Europe

[Ana Srovin Coralli works as a Teaching Assistant in the International Law Department of the Geneva Graduate Institute, where she is pursuing her PhD entitled Bringing Perpetrators of Enforced Disappearances to Justice: In the Shoes of the Prosecutors] The International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances (30 August 2023) was accompanied with a true victory for accountability: an announcement of the upcoming trial for enforced...

[Patricio Barbirotto is a research fellow and adjunct professor of international law at Ca' Foscari University of Venice] The awareness of the environmental damages provoked by armed conflicts has constantly been increasing after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and in particular since the Vietnam War. The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation on 24 February 2022, occurred...

Evropeyska Pravda is reporting that, although clearly not its first choice, Ukraine would be willing to accept an internationalized tribunal for the crime of aggression as long as it is based in another state's judicial system. Here are the relevant paragraphs, quoting the Deputy Head of the Office of the President: Ukraine decided on these concessions, Andriy Smirnov admitted for the...

[Mariana Gkliati is an Assistant Professor at Tilburg University. Danai Angeli is an Assistant Professor at Biklent University. Elizabeth Mavropoulou is a Lecturer at the University of Westminster. Niovi Vavoula is an Associate Professor at the Queen Mary University of London.] This blogpost was released on 11 July as an open letter to Greek and EU authorities, undersigned by 350 academics...

[Waleed Mahmoud Elfarrs, PhD Candidate in international law at Ghent University, is a legal expert consulting on armed conflict in the context of the MENA region.] [Mona Ghyoot is a Master in Laws student at Ghent University, specializing in public international law and writing a master’s thesis on universal jurisdiction.] 1.     Introduction On 12 May 2023, the French Court of Cassation delivered two landmark decisions on the...

On June 24, 2023, members of the Wagner mercenary group staged an armed revolt against Russian President Vladimir Putin and began an advance on Moscow that ended suddenly, after intervention and mediation by Belarusian President Lukashenko, on the same day. In this post, I present, analyse and systematise the statements and reactions of fifty-nine states. Before we start, let me...

On the morning of June 6th, 2023, Ukraine accused Russia of destroying the Kakhovka Dam in the Dnieper River. A few hours later, during the afternoon on the same day, Russia blamed Ukraine for the destruction. Since then, I searched and collected statements by forty-nine other states addressing the destruction. This post analyses and systematises these forty-nine reactions in order to offer a clearer outlook...

[Dr Claire Lougarre is a Lecturer in Law at Ulster University, School of Law. Her primary research expertise lies at the intersection of human rights law and health, with a particular interest in the right to health, as well as in sexual and reproductive health & rights.] Introduction According to Article 3(5) of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), the European Union...

[Panagiota Kotzamani is a post-doctoral researcher on corporate obligations and liability for international crimes and human rights violations at the Centre for Law, Sustainability and Justice (CLS&J), at the Department of Law, University of Southern Denmark (SDU).] The adoption of a Directive on the expected human rights due diligence (HRDD) standards for EU and EU-active corporations has been in the agenda...

[Lindsay Freeman is the Director of the Technology, Law and Policy Program at the Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley School of Law. Amanda Ghahremani is a lawyer specializing in international criminal law and a Research Fellow at the Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley School of Law. Sophie Lombardo is a second year law student at UC Berkeley School of Law and a Graduate Student Researcher at the Human...

Jennifer Trahan is back with another post at Just Security that tries to argue a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression (STCoA) is superior to the internationalized (hybrid) tribunal favoured by (at least) the the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and most recently the US. It will take a couple of responses to cover all of the ways in which...

[Kate Mackintosh is the Executive Director of the Promise Institute for Human Rights at the UCLA School of Law, and was deputy co-chair of the Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide.] In an exciting development for proponents of a new international crime of ecocide, the European Parliament on Tuesday agreed a text for the new Environmental Crimes Directive (“Draft...