Behind The Rhetoric: The Implication of Prohibiting Amnesties

Traditionally, amnesty was seen as the substance of peace and there was a presumption of the legitimacy of amnesty under international law. During the past two decades, some scholars and regional human rights courts have reached the opposite conclusion, claiming the existence of a prohibition against amnesty for gross human rights violations. In this view, a transitional amnesty – meant as a tool to allow a pacific post-war or post-dictatorship transition to democracy – would not be a legitimate option anymore. This article addresses the controversy concerning amnesty in international law and analyses both the motivations of those who support such a prohibition and the consequences on the concept of punitive power, the relationships between individual rights and law in general, and criminal law and democracy.