The JustSites project developed and deployed a new way of studying the social conditions that shape how atrocity crimes accountability is produced. Hinging on its original definition of the ‘justice sites’, the project analysed how such localised organisations work to produce international criminal justice in some of the most topical contemporary conflicts around the world. Conducting fieldwork in relation to several different conflicts and countries, the project underlined how agents in justice sites face opportunities and obstacles that are structured by their physical and organisational rootedness as well as by relations to other sites working either close to where crimes occurred or outside of the country in question. Collaborating or competing across Global North/East/South divides, justice sites as different as the International Criminal Court (ICC), NGOs, law firms, think tanks, investigative mechanisms, media outlets, and academic research centres depend on each other to produce accountability for international crimes. The potential impact, opportunities, and obstacles of these different justice sites are shaped by their locality that, for instance, gives them access to specific networks in The Hague where the ICC is headquartered or to witnesses and evidence in a specific case country.
Taking the physical conditions and global relations of the justice sites as its main research objects, the project contributed frontier theoretical and empirical perspectives on how international criminal justice works in practice – as well as on why it often fails to work as intended. It also contributed tools that connect the justice sites to localised organisations in other fields. For instance, the justice sites often face obstacles defined by what the project calls ‘practice sites’, some of which are linked to states that are sceptical towards international criminal justice. Sites outside of the field of international criminal justice often work according to converging or oppositional logics. As such, the developed framework enables critical studies of how international criminal justice is situated in a larger global space characterised by competing norms and goals, including those linked to state interests or to other stakeholders involved in defining distinct forms of justice, peace, and security at the domestic and global levels.
Contributing the first investigation of the wider constellation of justice sites is not only of scientific value. It is crucial for understanding the wider social, legal and political impact, or lack thereof, of this field of law. As such, the results produced by the project are also of importance for practitioners working in different justice sites, as well as for policy makers and stakeholders that design future responses to atrocity crimes or plan wider efforts to create lasting peace and security.
