‘No Safe Haven’ in Europe? The Future of Universal Jurisdiction Prosecutions

What is the future of individual accountability for human rights violations? This article addresses the question by critically examining the efforts by European domestic courts to prosecute crimes under international law in the context of the Syrian conflict, with particular focus on the ‘structural investigations’ and international crimes prosecutions in Germany. Using Maximo Langer’s categorization of universal jurisdiction cases, such developments in European domestic jurisdictions imply a shift away from the ‘global enforcer’ model of accountability, in which domestic courts are conceptualised as part of a global effort to prevent and punish grave human rights violation to the ‘no safe haven’ model of accountability in which states prosecute individuals to avoid providing refuge for perpetrators of grave crimes. This paper argues increasing ‘no safe haven’ prosecutions implies a move away from a cosmopolitan notion of individual human rights, in which domestic courts are linked via a global normative project, to a more sovereigntist model of individual accountability that reactively responds to the transnational dimensions of violations. This more limited form of universal jurisdiction cases provides avenues for continued accountability for human rights violations in the context of declining support for international accountability mechanisms generally and political complexities of the Syrian conflict more specifically. From this perspective, domestic prosecutions can provide a realistic alternative to individual accountability for human rights violations in the context of the crisis of global human rights. However, the paper further cautions that prosecutions of predominantly low-level perpetrators by European courts may also continue to exacerbate the neo-imperial critiques levied against the global human rights regime and ultimately have a limited effect on revitalising the normative project.