Reparations to Future Generation before the ICC

ABSTRACT This article argues that it is just for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to order the perpetrator of core crimes to provide reparations to those who were not yet born at the time of the commission of the crimes (‘future victims’). Responding to the criticism that future victims are not eligible to receive reparations, philosophical explanations are proposed to justify the award of reparations to future victims at the ICC using different conceptions of intergenerational justice. First, a theoretical framework is developed to divide victims into contemporary and future victims and then future victims are divided into three types: independent, dependent, and community-level future victims. Next, several existing theories of intergenerational justice are applied to each type of victims, and the different causal links required are identified. In sum, theoretical justifications for the award of reparations will differ based on the conception of harm suffered by the victims. On the one hand, relying on the proposal by Lukas H. Meyer, independent future victims should be repaired for the identity-independent harm up to the extent of the threshold of their well-being. The required causal link is between the crime and the harm suffered by the future victims. On the other hand, based on the subsequent-wrong solution proposed by George Sher, reparations to dependent future victims should be understood as reparations for the harm caused by failure to repair the harm suffered by those who existed at the time of the commission of crimes. The required causal link is between the harm suffered by contemporary victims and the harm suffered by future victims. Reparations to community-level future victims can be explained using the concept of transgenerational community proposed by Avner De-Shalit. The required causal link in this case is between the harm suffered by the community and the harm suffered by the future victims.