The Reckoning for Teachers
People:
Paco de Onís (Producer)
Pamela Yates (Director)
Peter Kinoy (Editor)
Grants:
$20,000 for audience engagement in 2009
About the Project
Three short film gems for use in classroom and community settings that explore the ideas and issues about international justice raised in the feature length documentary, “The Reckoning”. The shorts use new material filmed for but never included in “The Reckoning”.Law or War: The History of the International Criminal Court
The 15-minute film describes the creation of the first permanent international court in history established to investigate and prosecute individual perpetrators, no matter how powerful, for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. This module provides details about the structure of the court and presents the challenges and opportunities this new court raises for the international community.
Seeking Peace, Seeking Justice: The ICC in Uganda
The 16-minute film explores the role of the ICC in Uganda, where a civil war between the government and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has resulted in the abduction of children to be used as child soldiers and the displacement of more than a million Ugandans from their homes. This module focuses on dilemmas raised by pursuing justice and peace at the same time.
International Law – Testing the Limits: The ICC and Darfur
The 13-minute film investigates the role of the ICC in bringing perpetrators to justice in the Darfur region of Sudan, where genocide has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and violence has displaced more than two million Darfuri children, women, and men. This module illuminates a major challenge for the ICC: how to bring the accused to trial without any authority to make arrests.
Each of the modules was the centerpiece for developing curricula in collaboration with educational organization Facing History and Ourselves for students from middle school thorough high school to learn about international justice and the International Criminal Court. They are also being used in undergraduate and graduate programs, law schools, in community settings, and by civil society groups throughout the world, including the African NGO “Campaign Against Impunity” which demands that African leaders cooperate with the ICC justice mandate.