NGO-Prosecutorial Complex in Universal Jurisdiction Cases: Structure and Consequences for Justice and Public Knowledge about Human Rights Violations

The project will advance knowledge on the structure and functioning of networks formed by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and prosecutorial agencies in criminal proceedings under universal jurisdiction (UJ). It will further show how these networks affect justice, court narratives, and public knowledge about massive violations of human rights. NGO-prosecutorial networks affect trials and knowledge about violations in two ways. They color charges and court proceedings by channeling evidence, witnesses, and private prosecutors—some constituted out of refugee populations—into trials. In addition, NGOs contribute to the spread of contextualized court narratives through trial observation and the publication of blogs and reports on websites. The nature of these causal processes will be explored. American interest in these experiences is substantial, especially considering the “Justice for Victims of War Crimes Act” that recently updated federal law to enable prosecution of alleged war criminals in the United States—regardless of the place of perpetration and the nationality of the perpetrator or the victim. During this project, graduate students will be trained, and knowledge gained will be incorporated into college and graduate instruction. Insights will be communicated through a public-facing paper, workshops with practitioners, and a symposium.The project builds on scholarship that examines how criminal trials shape knowledge about and collective memory of mass atrocity crimes. This body of research shows that trials often affect public perceptions and collective memories of such crimes, even while constrained by the institutional logic of criminal law with its focus on individuals, disinterest in structural contexts and the longue durée, limiting evidentiary rules, and guilty-not guilty binaries. The proposed research looks beyond the confines of judicial institutions to examine their network ties with civil society in the form of NGOs, domestically and across national boundaries: a transnational NGO-prosecutorial complex. The project will enhance knowledge at the intersection of the sociology of law, knowledge, collective memory, and inter-organizational networks. The research includes in-depth interviews with prosecutors, investigators, and NGO representatives, in several countries engaging in UJ proceedings. Interviews explore organizational goals, the structure of exchange networks between organizations and the content of exchanges. An analysis of court documents will trace how NGO agendas, input, and networks are reflected in trial narratives. Analyzing NGO blogs and reports will identify additional network ties and examine the transmission of court narratives to the public. The project will add to sociology of knowledge insights into the link between network structures and the production of legal truths and everyday knowledgeThis award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.