Death and the Challenges of Distant Affectivity: Liminal Narratives at the International Criminal Court

The International Criminal Court (ICC) was established to adjudicate genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and aggression, or, in other words, atrocity crimes. The concept of death permeates the definitions of most international crimes, yet it is rarely explicitly mentioned in the text of international criminal law - the Rome Statute of the ICC. It is against this background that the Trial Chambers, in their judgments, tend to oscillate between a dispassionate and emotionally distant narrative based on factual - even graphic - recollections of events (sometimes accompanied by corroborating scientific evidence) and more personalised, almost emphatic, depictions that rest on individualised accounts of the occurrence of death and, where possible, identification of the victims. Based on an analysis of the ICC’s judgments, this chapter reflects on this judicial oscillation between a perhaps necessary distance and an unavoidable emotion.