Private Investigations in International Criminal Justice

 

Nuremberg Guidelines for Non-Public Investigative Bodies in the field of International Criminal and Humanitarian Law

In November 2018, the International Nuremberg Principles Academy together with the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law and the Commission for International Justice and Accountability held an expert meeting and discussed the prospects of private investigations in international criminal justice.

The experts, practitioners, and academics in the field of international criminal law concluded that the activities of organizations and individuals collecting, classifying, and preserving evidence on international crimes are indispensable. They also agreed on the necessity of a guideline to instruct such activities and to address pressing issues in relation to the use of the information and evidence in judicial proceedings. Due to the importance of such activities for the establishment of accountability, the guideline will provide normative instructions for the practitioners who gather information that may serve future prosecutions at the international, regional and domestic level. Based on these discussions, the Nuremberg Academy drafted an initial outline regarding different subject matters for the creation of the Nuremberg Guidelines on Private Investigations.

In 2019, the project partners met again and created the substantive contents of the above mentioned guidelines in a new document called Nuremberg Guidelines for Non-Public Investigative Bodies in the Field of International Criminal Law and Humanitarian Law, considering the already existing outline and the research conducted by the Nuremberg Academy.

In 2020 project stakeholders and practitioners of the field of international criminal law and humanitarian law analyzed and provided comments about the structure and content of the document. Once the drafting process is completed, the Nuremberg Academy and the Commission for International Justice and Accountability plan to host an event to share the Nuremberg Guidelines for Non-Public Investigative Bodies in the Field of International Criminal Law and Humanitarian Law with all the relevant actors.