held tens of thousands of detainees, largely political prisoners convicted in sham trials or individuals sent there for re-education. Conditions were deplorable. Throughout the 1950s, the young Czechoslovak Communist regime compelled detainees to …
Genocide Never Sleeps. Living Law at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
International tribunals come and go. By the 2020s, it became clear that the international community had less appetite for international justice than in the early 1990s. Against the background of the permanent International Criminal Court (ICC), the United Nations’ (UN) International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) — one of the only ever two fully powered UN tribunals — was a unique past phenomenon. Its unfinished business lives on in the UN’s…
The path to genocide in Rwanda
Young men at a roadblock check crossers’ scruffy papers. ‘Your ID’, yells a youngster. ‘I am not a Tutsi’, ripostes a woman with a baby on her back. ‘Have you seen your nose?’, demands a boy. Seconds later, a gang batters the lady to the ground, with machetes and sticks, because ‘she is a Tutsi warrior’. The next scene in Netflix’s ‘The World’s Most Wanted’ displays an avenue littered with corpses. Episode two of the series, about Rwandan busines…
A Cage Went in Search of a Bird
What happens to people who are accused of atrocity crimes at the bar of public opinion, are publicly indicted, prosecuted, tried, acquitted of criminal charges and then released? Does the mud stick? Or can the dirt also turn into gold, after legal exoneration and possible compensation? This article seeks to trigger a conversation on the international justice community’s stance on condemnation, compensation and convalescence. Through several versa…
The past is a foreign country
International criminal investigations are not only legal exercises but epistemological and cultural ones. Drawing on the author’s work across human rights practice, international tribunals, journalism and historical scholarship, this essay observes that the investigation of mass violence is embedded in cultural and historical frameworks that often sit uneasily with internationalised institutions. It questions the assumed universality of internati…
Political science (6 works) · International Law and Human Rights (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Criminal justice (4 works) · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics (4 works) · Sociology (4 works) · Criminology (3 works) · Economic Justice (3 works) · Politics (3 works) · Genocide (2 works)