CYIL 2013

INTERNATIONAL LAW OF VICTIMS

Fernández de Casadevante Romani, C. International Law of Victims [Mezinárodní právo obětí] Springer, Heidelberg 2012, 274 p.

In view of the recent turn in international law towards victims and the increased interest in their status and rights, the attempt by Springer to offer the first ever comprehensive treatment of the topic available in English should be more than welcome. The book, holding a promising as well as potentially somewhat misleading title of International Law of Victims, is the English-language revised version of the original Spanish book El Derecho Internacional de las víctimas that the author, Carlos Fernández de Casadevante Romani, professor in international law and international relations at the University Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid, Spain, published in 2011. 1 Despite certain logical inconsistencies and formal inadequacies, the book constitutes an interesting, well-informed and useful introduction into the topic that no one interested in the rights of victims should ignore. The book consists of two parts. Part One, entitled the Victims and International Law, sets the historical and terminological background of the topic. Recalling that “traditionally, International Law has not paid sufficient attention to victims” (p. 3), the book describes the changes that this approach has undertaken over the past few decades. It also provides a list of the main sources of international law relating to the status of victims, adopted at the universal or regional level (United Nations, Council of Europe, European Union, Organization of American States etc.). In a book focusing on international law of victims, the concept of victims is naturally of utmost importance. Noting “the non-existence of an international concept of victims” (p. 39), the author offers a survey of various categories of victims that current international law recognizes. The categories encompass victims of crime, victims of abuse of power, victims of gross violations of international human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian law, victims of violations of international criminal law, victims of enforced disappearance, victims of trafficking, and victims of terrorism. For each of the categories, the author scrutinizes available international instruments, seeking to find out how the specific victims are defined and which rights are conferred upon them. The last category, that of victims of terrorism, is accorded special attention – and also a special chapter. This chapter, somewhat surprisingly, concentrates primarily on rehearsing the well-known debate about the definition of terrorism, leaving the concept of victim aside. Once the author reaches the conclusion, in itself controversial, that “there are sufficient elements to build a concept of terrorism” (p. 80), he infers from it that “the non-existence in international law of a concrete definition of “victim of

1 Carlos Fernández de Casadevante Romani, El Derecho Internacional de las víctimas, Porrúa, Mexico, 2011.