In association with the International Commission of Jurists

August 2020

06 Aug

[Alexandra Huneeus is Professor of Law at University of Wisconsin Law School, where she directs the Global Legal Studies Center and Chairs the Human Rights Program.] Of the many innovations being advanced by Colombia’s peace mechanism (the Special Jurisdiction for the Peace, or SJP), one is the way it delineates its investigations. While some of its cases are organized by type of criminal activity – such as recruitment...

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05 Aug

[Judy Gitau is the Africa Region Coordinator for the global Women's Rights organization Equality Now, a lawyer, a published author in the fields of transitional justice and international criminal law and a member of Kenya's civil society.] In his book Complementarity, Catalysts, Compliance: The International Criminal Court in Uganda, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Christian De Vos illustrates what was intended by the legal rules under the...

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05 Aug

[Jacques B. Mbokani is a Professor of Law at the Université de Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo and a Consultant to Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa. A French version, provided by the author, appears below the English version of this post.] Introduction Christian De Vos's book on Complementarity, Catalysts, Compliance takes a fresh look at the relationship between the...

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04 Aug

In 2018, Latin American states adopted the “Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean”, also known as the Escazú Agreement, for the city in Costa Rica were it was signed. The treaty sets out an obligation for Member States to legislate on these three matters under specific conditions, within the broader context of...

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04 Aug

The United Nations Human Rights Committee has adopted General comment No. 37 on the right of peaceful assembly emanating from Article 21 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The final document was made available last week, and can be found here.    The adoption of this general comment – which is in effect an explanation or translation of Article 21...

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04 Aug

[Pascal Kambale and Sharon Nakandha are human rights lawyers with the Open Society Africa Regional Office (OSF-AfRO) where they serve as Senior Advisor and Program Officer respectively. They lead AfRO’s work on justice and accountability.] The request to provide some thoughts on Christian De Vos’ book is timely as the ASP appointed group of independent experts continues it task of making “concrete, achievable, actionable recommendations aimed at...

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03 Aug

[Liana Georgieva Minkova is a PhD candidate at the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge, UK, and a full-award holder of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Doctoral Training Partnership.] In Complementarity, Catalysts, Compliance, Christian De Vos sets himself the challenging task of providing new insight into one of the most discussed aspects of the work of the International Criminal...

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03 Aug

[Indrasish Majumder a third-year student pursuing B.A L.L. B (Hons) from National Law University Odisha, with a special interest in Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.] Two police officers block a woman’s path as she approaches the entrance of a hospital on the crowded streets of Panama clutching her purse and phone. “You! What are you doing? Today only women can be outside,” the woman (anonymous)...

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02 Aug

[Clare Brown is an Australian lawyer and Deputy Director of Victim Advocates International, based in Beirut.] On 28 July, CNN published an expose detailing the abuse of numerous Kenyan women by the Kenyan Consulate in Beirut, Lebanon. The women alleged that the Consulate had stolen money from them, physically assaulted them, and attempted to coerce them to perform sex work. The accusations, though alarming, are not...

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31 Jul

[Parisa Zangeneh is a PhD student at the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland, Galway, where she is a recipient of the Hardiman Scholarship.] Introduction In December, the Assembly of States Parties adopted Resolution ICC-ASP/18/Res.7, Review of the International Criminal Court and the Rome Statute System. This is a welcome call for an expert review of the...

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29 Jul

[Craig D. Gaver has practiced law in Washington, DC and the Arabian/Persian Gulf. He recently received the LL.M. degree from Columbia Law School. The views expressed herein are solely his own.] Civil aviation lies at the center of the Gulf dispute. Upon the break in relations on 5 June 2017, Saudi Arabia closed Qatar’s only land border (and later threatened to...

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