The Centre

The ICWC (International Research and Documentation Centre for War Crimes Trials) exists since 2003 as a research centre at Philipps University Marburg. As a pilot project, it was already established in 2000 at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt am Main.

The ICWC’s work is dedicated to research on international criminal law within the wider context of transitional justice as well as to the documentation of (historical) war crimes trials since World War 2. In this way, the Centre has been actively engaged for two decades in the international scholarly discourse on the examination of mass violence.

Through engaging events and the M.A. program "International Criminal Justice: Law, History, Politics" hosted at the ICWC, the Centre contributes to the interdisciplinary integration of research and teaching. With the Trial Monitoring Program, established as a study project, the ICWC is the only academic institution in Germany to provide training for trial observers.

Among the core tasks of the ICWC is the collection of documents relating to international criminal proceedings in a comprehensive database. This database is intended to enable scholars and other interested parties to locate relevant entries and associated case files on the basis of just a few key data points, such as the names of the accused. 

Finally, the Directors as well as the Managing Director of the Centre contribute to current debates—for instance on Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine or the war in Gaza—providing analysis of these events from the perspective of international (criminal) law for a broader public audience.