Coercive environment as a defence and/or mitigating factor for crimes under International Law

About the event

Professor Noëlle Quénivet, Professor of International Law, Bristol Law School (UWE Bristol), and Dr Windell Nortje, Senior Lecturer, Department of Criminal Justice and Procedure, University of the Western Cape and Visiting Fellow, Bristol Law School, (UWE Bristol), discuss their joint paper entitled Coercive environment as a defence and/or mitigating factor for crimes under International Law: Sentencing former child soldiers.

Child soldiers grow up in coercive environments. However, when they are prosecuted for international crimes, the circumstances of their upbringing are often overlooked. Under the ICC Statute, there are no grounds for excluding criminal responsibility that account for a coercive environment and that can be interpreted to cover such a situation. Our research indicates that this is not only a limitation of the ICC Statute; individuals prosecuted under national law who have also experienced coercive environments have similarly struggled to use criminal defences successfully. 

Although it is possible to consider mitigating factors to reduce the sentence for a child soldier—such as in the case of Ongwen—the authors disagree with how much weight the ICC gave to the coercive environment as a mitigating factor. While the ICC has adopted a more retributive approach, national courts have generally been slightly more lenient towards individuals who have faced coercive circumstances. Drawing on this jurisprudence, the authors aim to develop a detailed typology of mitigating circumstances based on justice-oriented factors.

This is a hybrid event which can be attended in-person or online.