Holding atrocities and abuses to account

When governments or non-state actors can get away with atrocities or abuses, they are emboldened to commit and repeat them. We see this time and time again: impunity breeds insecurity. That is why effective accountability is a strategic imperative as much as a moral one.

The challenge for international justice is that its jurisdiction, in practice, is limited. International courts can only reach so far; the walls of national sovereignty mean they can rarely hold state crimes to account.

Still, its impotence in some cases is not a measure of its meaninglessness in general. Ultimately, international law is a normative system as much as a legal one. Its value lies not in its ability to prosecute all crimes, but to coordinate and activate our sense of duties as an international community. This is important, as it provides the basis of legitimacy needed to rally collective responses.

But it also shows that international law, while necessary, is insufficient: it relies on states more often than courts to dispense justice in its name. That is why Australia must continue to play an active part in international efforts to sanction atrocities and hold perpetrators to account.

To prevent impunity from driving insecurity, we will:

Apply targeted sanctions when warranted. Targeted sanctions aim to apply acute pressure on the material interests of individuals involved in atrocities or rights abuses, while avoiding collateral suffering. In that way, targeted sanctions have more strategic potential than generalised ones, which tend to punish populations without disincentivising elites. Noting this, Australia will make full use of its new Magnitsky-style sanctions regime as our main means of deterring and preventing atrocities or systemic rights abuses.

Deprive international status when effective. Many regimes are highly sensitive to the deprivation of international status, which can undermine prestige as a core basis of domestic legitimacy. In this way, exclusion from international settings, such as sports or diplomatic forums, can be an effective means of deterring or dissuading rights abuses. The role of sports boycotts in ending Apartheid is evidence of this. Australia will therefore reserve this as a lever we apply, in concert with other partners, to prevent or deter systemic rights abuses.

Support comprehensive economic sanctions when needed. In the gravest cases of state-perpetrated atrocities, war crimes, or genocides, broad-ranging and hard-sitting sanctions are sometimes required. In these rare cases, and even when they are unlikely to influence the perpetrating state's behaviour directly, sweeping sanctions are necessary to prevent the wider normalisation of such atrocities.

Promote the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). While the principle was unanimously endorsed by UN member states, it has so far failed to transform state behaviour. Australia will therefore work through the UN and with international partners to strengthen R2P as an operative international norm. We will promote it as a basis for state responsibility to their citizens; but also as a legitimate and animating basis for interventions against genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity.

Advocate the international adoption of robust modern slavery laws. Per initiative 2.3.1, Australia will work to strengthen its own regime, including by lowering turnover threshold at which companies must report on forced labour risks. At the same time, we will more broadly encourage other countries to adopt and enforce similarly robust laws.

Strengthen the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice. As much as the ICJ has limited practical enforcement capacity, its rulings still carry normative importance, by providing a legitimate basis for the international community to mobilise sanctions in its stead. It is therefore important that we work with like-minded partners to encourage international respect for its authority; and indeed, when needed, rebut challenges to its mandate. The same applies to the ICC (which rules against individuals rather than states). In the case of ICC, however, we should also work to ensure that it is properly resourced: for unlike the ICJ, it can prosecute and detain individuals for crimes against humanity. Many state criminals are beyond its reach, but we should still support its practical role in ending the impunity of terrorists, non-state actors, and deposed regime figures.