Accountability for ISIL – National or International Responsibility?

16th of November 12.00 to 15.30 at House of Literature (Oslo, Norway) 

ICJ Norway hereby extends an invitation to a half-day conference on accountability for ISIL. The  conference will address alternative models for accountability through national and international  mechanisms and will take place on 16th November at the House of Literature in Oslo, Norway.  

Between June 2014 and December 2017, ISIL captured and controlled large parts of Iraq, committing  grave abuses of international human rights law and international humanitarian law. After the fall of  the ISIL, the UN Security Council voted unanimously in 2017 to ask the UN to establish a unit to assist  Iraq in investigating crimes that may amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide  and promote accountability for crimes committed by ISIL. The Investigative Team to Promote  Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh/ISIL (UNITAD) has worked to collect, preserve, and  store evidence in Iraq and has concluded that members of ISIL have committed war crimes.

Much remains to be done when it comes to ensuring accountability for ISIL. Most members of ISIL  have been arrested and imprisoned in Iraq, Syria, and the Kurdistan region of Iraq. For the most part,  they are not citizens of the countries in which they have fought. Some have been sentenced  according to Iraqi anti-terrorism legislation. Attempts to establish an international tribunal in the  region have not yet been fruitful. Most European countries oppose the return of ISIL-members and  their families to their home countries and support accountability through courts in the region. Still,  there are some court cases against ISIL-members and members of their families in European  countries, including in Norway.

Questions that remain include where and how accountability for international crimes best may be  ensured. Does it make a difference if ISIL-members and their families are held accountable through  national anti-terror legislation, or should they be held accountable for international crimes in an  international court? To what extent may they be held accountable in their home countries for crimes  committed in other states (extraterritorial jurisdiction)? What should be left to national courts, and  what accountability should the international community ensure? These are among the questions the  conference will address.

The conference will be divided into two sessions. Session (I) will include speeches from judges with a  background from the ICC (former Justice Howard Morrison) and the courts in Iraq and the Kurdish Region of Iraq (Judge Rezgar M. Amin) and we hope to also hear from the former Head of UNITAD and present Chief Prosecutor at the ICC, Karim A. Khan). They will share experiences on  accountability for violations of international law in international and national courts. Session (II) will  be with leading Norwegian prosecutors, lawyers and academics and will address accountability for  international crimes in Norwegian courts and the responsibility of the Norwegian authorities to  contribute to efforts seeking to ensure accountability for violations of international law.