Incitement in International Law

This book offers a comprehensive study of incitement in its various forms in international law. It discusses the status of incitement to hatred in human rights law and examines its harms and dangers as well as the impact of a prohibition on freedom of speech. The book additionally presents a detailed definition of punishable incitement. In this context, Wibke K. Timmermann argues that incitement should be recognized as the crime of persecution, where it is utilized within a system of persecutory measures by the State or a similarly powerful organization.

The book draws on the Nahimana case before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, as well as jurisprudence from German and other courts following World War II to provide support for this proposal. The work moreover provides a comprehensive analysis of public incitement to crimes; solicitation or instigation; and the related modes of liability aiding and abetting and commission through another person.

Dedicated exclusively and comprehensively to incitement in its various forms, this book will be of essential use and great interest to students and researchers of international criminal law and human rights law, in addition to practitioners within these areas.

Wibke K. Timmermann, PhD, LLM, is a lawyer at Legal Aid Western Australia in Perth, Australia. She previously worked as a Legal Officer at the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the ICTR. She has published a number of articles on the topic of incitement.