Description
Analyses of international justice mechanisms have demonstrated the operation of gendered and racialized power within ad hoc tribunals and more permanent international criminal justice courts. Amidst these critiques, and general efficiency issues, the international community has sought to diversify current structures of international criminal justice, leading to the implementation of hybrid courts. Discussions around hybrid courts are hopeful about their ability to remedy some of the issues international mechanisms face, with many arguing that these courts are better placed to deliver inclusive and bottom-up justice through the local engagement they foster. However, scholarly literature on hybridity more broadly positions the concept as inherently problematic. Post-colonial researchers have argued that hybridity, rather than addressing existing power structures, can perpetuate these structures by creating amalgamated international/national spaces. Working between these critiques, my research explores how hybridity manifests at hybrid courts, and to what effect. This dissertation examines the manifestation of hybridity by evaluating if two hybrid courts mobilise alternative discourses of gender and race, or if they (re) produce existing racialized and gendered power structures evident within international justice. I explore this question using post structural discourse analysis of documentary and interview data drawn from the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL). This research further contributes to conversations around the feasibility of hybrid courts to remedy some of the gender and race issues within international criminal justice.
