“Home Court Advantage: Comparing International Criminal Tribunals to Domestically-Grown Reconciliation”

Scholars have studied wars and their causes for centuries, but what happens when the tanks roll out and the guns stop firing? The concept of reconciliation is a relatively new field of study in international relations, and the scholarship of specific transitional justice mechanisms remains underdeveloped. I comparatively analyze the differences between external and internal peacebuilding strategies – specifically the effectiveness of international tribunals in establishing long term deep reconciliation. In defining internal and external transitional justice mechanisms, I differentiate between a reconciliation process that prioritizes rebuilding citizens’ lives over one that prioritizes the desires of the international community. It has been almost 30 years since the Bosnian War and the Rwandan Genocide, which marked the first use of international criminal tribunals as a transitional justice mechanism. However, Rwanda prioritized local level, community based trials more than Bosnia did. Scholars are divided on the effectiveness of international tribunals. By analyzing their use in these cases, I demonstrate that internal, domestic level trials are more reconciliatory than internationally conducted criminal tribunals, thus developing more informed guidance for future reconciliation.