Recent Posts

[Assistant Professor at the Poznań Human Rights Centre, Institute of Law Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences.] The Trump administration’s ‘family separation policy’ has been widely reported and criticized (see for example here and here). Recently, the public learned of the policy’s horrible long-term effects: in October 2020, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) revealed that parents of 545 children...

[Lys Kulamadayil is a SNSF Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Amsterdam Center for International Law.] Is the handshake between men and women a protected social practice under the German constitution and if so, should persons who refuse to shake hands be denied citizenship? A recent judgment by the Administrative Court of Baden-Württemberg affirming German authorities’ decision to deny a Muslim man German citizenship...

[Justin M. Loveland is a freelance legal consultant in public international law, transitional justice, and international human rights, currently working as Senior Legal Consultant to the Truth, Reconciliation and National Unity Commission of Seychelles.] For the perhaps small percentage of the world that can place Seychelles on a map, the 115 islands northeast of Madagascar form a paradisiacal archipelago of white sandy beaches whose main offerings...

[Pranay Lekhi is a Legal Advisor – Not Admitted UK – at Allen & Overy, London. He graduated first-class from the University of Cambridge with a specialization in International Law. Views are strictly personal.] On October 7 2020, the Supreme Court of India held that public places cannot be occupied indefinitely while exercising the right to peacefully protest (para 17). The judgement has...

[Parisa Zangeneh is a PhD student at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland, Galway, where she is a recipient of the Hardiman Scholarship.]   The Independent Expert Review and themes of trust and tenure In Friday’s EJIL:Talk post on the Independent Expert Review (IER, the Report), Professor Guilfoyle raises a number of important issues about the health of the...

[Alessandro Pizzuti is co-founder of UpRights. Prior to forming UpRights, Alessandro worked as a legal officer at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon as well as at the International Residual Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.] On 14 October 2020, the Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA) announced...

[Eve Massingham is a Senior Research Fellow with the School of Law at The University of Queensland.] Over the coming months there will be considerable attention, both in Australia and internationally, on the findings of the Brereton Inquiry into crimes alleged to have been committed by Australian special forces operating in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016. The report specifically identifies 19...

By Karolína Babická, ICJ Legal Adviser The EU Counter-terrorism Directive On 15 March 2017 the European Union (EU) adopted EU Directive 2017/541 on Combatting Terrorism (“the Directive”)with a deadline for transposition into domestic law of 8 September 2018. The Directive aims principally to extend the scope of application of criminal law by Member States to terrorism related threats and activity within the EU. In...

[David Matyas is a PhD Candidate and Gates Cambridge Scholar at the University of Cambridge, Lauterpacht Centre for International Law.] For over two weeks, violent and escalating clashes in the Tigray region of Ethiopia have resulted in hundreds of deaths, thousands of displaced persons and ever growing humanitarian needs in this mountainous region of northern Ethiopia. The parties to this conflict include the government of...

[Henning Lahmann is a Senior Researcher at the Digital Society Institute ESMT Berlin.] Back in May, the German Federal Constitutional Court (the Court) held that the law for Germany‘s Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND) was unconstitutional in its current form due to insufficient legal protections for journalists who are not citizens and who work outside of Germany’s borders against surveillance measures, a judgment widely lauded for its expansive...

[Eian Katz is Counsel and Program Manager at Public International Law and Policy Group. Opinions expressed here are his own.] Recent allegations that Turkey has prevented humanitarian aid from reaching Nagorno-Karabakh mark the latest instance of a disturbing trend in global conflicts. In recent months, belligerent actors have engaged in similar acts of obstructionism in Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen to dire humanitarian effect. The abject politicization of aid delivery...

[Hadi Dadmehr is a PhD candidate in Public International law at the National University of Iran (SBU). Hadi was Head of the Department of Law at the University of Zabol, Iran,  for 6 years. You can find him on Twitter @HadiDadmehr.] Donald Trump, the 45th U.S. president, repeatedly claimed during his campaign rallies that the first call he would receive after winning the election would be...