Prosecuting War Crimes and Genocide: The Twentieth-Century Experience [Hardcover]

Howard Ball (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0700609776 | ISBN-13: 978-0700609772

The "ethnic cleansing" that has gripped the Balkans for much of this decade is but another chapter in the long history of man's inhumanity to man. Hopeful but unflinching in the face of such realities, Howard Ball's book focuses on international efforts to punish perpetrators of genocide and other war crimes. Combining history, politics, and critical analysis, he revisits the killing fields of Cambodia, documents the three-month Hutu "machete genocide" of about 800,000 Tutsi villagers in Rwanda, and casts recent headlines from Kosovo in the light of these other conflicts. Beginning with the 1899 Geneva Accords and the Armenian genocide of World War I, Ball traces efforts to create an institution to judge, punish, and ultimately deter such atrocities-particularly since World War II, since which there have been fourteen cases of genocide. He shows how international military tribunals in Nuremberg and Tokyo set important precedents for international criminal justice, tells what the international community learned from its failure to stop Pol Pot in Cambodia, and describes the ad hoc tribunals convened to address genocide in the Balkans and Rwanda. He then focuses on the establishment of the International Criminal Court with the Treaty of Rome in 1998 and assesses its probable future. The book also analyzes the reluctance of the United States to sanction the ICC, tracing longstanding U.S. reluctance to grant criminal justice jurisdiction to an international prosecutor. Ball examines questions of national sovereignty versus international law and reminds us that although most Americans consider such horrors to be problems of other countries, these are in fact countries in which many of our own citizens have their roots. With its unique focus on the ICC, Prosecuting War Crimes and Genocide is a work of both synthesis and advocacy that combines history and current events to make us more aware of the racist fervor with which these brutalities are carried out, more alert to the euphemisms in which they are cloaked. It forces us to ask not only whether the killing will stop, but whether humanity can prevent future genocides.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Howard Ball is professor of political science and university scholar at the University of Vermont. A former civil rights worker in Mississippi, he is the author of twenty previous books, including A Defiant Life: Thurgood Marshall and the Persistence of Racism in America; Hugo Black: Cold Steel Warrior; and Justice Downwind: America's Atomic Testing Program in the 1950s.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 300 pages
• Publisher: University Press Of Kansas (October 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0700609776
• ISBN-13: 978-0700609772
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #979,581 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #95 in Books > Law > Specialties > War

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Where will human rights be in the 21st century?, June 12, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Prosecuting War Crimes and Genocide: The Twentieth-Century Experience (Hardcover)

This book provides an excellent, detailed account of the war crimes and genocide which happened in the 20th century. Ball details human rights abuses which occurred during WWI, WWII, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Cambodia. In providing an in-depth look into our past, Ball shows where international law may be moving in the future. The international community continues to see gross human right violations since the Nuremberg Trial. Ball provides Problems and Prospects for the future of the international community to protect victims against human rights violations and to punish those who commit human rights voilations.

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing, October 7, 2011

By 

luizhlbarbosa - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Prosecuting War Crimes and Genocide: The Twentieth-Century Experience (Hardcover)

The book can be summed up in one word: amazing. The reader, looking at the cover so simple, is not able to fathom the depth of its content. What caught my attention was the wealth of detail in reports of armed conflict, especially trials rarely explored by other authors as the Congress of Vienna and the Court of Leipzig. Fundamental to any study of war crimes tribunals.