In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Africa

19 Apr

[Beth Karlin is the Program Director of the Transformational Media Lab within the Center for Unconventional Security Affairs (CUSA) as well as a Research Associate at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) and a doctoral student in the School of Social Ecology at University of California, Irvine. Her research focuses on the potential and application of new media and technologies for civic...

|
19 Apr

[Mark Kersten is a PhD candidate in International Relations at the London School of Economics and author of the blog Justice in Conflict. You can find him on Twitter @MarkKersten] It is widely accepted wisdom that social media is radically transforming how we understand the world and share information. In this context, the emergence of Twitter, Facebook, blogging, etc. challenge the very practice...

|
18 Apr

[Sarah Kendzior is an instructor at Washington University in Saint Louis. Follow her on Twitter @sarahkendzior] Kony2012 rose and fell on the power of celebrity. “We want to make Kony famous”, Invisible Children proclaimed, and it did, enlisting the support of twenty “culture-makers” to spread the word that an African child-killer was still at large. Kony2012 is often touted as an example of...

|
18 Apr

[Charli Carpenter is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She blogs at Duck of Minerva.] One of the most curious aspects of the Kony2012 campaign is its backing by an important and powerful public servant, Luis Moreno-Ocampo. In publicly endorsing the campaign, Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, has espoused a powerful causal...

|
18 Apr

Opinio Juris is pleased to announce an online symposium addressing social activism and international law. As our readers know, Kony 2012 was a YouTube sensation, spreading faster than any video in history. Although the details are airbrushed, the central theme of the video is about international law. The key idea of the video is that the indicted fugitive Joseph Kony...

|
17 Apr

I have no idea whether it's true, but that's what the BBC is reporting: The International Criminal Court could soon drop its demand that Saif al-Islam Gaddafi be transferred to the Hague for trial, officials have told the BBC. They say the most prominent son of the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi could instead be tried inside Libya but under the supervision...

|
14 Apr

Moreno-Ocampo's inability to avoid allegations of bias has long haunted his tenure as Prosecutor.  It's impossible to forget, for example, photos of him standing next to the Ugandan President, Youweri Museveni, as he announced that he was investigating the situation in Northern Uganda -- an act that Ugandans widely perceived, rightly in light of the OTP's failure to seriously investigate...

|
11 Apr

In 1973, Hans Blix and Jirina Emerson edited the Treaty Maker’s Handbook to help newly emerging States appreciate, post-decolonization, the intricacies of treaty-making as a matter of both domestic and international law. One of the work’s lasting legacies was the inclusion of sample provisions drawn from existing treaties on various treaty topics such as participation, entry into force, reservations, and...

|
22 Mar

I found much to like and dislike in this essay by Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole discussing his widely shared tweets on the Invisible Children Kony 2012 video. Here is one: Teju Cole@tejucole 1- From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex. Cole goes on to observe (rightly in my...

|
14 Mar

From AllAfrica.com: Today, International Criminal Court (ICC) judges in The Hague delivered the Court's first verdict—a finding of guilt against former Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga. Prosecutors accused Lubanga of the war crimes of conscripting, enlisting, and using children under the age of 15 years for combat purposes while he served as political head of the Union of Congolese...

|
01 Mar

Sudan and newly-independent South Sudan have featured in many news stories over the last several years; a headline in today’s Washington Post, for example, reads “South Sudan: Sudan bombed 2 oil wells in South Sudan, is massing troops near disputed border.” Elections and the formation of a new state, the on-going saga of Sudan’s leaders and the International Criminal Court, and most recently the threat of more conflict have ensured attention from the international community and the US foreign policy and national security teams. On March 9, Friday, 9-10:30 am, CSIS will host at its Washington DC offices a panel discussion on current events in Sudan and South Sudan by two of the leading academic and NGO experts: Loyola University (Los Angeles) anthropology professor Jok Madut Jok, who is also Undersecretary, Ministry of Culture and Heritage of his homeland, South Sudan; and John Ryle, executive director of the Rift Valley Institute, the leading NGO offering policy and academic expertise on the region, and professor of anthropology and human rights practice at Bard University.  The event  will be moderated by Richard Downie, Deputy Director of the CSIS Africa Program.  RSVP information below the fold.
|