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Here’s your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa The African Union has decided against sending peacekeepers to crisis-hit Burundi after the embattled government said that any such move would be considered an invasion. Campaigners have called on Egypt to immediately release a 17-year-old Somali refugee who has been held for nearly six months. At least three...

There have been noises coming out Ukraine for years that its government was preparing an international legal action against Russia over Crimea.  It looks like Ukraine has finally prepared to pull the trigger. According to this report, Ukraine is ready to charge Russia with violating the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in the following ways. "First, the seizure of...

I had the pleasure of going on BBC World News a couple of days ago to discuss the opening of Laurent Gbagbo's trial at the ICC. The clip they sent me is very low quality; the sound isn't even synced correctly. But I'm posting it just in case anyone wants to hear what I had to say. It's about three...

The New York Times reported yesterday that Adolf Eichmann apparently wrote, by hand, an 11th-hour request to the Israeli President for a pardon of his conviction for crimes against humanity (or commutation of his death sentence). The request was denied and Eichmann was executed a few days later--the only execution ever carried out by the Israeli criminal justice system. The letter had been filed...

[Nader Diab is an Associate Legal Adviser at the International Commission of Jurists. LL.M Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. Twitter : @NaderiskDiab] In the GC the ACHPR reiterated its call for the abolition or imposition of a moratorium on the death penalty (for previous similar calls see two resolutions of the ACHPR on this issue here and here)....

[Valentina Azarova is a Research Fellow in the Institute of Law, Birzeit University. She has assisted and advised in the suits filed by Al-Haq against foreign corporations for involvement in abuses in occupied Palestinian territory and is a member of the legal committee, Global Legal Action Network (GLAN)]. On 19 January 2016, Human Rights Watch (HRW) released Occupation, Inc.: How Settlement...

[Jonathan Horowitz is a Legal Officer on National Security and Counterterrorism in the Open Society Justice Initiative. This post is based on his recently published article in Emory International Law Review, “Reaffirming the Role of Human Rights in a Time of “Global” Armed Conflict,” and will also appear in a longer form and under a different title in a forthcoming book, Theoretical Boundaries...

Here’s your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa The United Nations Security Council should place an arms embargo on South Sudan, while the oil-rich country's President Salva Kiir and a rebel leader qualify to be sanctioned over atrocities committed in a two-year civil war, U.N. sanctions monitors said in an annual report. A Rwandan man...

I was watching a recent episode of the TV show The Blacklist the other day, when much to my surprise there was a segment on the International Criminal Court. As the summary recounts:  "The Director wakes up on the Venezuelan president's jet, where Foreign Minister Diaz arrests him. Red calls Hitchin to say they're on their way to the Hague, where The...

Announcements The Association of Defence Counsel practicing before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ADC-ICTY) based in The Hague, is currently seeking applications for legal interns to start as soon as possible in assisting Defence Counsel with ongoing cases. Interns will be involved in a range of tasks including, but not limited to; conducting legal research, preparing witness summaries, witness...

The SEAL in question is Matthew Bissonnette, who published the bestselling No Easy Day under the pseudonym Mark Owen. According to the Intercept, the federal government is investigating Bissonnette for revealing classified information and using his position to make money while still on active duty: A former Navy SEAL who shot Osama bin Laden and wrote a bestselling book about the raid is now...

[Oliver Windridge is a British lawyer specializing in international human rights and international criminal law. Oliver is founder of The ACtHPR Monitor, an independent blog and website dedicated to the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, on twitter @acthpr_monitor. In June 2014 he was one of five non-African lawyers to be appointed to the Court’s inaugural list of Legal...