Ad Hoc Tribunals in Africa: A Wealth of Experience but a Scarcity of Funds

International judicial norms developed slowly during the Cold War but have recently begun to draw on the experiences of the Criminal Tribunal in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda . These ad hoc bodies had to respond quickly to emergency situations by combining different international approaches to justice and prosecution. The Special Court for Sierra Leone is the latest of these experiments. Despite having had more time for reflective discussion and negotiation, the Special Court faces the same challenge and constraint: the parameters of time and resources are set by political imperatives. The International Criminal Court goes some way to addressing the problems of funding, good judicial appointments and contrasting legal systems, the details of future trials will not be easy. Ad hoc tribunals will probably still have a role to play in cases where the ICC cannot intervene.