Zwanzig Jahre Völkerstrafgesetzbuch Deutsches Völkerstrafrecht und (dessen) Kolonialität

This piece draws on critical theory to examine the possible coloniality of the German Code of Crimes against International Law (CCIL) and its practice. Acting as a translator of international post-colonial scholarship, I draw on perspectives from Third World Approaches to International Law and Critical Race Theory to adopt a critical position on the occasion of the 20-year anniversary of the coming into force of the CCIL. Against the background of Germany's current hegemonic position and its history of imperialism, I question in how far the practice of the CCIL to date can be described as anti-hegemonic and progressive. There are, I argue, two perspectives on coloniality here: First, the possible coloniality exported from the International Criminal Court's Rome Statute into the code; and second, the coloniality that the CCIL – described as an 'export hit' – could itself be exporting to other jurisdictions as they adopt similar codes of their own using the CCIL as a template. To make the critique as concrete and practical as possible (apprehending the often-recited distance of theory from practice), I propose three concrete action points: First, to take reparations seriously from a material and not simply symbolic viewpoint; Second, to address the racializing stereotypes that are baked into legal-political notions of where and by whom international crimes are committed; Third, to learn from abolitionism movements and their work on the problematic aspects of the prison-industrial-complex and demands for putting the brakes on criminal law to make space for non-punitive and reparative forms of justice.