In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

28 Feb

[Larissa van den Herik is a professor of public international law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies at Leiden University.] As the balance of world power is tilting east with China’s economic might and its increased international political power ending US hegemony, it is said that we are entering into a new geoeconomic world order in which economic instruments follow the logic of conflict rather than...

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28 Feb

[Alexandra Hofer (a.s.hofer@uu.nl) is an assistant professor in public international law at Utrecht University and affiliated researcher at the Ghent Rolin-Jaequemyns International Law Institute (GRILI).] Note to reader: most of this piece was written on Friday, 25 February. Given the speed at which the situation is evolving it may not be up-to-date at the time of publication, though it tried to take into account some of the additional measures...

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28 Feb

[Jennifer Trahan is Convenor of the Global Institute for the Prevention of Aggression, and Clinical Professor at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs.] Let us be clear why the United Nations is largely paralyzed in the face of one of the clearest cases of aggression since 1939:  it is because of the veto power of a permanent member of the UN Security...

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28 Feb

Call for Papers Call for Papers - Young Researchers’ Workshop ‘European Human Rights Protection: Twenty years from now': On the 16th of September 2022, the Academy for European Human Rights Protection at the University of Cologne will be opened officially. This joyous occasion will be marked with a colloquy bringing together judges from the European Court of Human Rights, the European Court,...

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25 Feb

[Carsten Stahn is Professor of International Criminal Law and Global Justice at Leiden Law School.] ‘In times of war, the law falls silent’ (silent enim leges inter arma). This famous maxim by Cicero is often used to illustrate the lack of power of law in the face of conquest and occupation. In the discourse over the war in Ukraine, we witness...

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24 Feb

[Ryan Thoreson is a researcher in the LGBT Rights Program at Human Rights Watch.] For most children, nationality is clear-cut. Most countries pass nationality down to children who are born to at least one of their citizens, while a smaller number grant nationality to any child born on their territory. But citizenship laws are by nature more exclusive than inclusive. For children whose parentage or family structure...

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23 Feb

[Amirali Alavi is the Chair of the Association of Families of Flight PS752 Victims’ Legal Committee. Irwin Cotler is Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights (RWCHR), an Emeritus Professor of Law at McGill University, and former Justice Minister and Attorney General of Canada. Yonah Diamond is an international human rights lawyer with the RWCHR.] On January 8, the...

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22 Feb

[Nidhi Singh works as a Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Fellow at the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA) and as a part-time researcher with the International Platform for Corporate Liability.] In June 2014, the UN Human Rights Council adopted Resolution 26/9 which decided to establish an international, legally binding instrument on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect...

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22 Feb

As of 23:00 CET on 21 February 2022, media outlets and journalists have begun to report on an announcement by Russia that it will send troops for "peacekeeping operations" in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in Eastern Ukraine. This followed Russia's announcement earlier the same evening that it would recognize those regions as independent entities, triggering threats of sanctions from...

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21 Feb

[Charlotte Renglet is a PhD candidate working on climate litigation and indigenous peoples’ rights at the Faculty of Law and Criminology of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Prof. Dr. Stefaan Smis is the Head of the Department of Public Law at the Faculty of Law and Criminology of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and a part-time Reader in International Law at the University...

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16 Feb

[Vrishank Singhania is a final year student at the National Law School of India University. He serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the National Law School of India Review. ] In June 2021, an Independent Expert Panel (IEP) released a report, detailing proposed amendments to the Rome Statute, to include a fifth crime – ecocide. This proposal would criminalize at an international level,...

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16 Feb

Events Diakonia International Humanitarian Law Centre virtual event: IHL and the protection of persons with disabilities: Even though about 15 percent of the population have some form of disability, this group is largely ignored when an armed conflict breaks out. International humanitarian law (IHL) does not include specific provisions for the protection of people with disabilities. At a virtual side-event on...

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