In this project, the imagery of enemy of mankind in international refugee law (IRL) and international criminal law (ICL) will be scrutinized. Research will focus on a specific type of defendant; those who are considered an ‘enemy’, e.g. terrorism suspects in Guantanamo Bay who cannot be tried for lack of evidence but are detained indefinitely nevertheless or, in the past, pirates on the high seas who were beyond legal protection. The work of Günther Jakobs on Feindstrafrecht - enemy criminal law – (Jakobs, 2004) is of interest as is Hannah Arendt’s work on statelessness and non-citizenship in Origins of Totalitarianism (1966).  

Researcher: Elies van Sliedregt