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22 Aug

[Dr. Mia Swart is Visiting Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand Law School] Informers Up Close focuses almost exclusively on informers in the context of Communist Czechoslovakia. Drumbl and Holá state explicitly that, but for a sideways glance here and there, the book is not comparative in nature. It zooms in on individuals that informed to the secret police or...

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21 Aug

[Nesam McMillan is an Associate Professor in Criminology at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and author of Imagining the International: Crime, Justice and the Promise of Community (2020)] In their new book, Drumbl and Holá offer a meditative scholarly inquiry into the practice, motivations and social significance of informing. They invite the reader to better appreciate the everydayness of informing (p....

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20 Aug

[Saira Mohamed is Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley] Mark Drumbl and Barbora Holá’s fascinating Informers Up Close: Stories from Communist Prague offers a rigorous and engrossing account of the lives of informers in Czechoslovakia and the reckoning that comes for them after the fall of Communism. The book gives the reader so much to grapple with and...

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19 Aug

[Sergey Vasiliev is Professor of International Law at the Open University in the Netherlands] Why bring a new book about the secret police (StB) collaborators in Communist Czechoslovakia, of all topics, into the burning, drowning, and splintered world of 2024? Can it serve purposes other than indulging one’s historical curiosity or wanderlust – an unaffordable distraction? I certainly thought so, if...

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17 Aug

[I serve as the ICC Prosecutor's Special Adviser on War Crimes. This post is written in my academic capacity and does not reflect the position of the Office of the Prosecutor.] It is being widely reported that President Zelensky has submitted the Rome Statute to Ukraine's parliament for ratification. If so, that is great news: although Ukraine's two Art. 12(3) declarations...

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09 Aug

[Sanjana Ragu is an Bachelor of Laws graduate from Strathmore University and currrenly works as a trainee lawyer at Anjarwalla & Khanna] Be it Palestine in the East, or Sudan in the South, in the chessboard of global politics and economy, the suffering of the Global South is often a pawn, sacrificed for strategic advantage. This wretched reality becomes apparent once...

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09 Aug

[Dr Cristiano d'Orsi is a Lecturer and Senior Research Fellow at the Faculty of Law, University of Johannesburg and Senior Consultant in AFRICAN Refugee Law at Witness Experts in London] Mandela and his First Struggles with the ANC Nelson Mandela’s birth coincided with the beginning of British rule in Palestine (1918) and what has been called the Third Aliyah, another wave of...

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09 Aug

[Lazola Nomkala holds Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Laws degrees from the University of the Western Cape (UWC)] On 19 July 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that the Israeli occupation in Palestine was illegal. Despite the disputed nature of Israel’s origins, the occupation formally began in 1967. What followed was the violent dispossession of Palestinians achieved via...

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08 Aug

[Madhav Mallya is an independent legal researcher based in Toronto. He is a former associate professor at the Jindal Global Law School.] In Van Pezold v Zimbabwe, an investor-state arbitration tribunal ruled that Zimbabwe’s compulsory land redistribution scheme—intended to acquire land from white settlers without compensation and redistribute amongst the native population—violated the international law on the prohibition of racial discrimination,...

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08 Aug

[Trésor Muhindo Makunya is an Associate Professor of Constitutional and International Human Rights Law in Africa at the University of Goma] Article 19: All peoples shall be equal; they shall enjoy the same respect and shall have the same rights. Nothing shall justify the domination of a people by another’. Article 20(3): ‘All peoples shall have the right to the assistance...

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08 Aug

Wale ni sisi: Na sisi ni wale: This Swahili phrase means "They are us: and we are them." It has been borrowed from Katama Mkangi, ‘Walenisi’ (1995). [Dr. David Ngira is an African who lives in Kenya. The views are his own and do not represent those of any organization or entity.] Introduction The Global North’s imperialism has significantly shaped the development of...

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