In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

15 Aug

Carlos Lopez is a Senior Legal Adviser at the International Commission of Jurists The new revised draft of an international treaty on the issue of business and human rights released on 16 July 2019, presents important changes and much needed improvement in relation to the so-called “zero draft” published in 2018. The revised version, elaborated by the chairperson of the Open-ended Intergovernmental Working Group (OEIGWG) which was...

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15 Aug

[Catherine Savard is a LL.M. student at Université Laval and assistant coordinator of the Canadian Partnership for International Justice. While she collaborated to the legal analysis on genocide of Canada's National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, the present post is written in a personal capacity and entirely independent of the Inquiry’s works.] Canada’s National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) delivered its Final Report...

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15 Aug

Steven Kay QC is Head of Chambers at 9 Bedford Row.  Joshua Kern is a barrister at 9 Bedford Row). On 3 July 2019, we submitted a communication to the Office of the Prosecutor (“OTP”) of the International Criminal Court (“ICC”) (summarised here)  which argued that Palestine’s objective legal status as a non-State entity, as well as Palestine’s indeterminate sovereign territorial claim, operate...

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15 Aug

[Anji Manivannan is the Legal Director at People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL) and a Senior Programs Officer at the World Federalist Movement - Institute for Global Policy (WFM-IGP).]  Introduction May 18th marked the tenth anniversary of the end of the 26-year-long armed conflict between the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The GoSL’s victory came with the deaths of 70,000–140,000...

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13 Aug

[Owiso Owiso is a Doctoral Researcher in Public International Law at the University of Luxembourg and a member of the PhD Academy of the Cross Cultural Human Rights Centre, VU Amsterdam.] Introduction With the celebratory dust finally settled, stakeholders are beginning to take stock of the performance of the greatest achievement of the international criminal justice movement, the permanent International Criminal Court (ICC). Tough questions are now...

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13 Aug

[Alison Berthet is an English-qualified lawyer who specialises in business & human rights. After several years in private practice, she is now an independent business & human rights consultant.]  The world has come a long way since 2011, when the United Nations and the OECD adopted the first international standards on the responsibility of businesses to respect human rights. Today, few...

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12 Aug

[Brenda K. Kombo is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Free State Centre for Human Rights at the University of the Free State.] It is ironic that the agreement establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) came into force less than a week after United Kingdom Prime Minister Theresa May announced her resignation; the same day United States (US) President Donald Trump threatened Mexico with tariffs; and as the US-China trade war...

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12 Aug

Last week, I asked my followers on twitter to weigh on whether human-rights NGOs should offer unpaid internships. The poll offered three choices: (1) paid only; (2) unpaid is okay; (3) NGOs should offer a mix of paid and unpaid. I expected position 2 to be unpopular, but I thought position 3 would garner the most votes. I was right about...

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12 Aug

[Alexander Gilder is a PhD Researcher at The City Law School, City, University of London. From September he will be a Lecturer in Law at Royal Holloway, University of London.] In recent years UN peace operations have begun to explicitly seek so-called ‘stabilization’. In 2015 the Report of the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO) suggested the Security Council give clarification to how the UN interprets ‘stabilization’....

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09 Aug

[Jean-Pierre Gauci is the Arthur Watts Senior Research Fellow in Public International Law at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (UK) and the Director of The People for Change Foundation (Malta). Eleni Karageorgiou, is a Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Law at Lund University and Researcher at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (Sweden).] Two shipwrecks close...

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09 Aug

[Victor Kattan is a Senior Research Fellow of the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore where he heads the Transsystemic Law Cluster. He is also an Associate Fellow of NUS Law. This is the second part of a two-part post.] Recognition of Palestine’s Statehood Since 1988, 138 states (72 per cent of UN members) have recognised a Palestinian state in the territories occupied by Israel on 4 June 1967. The...

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09 Aug

[Victor Kattan is a Senior Research Fellow of the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore where he heads the Transsystemic Law Cluster. He is also an Associate Fellow of NUS Law. This is the first part of a two-part post.]  The post in Opinio Juris submitted by Steven Kay QC and Joshua Kern of 9 Bedford Row based on their Article 15 Communication to the Prosecutor...

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