Enforcing victims’ language rights:

Paraprofessional interpretation and terminological work at the International Criminal Court

Abstract

While the language rights of the accused in criminal proceedings conducted before national and international courts are well established, there are other participants of the proceedings whose linguistic participation must be ensured for the fulfilment of human rights requirements. This paper focuses on the language rights of victims before the ICC on the one hand, and the language services to enforce such rights on the other. These language services include in particular the recruitment and training of paraprofessional interpreters, as well as the necessary terminology work in the so-called situation languages.