Dr Anni Pues
Senior Lecturer
Dr Anni Pues is a Senior Lecturer in International Law at the School of Law, University of Glasgow. She is the academic coordinator of LLM Dissertations and teaches international criminal law. Dr Pues is also a distinguished practitioner of law, admitted to the List of Counsel at the International Criminal Court, and currently acts as lead Victims Counsel at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers.
Her work includes a monograph on Prosecutorial Discretion at the International Criminal Court (Hart, 2020), and a range of publications spanning the areas of international and transnational criminal law as well as international human rights law. Currently, she is carrying out research in the following areas:
•Universal jurisdiction proceedings
•Emerging new actors and institutions of international criminal law
•and the evolution of victims’ rights in international law.
She also undertakes training and capacity building activities for judges, legal practitioners, and academics from different parts of the world. Recently, she was appointed as an Honorary Member of the Advisory Council of the Kurdistan Center for International Law.
Below is a list of key publications. For a full list please click on the following link:
Evolving justice arrangements post-Brexit
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Project Report. Joint Committee of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission.
A victim’s right to a fair trial at the International Criminal Court? Reflections on Article 68(3) of the Rome Statute
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This article offers critical reflection on the scope of the fair trial notion in Article 68(3) of the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The ICC Statute — perhaps more clearly than any other international procedural regime — is committed to the general idea of fairness, including for victims as an overarching principle of international criminal justice. However, the article challenges claims that the fair trial notion in Article 68(3) contains any fair trial guarantee for victims participating in proceedings before the ICC. The analysis of the relevant ICC jurisprudence shows that victims’ rights to participate are ultimately reducible to mere privileges, because their scope of participation is entirely dependent on discretionary judicial decisions. The Court’s response to the difficult task of making a criminal trial with thousands of participants work is common legal representation. This collective approach to participation might be pragmatic but leaves no scope for any claims regarding individual fair trial rights for victims. The general trend towards increasingly treating victims as a collective, rather than individuals, is also inconsistent with the idea of an overarching, general component of fairness for all parties and participants. To achieve such a general component of procedural fairness attached to the proceedings more widely speaking, it is argued that the ICC will need to rethink its approach to victim participation. Only a clear-cut, minimum set of participatory rights guaranteed in the legal framework of the Court, spelled out for example in the Rules of Procedure and Evidence, would allow the definition of a breach to any general component of fairness. Till then, the ‘right to a fair trial’ or a ‘fair trial guarantee’ continues to be reserved for the accused.
The UN General Assembly as a security actor: appraising the investigative mechanism for Syria
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This article analyses the role of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) as a security actor. With the creation of the ‘International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism to Assist in the Investigation and Prosecution of Persons Responsible for the Most Serious Crimes under International Law Committed in the Syrian Arab Republic since March 2011’ (IIIM), through UNGA Resolution 71/ 2481 in 2016, the General Assembly creatively used its powers to strengthen international criminal justice. Although investigative or fact-finding missions itself are nothing new to the UN system, Resolution 71/ 248 is qualitatively different to any other mission before it. The IIIM was established without Syrian consent, which is a historic first for the General Assembly. It is also the first time that such a body is tasked with investigations that fulfil prosecution standards, that serves as an evidence repository as well as a connecting hub between different justice actors. The UN General Assembly filled a void where the UN Security Council found itself in a stalemate over Syria. The IIIM has since served as a blueprint for a new generation of investigative mechanisms that emerged in the UN system. Looking beyond the appraisal of the IIIM, the article argues that the UN General Assembly practice in maintaining peace and security has significantly evolved over time. The early UN General Assembly practice through Uniting for Peace allowed it to assert its proactive role in parallel to the Security Council, yet it failed in its claim of authority to recommend forceful, collective measures. The practice subsequently evolved towards the diverse use of non-forceful measures, of which the IIIM provides a recent example. Creative boundary pushing in the UNGA through non-forcible measures will hopefully contribute to peace and security beyond war.
Prosecutorial Discretion at the International Criminal Court
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This timely book provides a comprehensive guide to, and rigorous analysis of, prosecutorial discretion at the International Criminal Court. This is the first ever study that takes the reader through all the key stages of the Proscecutor's decision-making process. Starting from preliminary examinations and the decision to investigate, the book also explores case selection processes, plea agreements, culminating in the question of how to end engagement in specific country situations. The book serves as a guide to the Rome Statute through the lens of the Prosecutor's activities. With its unique combination of legal theory and specific policy analysis, it addresses broader questions that will be relevant to other international and hybrid criminal courts and tribunals. The book will be of interest to students, practitioners of law, academics, and the wider public concerned with international law, criminal justice and international relations.
Discretion and the gravity of situations at the International Criminal Court
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This article offers a new perspective on the gravity notion in Article 17(1)(d) of the Statute. It demonstrates that it is impossible to determine gravity to ‘exacting legal requirements’, as the Pre-Trial Chamber in the situation of the registered vessels of the Union of the Comoros, Greece and Cambodia found. Instead, the Prosecutor is equipped with some ‘interpretative discretion’ that allows adjustment to the factually diverse situations that the International Criminal Court (icc) is confronted with. This form of discretion, however, is distinct from those procedural discretionary processes that have to be used to select which situations to investigate. Interpretative discretion nevertheless requires as much consistency as possible. As pathways to achieve that, this article challenges the concept of situational gravity. It further proposes to exclude any perpetrator-based element in the gravity assessment to harmonise the interpretation of gravity for potential and real cases before the ICC.
Towards the ‘Golden Hour’?: A critical exploration of the length of preliminary examinations
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Over the years, the conduct of preliminary examinations has gained increasing importance at the International Criminal Court (ICC). One notable aspect in this area is the hugely diverging length of such examinations, ranging from one week for the situation in Libya to 12 years (and rising) for the situation in Colombia. This article critically interrogates the repeated claim of the Prosecutor that the absence of any provisions regulating the length of preliminary examinations was a deliberate decision of the drafters of the Rome Statute, leaving her with unfettered discretion in that area. Instead, it is suggested that the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in prioritizing preliminary examinations is legally limited through the obligation to ensure effective investigations, demanding reasonably swift responses because evidence vanishes over time — witnesses disappear, memories fade, and data gets lost (the ‘golden hour’ principle). Furthermore, the conduct of preliminary examinations is also limited through the legal and policy commitment to impartiality, including the appearance of impartiality. A robust debate about a structured and transparent process of prioritization at the preliminary examination stage is thus overdue. It is proposed that the Prosecutor should introduce a policy commitment to conclude preliminary examinations within a defined time limit. Such a policy would be an important step towards a more structured method of situation selection, and would reduce the possibility that decision-making processes in more contentious situations are postponed for obscure reasons.