The Impacts of English-Language Hegemony on the ICC

Abstract

The ICC’s working language policy conforms to the mould of many other international legal institutions. All staff members must be proficient in at least one of its working languages, English and French. As in other comparable institutions, however, the reality is that English has become the Court’s lingua franca. What does the dominant role of English mean for the ICC’s ability to further the international criminal justice project? How does the status of English at the Court privilege those professionals for whom it is a native language, as well as the legal framework they bring with them? What kinds of conceptual limitations does dependence on a single language create for an institution aiming to promote what it considers globally applicable principles? Does the ICC’s objective of delivering global justice enable, in fact, the dominance of the contemporary worldwide lingua franca without too much pushback? This chapter, based on a multi-year ethnographic project on how the ICC addresses diverse language challenges, explores the impact of the uneven status of the Court’s working languages on those who work at and with the ICC, as well as on what the Court conveys to the world through the communications of its top officials, its judgments, its outreach activities, and its everyday language choices. It is shown that English-language hegemony is not only entrenched but has detrimental effects for the ICC in both practical and symbolic spheres, rendering the Court less efficient while also undermining its mission as a global institution.

By the same process whereby man spins language out of his own being, he ensnares himself in it; each language draws a magic circle round the people to which it belongs, a circle from which there is no escape save by stepping out of it into another.

– Wilhelm von Humboldt (Cited in Cassirer 1946, p. 9)