Punishment of international crimes at international and hybrid criminal courts has been traditionally and primarily guided by retributive justice and adversatial proceedings rather than by restorative justice and an inquisitorial model. Thus, victims status has been fundamentally limited to be witnesses at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL). However, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has meant a pivotal change in how victims are cosidered at international and hybrid crimilan courts, i.e., from a paternalistic view regarding them only as witnesses to a judicial scenario at which they can also voice their views and concerns (victim participants) as well as claim reparations. This trend ha continued at the international criminal justice level as evidence in hybrid criminal courts created after the ICC such as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) at which victims can be civil parties and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) at which victims can be victim participants, in addition to the existence of victimsä status as witnesses in both courts. The present study seeks to address two main research questions. The first one is: What is the victims status at international and hybrid criminal courts? and the second one is: How does victims status as witnesses, victim participants/civil parties and reparations claimants work at international and hybrid criminal courts? Besides the legal framework and case law/practice of the courts considered, oher areas of law such as comparative criminal procedural law and international human rights law have been examined in this study. Moreover, victims status considered in a triple dimension as witnesses, victim participants/civil parties and reparations claimants has veen analyzed paying attention to not only the victims status as such ut also other interests existing at the courts. Therefore, this study seeks to present a comprehensive and integrated critical view of the victims stats across six international and hybrid criminal courts.
