Some Reflections on the Conceptual Transformation of Amnesty in International Law

A sovereign act of forgiveness for past crimes is granted by a government to all persons (or certain groups of persons) who have been guilty of crime or delict and often conditioned upon their return to obedience. The goal of this paper is to examine main aspects of amnesty. From one side, advocates of amnesty believe that granting amnesty is a need of transitional societies going toward peace and stability while the opponents are on the idea that amnesty cases would expand the culture of impunity and violate the human rights norms in international instruments. To this end, they refer to the decisions adopted by the national and international bodies. Moreover, recent developments in criminalization of international law along with strengthening the universal jurisdiction principle have questioned the legality of amnesty so that the international community only tends to accept the conditioned amnesties.