Salla Huikuri

Finnish Ministry of the Interior · Strategic Development

Darknet forums dedicated to child sexual abuse material (CSAM) attract thousands of users interacting with each other through online communications. Given finite resources, law enforcement agencies seek ways to effectively prioritise their investigative efforts by identifying key-players that are central to the forum community. For the identificati...

Background: The darknet hosts an increasing number of hidden services dedicated to the distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Given that by contributing CSAM to the forum members subject themselves to criminal prosecution, questions regarding the motivation for members contributing to darknet CSAM forums arise. Objective: Building on i...

Online communities on darknet contribute to sexual violence against children. They provide offender access to Child Sexual Abuse Material and to a group of peers that supports criminal activities. This article sheds light on online child sexual abusers and their justifications for Child Sexual Abuse (CSA). It describes different offender profiles a...

To date, the possession of purely text-based child sexual exploitation material, in contrast to photographic and videographic depictions, is not punishable in Germany. For the first time, the current article shows to what extent stories from a so-called girl lover forum on the darknet address sexualized violence against children. Based on a textual...

By routing traffic through a random combination of servers worldwide, the darknet obfuscates the identity of its users, making it an attractive medium for journalists, dissidents, and individuals committing crimes. Since 2008, access to the darknet has been facilitated by the The Onion Router (TOR) browser, bringing the darknet within reach of an i...

Germany has influenced international criminal law in the twentieth century more than any other country. This chapter starts where the First World War ends: with the unsuccessful Leipzig trials, the following Second World War, and the Nuremberg tribunals. The postwar German political elite undermined Nuremberg’s legacy and this sentiment started to...

The EU has promoted a strong, permanent, and independent ICC since the Rome conference on the establishment on the ICC. Because the EU cannot compete with the US on military terms, an international system based on multilateralism is important for increasing its power. At the Rome conference, the EU successfully built a coalition of Like-Minded Stat...

This chapter starts with an overview of realist, liberal, and reflectivist explanations for the institutionalization of the ICC. It then proceeds to the concept of normative binding. Normative binding is triggered by unilateral policies and power disparity between the leading state and other actors. When secondary powers cannot balance in hard powe...

Since the Rome conference, Indonesia has followed a state sovereignty-oriented agenda when it comes to the ICC. After dealing with the legal side of ratification, I move on to the political considerations and explore the agendas of the executive, legislative, and different ministries. What looms in the background are human rights violations and his...

For late ratifiers that did not buy into the ICC in the first five years after the Rome conference, the world of international criminal law was bipolar, as the G.W. Bush Administration and the EU battled for their respective agendas. Both leaders approached third states bilaterally and used external pressure to achieve their goals. Accordingly, for...

After the Nuremberg trials, the Truman Administration wanted to include an ICC to the Genocide Convention. By the end of the Cold War, the establishment of an ICC became topical. Unlike the G.H.W. Bush Administration, Clinton supported the idea. The aim of the Administration was to secure control over the Court through the UNSC. This was opposed by...

The negotiations on the ICC allowed the EU to unite its member states behind a common cause and to create a counterweight to the USA. A cross-case comparison finds that Germany, promoter of multilateralism, has the least in common with the other countries. The Philippines is a typical straggler, which does not emphasize international norms, but uti...

This chapter describes how the Philippine legislative, the congress, civil society, and the EU kept on pleading President Arroyo to join the ICC, unsuccessfully. While human rights violations, committed under Arroyo’s watch, gave reasons to be suspicious about the ICC, the biggest hindrance for the Philippines’ ratification was the US opposition to...

This book explores the institution of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a policy instrument. It argues that after the Cold War the European Union started challenging the unilateral policies of the United States by promoting new norms and institutions, such as the ICC. This development flies in the face of traditional explanations for cooper...

Southeast Asia is one of the most underrepresented regions in the International Criminal Court (ICC). I address the question of non-ratification of the Rome Statute with a case study on Indonesia. While the Yudhoyono Administration has repeatedly promised to join the ICC, ratification has not materialized. I argue that Indonesia's tradition of emph...