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This article examines the influence and interpretation of international law in Australia’s policy and conduct regarding captured individuals during the recent Afghanistan Conflict. By critically analysing declassified government documents, Parliamentary statements, and original interview data with former Foreign Minister and Defence Minister Stephen Smith, I advance a two-pronged argument. First, contrary to what other sombre studies of the anti-torture norm might predict, Australia’s understanding of fundamental international legal rules pertaining to captured individuals in armed conflict – including the humane treatment principle and the prohibition on torture – helped regulate its policies and actions during the Afghan war. By regulate, the article posits that Australia’s policies and behaviour were governed or controlled in part by a felt sense of legal obligation among some key policy-makers. Second, like its allies Britain and Canada, Australia claimed it did not formally detain individuals during the initial years of the Afghanistan Conflict, even though it appears to have factually captured and transferred some people to United States (us) and Afghan authorities. As the war dragged on, and Australia’s troop contributions increased and local hostilities worsened, Australia – again like its allies – relied on detainee agreements and changed its conduct to try to protect captured individuals and transferees from abuse. Despite such agreements and changes, critics contend that transferred captives faced a significant risk of torture in Afghan jails, particularly those run by the country’s intelligence agency. This suggests that state and non-state views of what the prohibition on transferring to possible torture requires in practice are less settled than related shared understandings of other fundamental prisoner protections in international law and armed conflict.
The Politics of International Criminal Law is an interdisciplinary collection of original research that examines the often noted but understudied political dimensions of International Criminal Law (ICL). As a nascent legal regime that seeks to regulate the longstanding power of states to manage war and crime, ICL faces challenges to its legitimacy, including disagreement over its aims and effectiveness; inequality in the work of its institutions; and opposition from dominant countries. The editors bring together eleven senior and emerging scholars and practitioners from Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and North America to analyse these challenges from an illuminating range of theoretical and empirical perspectives. Taken together, the collection ultimately helps advance our understanding of the particularly charged relationship between law and politics in ICL.
The Politics of International Criminal Law is an interdisciplinary collection of original research that examines the often noted but understudied political dimensions of International Criminal Law (ICL). As a nascent legal regime that seeks to regulate the longstanding power of states to manage war and crime, ICL faces challenges to its legitimacy, including disagreement over its aims and effectiveness; inequality in the work of its institutions; and opposition from dominant countries. The editors bring together eleven senior and emerging scholars and practitioners from Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and North America to analyse these challenges from an illuminating range of theoretical and empirical perspectives. Taken together, the collection ultimately helps advance our understanding of the particularly charged relationship between law and politics in ICL.