December 2020

[Mandipa Machacha is a Feminist Human Rights Practitioner, and a LL.D. student in Human Rights Law at the University of Pretoria Centre for Human Rights.] Despite extensive protection of the right to education in international and regional human rights instruments, even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, both globally and in Africa, mere access to education was still not guaranteed in practice to all...

[Justice Moses Hungwe Chinhengo is judge of the Lesotho High Court and a Commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists.] COVID-19 has altered every aspect of our lives in a very short space of time. As South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has observed, “the world we live in will never be the same”. As we adapt to the “new normal”, it is...

[Justice Jamesina E. L. King is a Commissioner of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) and a Commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists. She is also a Justice of the Court of Appeal of Sierra Leone.] The Constitutive Act of the African Union records in its preamble the determination of Member States to “take up the multifaceted challenges that confront our continent...

[Tim Fish Hodgson is a Legal Adviser for the International Commission of Jurists and Tanveer Jeewa is a Communications Consultant for the International Commission of Jurists.] This week Opinio Juris is hosting an online symposium on the impact of COVID-19 on human rights in Africa. Coordinated by the International Commission of Jurists’ Africa Team, the symposium hones in some key issues arising out of...

Announcements Francis Lieber Prize 2021: The American Society of International Law's Lieber Society on the Law of Armed Conflict awards the Francis Lieber Prize to the authors of publications that the judges consider to be outstanding in the field of law and armed conflict.  Both monographs and articles (including chapters in books of essays) are eligible for consideration — the prize is...

[Jennifer Trahan is Clinical Professor and Director of the Concentration in International Law and Human Rights at the NYU Center for Global Affairs and author of Existing Legal Limits to Security Council Veto Power in the Face of Atrocity Crimes (CUP 2020), winner of the “2020 ABILA Book of the Year Award” by the American Branch of the International Law Association.] This is...

[Jennifer Trahan is Clinical Professor and Director of the Concentration in International Law and Human Rights at the NYU Center for Global Affairs and author of Existing Legal Limits to Security Council Veto Power in the Face of Atrocity Crimes (CUP 2020), winner of the “2020 ABILA Book of the Year Award” by the American Branch of the International Law Association.] I am...

[Carrie McDougall (@IntLawCarrie) is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Melbourne and former Legal Specialist at the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Legal Adviser at Australia’s Mission to the United Nations.] In her new book, Existing Legal Limits to Security Council Veto Power in the Face of Atrocity Crimes, Jennifer Trahan provides an excellent overview of the veto power enjoyed by the Permanent...

[Roger Clark is the Board of Governors Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School; he also represented Samoa in the negotiations on the International Criminal Court.] Jennifer Trahan’s new book, Existing Legal Limits to Security Council Veto Power in the Face of Atrocity Crimes (CUP 2020) is, I believe, destined to be one of the most influential of the many books that are hitting the...

[Milena Sterio is The Charles R. Emrick Jr. – Calfee Halter & Griswold Professor of Law at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and Co-Coordinator for Global Justice Partnerships at the Public International Law and Policy Group.] It is my pleasure to contribute this guest post to the Opinio Juris symposium about Professor Jennifer Trahans’s recent book, Existing Legal Limits to Security Council Veto Power...

[Dire Tladi is a Professor of International Law, at the University of Pretoria, a member of UN International Law Commission and its Special Rapporteur on Peremptory Norms of General International Law (Jus Cogens).] I am grateful to Jennifer for inviting me to contribute to this symposium on her book Existing Limits to Security Council Veto Power in the Face of Atrocity Crimes. When...