Legitimising the Juba Peace Agreement on Accountability and Reconciliation: The International Criminal Court as a Third-party Actor?

This article analyses the Juba peace negotiations on accountability and reconciliation. It advances a new interpretation of the Agreement on Accountability and Reconciliation, focusing on five justice features: National proceedings, restorative accountability, alternative sentencing, individual responsibility and forward-looking victimhood. The article argues that the nature of the agreed justice policy derives from negotiators and mediators’ pursuit of international legitimation by the ICC and its compliance constituency. This argument has implications for our understanding of the role of the ICC in internationally judicialised peace processes: The need for peace agreement legitimation combined with the legitimacy requirements in such peace processes structurally constitutes the ICC as metaphorically present in the negotiation room and thus akin to a third-party actor.