The Effect of Linguistic Diversity and the Right on Translation in the Realization of Fair Trial in International Criminal Proceedings

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Assistant Professor of Public International Law, Department of Law, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Kurdistan

Abstract

Realization of justice in international criminal proceedings requires objective criteria and standards due to the multilingual nature of this process. The right to a fair trial includes a number of technicalities (procedurals) designed for the criminal justice process as an umbrella guarantee. Some aspects of this guarantee are directly related to the language. Language is both a means of doing justice for all the rights of the accused (prosecute claim) and one of the criteria for the realization of a procedural justice by providing free interpreter assistance in situations where the accused does not understand or cannot speak the working language of the court. The right for having an interpreter for such defendants is recognized both as a conventional international rule and is visible in the statutes of the International Criminal Courts, but the mere expression of this right without proper and practical application does not guarantee the right to be respected in international proceedings. Therefore, the question that is raised is what role does language and interpreter as a communication factor play in realizing a fair trial in the international criminal justice system that is full of multilingual proceedings. The author believes by following the legal doctrines, documents and judgments of international criminal courts that the right of a defendant who does not speak the working language of the court to have an interpreter is not only closely related to all the principles of fair trial and defense rights of the accused, but in fact, failure to observe this right can mean a violation of other formal principles in the trial. The logic of this right lies in effective communication by enabling the accused in order to protect the accused against arbitrariness and the minimum guarantees of a fair trial, especially where the trial is conducted in more than one language which has provided a hopeful structure for prosecuting claim of linguistic rights in criminal proceedings.
 

Keywords

References

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Criminal Law Doctrines
Volume 20, Issue 25
July 2023
Pages 93-126

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