Barbora Holá – författare

Social scientific research focusing on mass atrocities, which include widespread or systematic crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, expanded after the end of the Cold War. Mass violence in the former Yugoslavia, as well as the genocide in Rwanda, sparked new research initiatives in numerous disciplines. Scholars working in various academic fields such as international (criminal) law, political science, psychology, sociology, history, anthropology, and demography began to focus on the causes and consequences of atrocity crimes. Yet knowledge generated by these various disciplines remains scattered and has not been integrated into a single edited volume.The Oxford Handbook on Atrocity Crimes surveys and further develops the evolving field of atrocity crimes studies by combining major mono-, inter-, and multi-disciplinary research on atrocity crimes in one comprehensive volume. With contributions of leading scholars, this handbook will be an essential source and reference tool. Unique in its thematic focus (atrocity crimes as an overarching phenomenon, including crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes) as well as in its comprehensive scope, the book covers the etiology, the actors involved, the harm caused, the reactions to atrocity crimes, and in-depth analyses of understudied situations of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

Informers are generally reviled. After all, 'snitches get stitches.' Informers who report to repressive regimes are particularly disdained. While informers may themselves be victims enlisted by the state, their actions cause other individuals to suffer significant harm. Informers, then, are central to the proliferation of endemic human rights abuses. Yet, little is known about exactly why ordinary people end up informing on--at times betraying--other people to state authorities. Through a case-study of Communist Czechoslovakia (1945-1989) that draws from secret police archives, oral histories, and a broad gamut of secondary sources, this book unearths what fuels informers to speak to the secret police in repressive times and considers how transitional justice should approach informers once repression ends. This book unravels the complex drivers behind informing and the dynamics of societal reactions to informing. It explores the agency of both informers and secret police officers. By presenting informers 'up close', and the relationships between informers and secret police officers in high resolution, this book centres the role of emotions in informer motivations and underscores the value of dignity and reconciliation in transitional reconstruction. This book also leverages research from informing in repressive states to better understand informing in so-called liberal democratic states, which, after all, also rely on informers to maintain law and preserve order.To learn more, read the introduction and conclusion from the book's symposium: https://opiniojuris.org/2024/08/19/introduction-to-the-sympo https://opiniojuris.org/2024/08/23/symposium-on-informers-up https://justiceinconflict.org/2024/10/07/disguise-blur-purr- and-nakedness-mark-drumbl-and-barbora-hola-on-informers-up-c lose-stories-from-communist-prague/ https://justiceinconflict.org/2024/10/16/to-change-the-we-as -well-as-the-me-and-the-you-concluding-the-symposium-on-info rmers-up-close/

Punitive practices are highly revealing of a society's social fabric, its normative order, and power structure. Punishment in International Society examines the penal philosophies and practices in international society. The contributions to this book show the added value of a punitive lens to international politics in two major ways: First, punitive practices reveal the contours of the international normative order, its structures, and hierarchies. Such a perspective highlights the prominent position of individuals in the current normative order, but it also reveals a major divergence in the international normative order between a global North that emphasizes individualized, retributive punishment for atrocity crimes and a global South that puts reparations for past colonial wrongs on the agenda. Second, in contrast to a nation-state, the authority to sanction and act in defense of the normative order is far more dispersed and contested in international society. Although there is a demand to embed punitive practices in procedures and institutions, the most legitimate site of such authority remains contested as regional organizations such as the African Union compete with the United Nations for the authority to defend the normative order. This book brings together an international roster of scholars from the social sciences, law, and humanities. The contributions demonstrate that punitive practices have been more prevalent than commonly acknowledged as they have often been masked as (self-)defence, reparations, or coercive diplomacy. By approaching international punishment from various disciplines, this volume sheds new light on different dimensions of the punitive practices across the globe.