(focused on the punishment of the criminal behavior) and restorative justice
(threatens the situation of victims and their rehabilitation). In my understanding,
retributive justice and restorative justice are not self-excluding, but instead they
complement themselves. There is a convergence between the search for justice
through the punishment of those responsible for violations to human rights
(retributive justice) and the search for the rehabilitation of the victims of said
violations (restorative justice).71
4.
The Integrating Hermeneutics and the Protection of the
Law.
98.
This is how terrorism is fought: within the Law. Here, International
Humanitarian Law meets domestic criminal law to punish those responsible for those
grave violations, thus dealing with the claims for justice of the victims of terrorist acts.
What is not admissible, besides being criminal, is to fight terrorism with their own
weapons, turning to the State’s terrorism and thus multiplying the number of innocent
and defenseless victims. The recent and notable developments in International
Criminal Law also come to give a boost to these new approximations or convergences,
- now between International Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Law. It was
necessary to wait all those years for this to happen, what today is a result of the
awakening of the universal juridical conscience –in my opinion the ultimate material
source of all Law – to deal with an urgent need of protection of human beings in
situations of armed conflicts.
99.
These new approximations or convergences are now added to the other that,
for years, have been the object of my reflections and studies, specifically, the
approximations or convergences – at a normative, hermeneutic, and operative level –
between the International Human Rights Law, International Humanitarian Law,
International Refugee Law;72 to these three aspects of protection we must currently
Cambridge, University Press, 2007, pp. 158-159.
.
71
As illustrated by the mechanisms of the TPI itself as a whole.
.
Cf. A.A. Cançado Trindade, Derecho Internacional de los Derechos Humanos,
Derecho Internacional de los Refugiados y Derecho Internacional Humanitario:
Aproximaciones y Convergencias, in 10 Años de la Declaración de Cartagena sobre
Refugiados - Memoria del Coloquio Internacional (San José de Costa Rica, diciembre
de 1994), San José, IIDH/ACNUR/Gob. Costa Rica, 1995, pp. 77-168; A.A. Cançado
Trindade, Aproximaciones o Convergencias entre el Derecho Internacional
Humanitario y la Protección Internacional de los Derechos Humanos, in Seminario
Interamericano sobre la Protección de la Persona en Situaciones de Emergencia Memoria (Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, junio de 1995), San José de Costa Rica,
CICR/ACNUR/Gob. Suiza, 1996, pp. 25-28 y 195-197; A.A. Cançado Trindade,
Derecho Internacional de los Derechos Humanos, Derecho Internacional de los
Refugiados y Derecho Internacional Humanitario - Aproximaciones y Convergencias,
Ginebra, CICV, [2000], pp. 1-66; A.A. Cançado Trindade, "Aproximaciones y
Convergencias Revisitadas: Diez Años de Interacción entre el Derecho Internacional
de los Derechos Humanos, el Derecho Internacional de los Refugiados, y el Derecho
Internacional Humanitario (De Cartagena/1984 a San José/1994 y México/2004)", in
Memoria del Vigésimo Aniversario de la Declaración de Cartagena sobre los
Refugiados (1984-2004), 1a. ed., San José de Costa Rica/México, ACNUR, 2005, pp.
139-191; A.A. Cançado Trindade, "International Law for Humankind: Towards a New
Jus Gentium - General Course on Public International Law - Part II", 317 Recueil des
72