Although maintaining the balance between restoring peace and ending impunity can be sensitive and complex, amnesties for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are unacceptable, according to the United Nations Legal Counsel. "In the past it was not infrequent to hear people say 'look there are situations where we simply have to make a choice: either you want peace or you want justice but you can't have both together,' so the dilemma was peace or justice and the assumption was that sometimes it is impossible to have the two. I would submit today that it is no longer acceptable to put the dilemma in these terms," Nicolas Michel, Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs, told reporters in New York today. The Under-Secretary-General said that a guiding principle for the UN was the need to create conditions conducive to...
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