IECLO’s Scientific Coordinator from the United States, Professor & Indiana University Presidential Fellow Anja Matwijkiw has completed a special issue on crime and corruption for Brill”s International Criminal Law Review (see https://brill.com/view/journals/icla/aop/issue.xml?language=en). 

As the lead guest editor on “Crime and Corruption. Serious Economic Crimes and International Criminal Law – Shaping a New Era of International Law and Justice”, Professor and Indiana University Presidential Fellow Anja Matwijkiw was the editorial “octopus” – multi-tasking for the objective of collaborating with a team of guest co-editors, consisting of Dr. Bronik Matwijkiw, Dr. Sunčana Roksandić, and Dr. Marc Engelhart. Besides criminal and human rights law, criminology and considerations that draw on political thought, sociology, ethics, philosophy, and cultural values are accommodated in the publication. On April 25, 2025, Anja Matwijkiw talked about her work for a panel at the Institute for European Studies at the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, Indiana University-Bloomington. Director Roberta Pergher moderated the event, which included four panelists (as shown on the poster).

The special issue, which is edited as a double volume on the topic, underscores the importance of tackling crime and corruption at the national, transnational and international levels while taking preventive and repressive instruments into account. Its lens is multidisciplinary in scope and the articles all home in on one or more aspects of the negative effects of corruption that the Executive Director of United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime Yury Fedotov captured in 2013, with the poignant statement that “[c]orruption is the thief of economic and social development; stealing the opportunities of ordinary people to progress and to prosper”.[1] In circumstances where “vast quantities of assets, which may constitute a substantial proportion of the resources of States’ have been channeled away from their intended recipients with the involvement of people in positions of power and trust, the phenomenon called grand corruption becomes an issue, thereby raising questions about structural weaknesses and (the failure of) liberal democracy. Notwithstanding, in contradistinction to so-called petty corruption, grand corruption is not applicable as a crime at the international and global level.

“Crime and Corruption. Serious Economic Crimes and International Criminal Law – Shaping a New Era of International Law and Justice” consists of 13 contributions written by 18 authors from different countries in South and North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, and Africa. These are:

  1. Uglješa Ugi Zvekić, “For an Effective Global Anti-Crime Governance: UNTOC and UNCAC Consolidated”.
  2. Héctor Olasolo, Pablo Galain Palermo and Robert J. Blaise MacLean, “The Case for Considering Corruption as a Central Element of Governance: Institutional and Organizational Corruption and Complex Corruption Networks”.
  3. Marc Engelhart and Sunčana Roksandić, “Environmental Corruption: Fighting Two Evils through International Criminal Law alongside the Introduction of a Special Protocol to UNCAC and UNTOC”.
  4. Anja Matwijkiw, “Corruption: From International Law and Ethics to Realpolitik and Amoralism. Part i: Perspectives on the Corruption Discourse”.
  5. Bronik Matwijkiw, “Corruption: From International Law and Ethics to Realpolitik and Amoralism”. Part 2: The Macro Approach”.
  6. Andy Aydin-Aitchison, “Bringing together the criminologies of atrocity and serious economic crimes”.
  7. Yuliya Zabyelina, “Considerations of (Non)-Application of Immunity of Public Officials from Foreign Jurisdiction in Cases of International and Transnational Crimes”.
  8. Annika van Baar, “Theorizing and Understanding Corporate Involvement in Atrocity Crimes”.
  9. Ivana Jelić and Julia Jungfleisch, ‘Clearing Muddied Waters: The Relationship Between the Rule of Law and the Fight against Corruption in the Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights’.
  10. Benny Hutahayan and Yudi Kristiana, “Judicial Corruption in the Post-Reform Era: Assessing the Effectiveness of Legal Reforms in Indonesia”.
  11. Anna Oriolo, “The Contribution of the European Court of Human Rights to the Construction of a Corruption-Free Society”.
  12. Sobe Williams, “Extricating Sexual Corruption from the Shadow of Anti-Corruption Law: The Imperative for a new Approach”.
  13. Nandor Knust, “ECO-COM-B: Environmental Crimes’ – Steps Towards a More Holistic System of Environmental Crime Control”.

In the Introduction to “Crime and Corruption. Serious Economic Crimes and International Criminal Law – Shaping a New Era of International Law and Justice”, the multidisciplinary lens is explained in terms of an anti-dote to “fragmentation”, a way of overcoming the fact that sometimes “knowledge develops in silos without reference to other schools of thought”.

According to Professor and Indiana University Presidential Fellow Anja Matwijkiw, the Editor-in-Chief of International Criminal Law Review, Professor Caroline Fournet is owed a debt of gratitude for her support of multidisciplinary efforts that serve to break down or at least test and challenge the traditional boundaries and, with these, the business-as-usual comfort zone for experts as regards analysis and legal discourse.

“Both the existing law and the existing literature need a little push forward”, Professor and Indiana University Presidential Fellow Anja Matwijkiw explains. “As authors and guest editors, we are united by the belief that it is necessary to combine the expertise of different disciplines and fields of study to tackle crime and corruption in a theoretically meaningful and practically successful manner, in effect, by establishing bridges”. 

The special issue will be followed by a book publication, which will appear later in 2025 and which will contain more contributions on the topic. “We aim(ed) to recruit progressive and innovative scholars for the publication and we envision what you may call a Thinking Things Through contribution to the existing literature”. So, Professor and Indiana University Presidential Fellow Anja Matwijkiw summarizes the aspiration. 

Information for Photo and Poster:

2025 photo of Anja Matwijkiw by Associate Director of Arts and Humanities Research Development Ana Maria Velasco, Indiana University-Bloomington.

2025 poster for “Crime and (Grand) Corruption: Law, Policy and Interdisciplinary Considerations” panel featuring Karen E. Bravo, Anja Matwijkiw, Sunčana Roksandić, and David Bosco, the Institute for European Studies at the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, Indiana University-Bloomington.

[1] United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), “Corruption is the thief of economic and social development, says UNODC Chief at anti-corruption opening in Panama, 25 November 2013”, www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2013/November/corruption-is-the-thief-of-economic-and-social-development-says-unodc-chief-at-anti-corruption-opening-in-panama.html.