Taking its demand-driven approach seriously, The Hague Institute decided to start with a broad range of topics, thus discovering its strengths and added value. After the initial phase, ending early 2013, the Institute will decide on its core focus, given, amongst other things, the results it has obtained in terms of external funding.
Conflict Prevention Climate change poses a risk to the basic needs and human rights of individuals and communities. Extensive research in the natural sciences has laid a solid foundation for the emerging consensus on the phenomenon and man-made contributions to it. However, the social implications of climate change need further illumination. This project aims to overcome some important knowledge gaps through in-depth case study analyses and integrated stakeholder dialogues on climate change-induced socio-political tensions.
Conflict Prevention The management and fair distribution of water is rising in importance on the international agenda. The Netherlands internationally leads in the areas of water technology, governance, conflict resolution, and legal systems. The Hague Institute for Global Justice is a member of the Water Diplomacy Consortium, which builds upon Dutch expertise to become a knowledge hub for water diplomacy, governance, and law. Water Diplomacy aims to identify, appraise, and handle conflicts over to water availability, allocation, and use—one of the focal areas of Dutch foreign policy.
Rule of Law
Fact-finding missions into human rights violations often precede criminal investigations. Yet, it is not clear how these two types of investigations relate to each other, particularly in terms of the sharing of information and evidence. Can criminal investigators and prosecutors interact more effectively with each other and with other investigators (including commissions of inquiry, UN panels of experts and the OHCHR, truth commissions etc.), without compromising their respective mandates? And if so, how?
Rule of Law In the immediate aftermath of a conflict or disaster that has reduced a state’s ability to govern and administer justice, exceptional measures are called for. Stability must be restored, the state’s monopoly on the use of violence reasserted and a strong signal sent out that crimes will not (or no longer) go unpunished. As central government is often too removed from local realities in post-conflict countries, state-building needs to be approached from the level that is closest to its citizens – local government.
Rule of Law Do people live in an environment where justice is hard to come by? And if so, what can be done to improve this? Whilst exploring how citizens experience justice is a largely neglected area, this project will redress the balance somewhat by evaluating how much access citizens have to justice, through which institutions, the quality of the procedures and the fairness of the outcomes obtained. By developing standardised tools, this project aims to support local human rights NGOs, legal aid NGOs and selected legal-service providers in their role as potential guardians of justice. Armed with the appropriate tools, these organisations will be better able to ask specific agents in the legal system for concrete improvements in laws, court procedures, legal information or the provision of legal services.
Rule of Law The foundations of this project were first laid out during the three years of extensive research conducted jointly by the Amsterdam Center for International Law (ACIL) and The Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law (HiiL). From that project, came a set of ‘general rules and principles of international criminal procedure’ (to be published with Oxford University Press in March 2013. These principles were found to govern the investigation of international crimes by the various international criminal tribunals and will provide a solid base for a Model Code for the Investigation and Prosecution of International Crimes (‘the Model Code’) in the years to come.
Rule of Law In an attempt to become green, many economies are using natural materials for bio-energy, bio-plastics, and bio-polymers, thus fuelling the potential for biomass disputes. At the same time, views differ about the sustainability of different resources that can be used as biomass, and how and which definitions should be used in sustainable policies. So how much demand is there for a knowledge and remedy network centre for biomass and land use sustainability disputes and would it be feasible and viable to create such a network centre? This project goes in search of an answer to this central question by conducting stakeholder consultations and expert meetings, by commissioning scientific research by the University of Leiden, and by holding interviews with eminent biomass, sustainability and alternative dispute resolution experts.
Rule of Law The Hague Institute for Global Justice and the Conflict Research Unit of the Clingendael Institute share the responsibility of running the secretariat of the Knowledge Platform Security and Rule of Law.
Rule of Law Justice can be a scarce commodity in countries affected by conflicts. The Hague Institute draws lessons from experiences of postconflict rebuilding activities in Afghanistan and Iraq and from current endeavors in Libya for improved access to justice and building or rebuilding sustainable institutions for the rule of law. The Hague Institute is partnering with the Van Vollenhoven Institute (VVI) to examine access to justice and building institutions for the rule of law in these fragile states. Findings will be presented at the centenary celebrations of the Peace Palace in August/September 2013.
Rule of Law Many experts are dispatched on rule of law missions, but what mechanisms are currently in place to systematically collect first-hand the valuable information from these experts? Once collected, how can such information best be used for future rule of law missions?
Rule of Law The project on developing victimological approaches to international crimes started in 2009 when Intervict organised an international seminar centred on Africa. This resulted in an edited volume (Letschert, R.M., Haveman, R., Brouwer, A.L.M. de, & Pemberton, A. (Eds.). (2011). Victimological approaches to international crimes: Africa. ) of multidisciplinary contributions that reviewed the function and effects of criminal justice procedures and psychosocial recovery in societies torn by mass political violence. Now that the ‘Arab Spring’ has engendered debate across the region on the need to end impunity for international crimes, there are new openings for victimological approaches to international crimes in North Africa and the Middle East.
Global Governance To lead the debate on global governance. Eminent thinkers and renowned institutes from the old and the new world focus on interests and values for a new rule-based world order. The initiative raises awareness regarding the deficiencies and flaws in the current international architecture and presents policy makers with knowledge-based and action-oriented results for how to make global governance work.
Global Governance The protection of intellectual property (IP) is an incentive for research. However, developing countries often cannot afford to pay the high price of knowledge and technology that is protected by intellectual property rights (IPR). Several important global initiatives have been promulgated in recent years to promote research and innovation on how intellectual property rights can be harnessed for development and poverty reduction objectives. Unfortunately, the acceptance of the underlying standards, let alone the implementation process necessary for the approximation of these objectives has proven to be rather unwieldy in practice.