In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Middle East

04 Jan

[Dov Jacobs, Joshua Kern and Daniel Reisner appear as amici curiae on behalf of the IJL in the ongoing proceedings before Pre-Trial Chamber I of the ICC in the Situation in Palestine. The IJL Brief before PTC I is available here. The Pre-Trial Chamber’s decision remains sub iudice.] On 19 November 2020, it was reported that the Palestinian Authority will resume civil and...

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18 Dec

[Clive Baldwin is a Senior Legal Advisor for the legal and policy office at Human Rights Watch.] UK nationals committed abuses in Iraq after 2003 on a significant scale. The International Criminal Court’s Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) Final Report on the UK and Iraq on December 9 is the latest official report to find that members of UK armed forces subjected Iraqi detainees to abuse,...

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12 Dec

In my previous post, which was quite critical of the OTP's decision not to seek authorization to investigate British war crimes in Iraq, I made two central points. The first was that, pursuant to the Afghanistan appeals judgment, the OTP would not have needed to present the Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) with information concerning complementarity and the PTC would not have...

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11 Dec

[Andreas Schueller is the Director of the International Crimes and Accountability Program at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights.] On 9 December 2020, the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague announced its decision to close the preliminary examination into alleged war crimes by British troops in Iraq between 2003 and 2009. The OTP explained...

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01 Dec

A number of us -- me, Aurel Sari, Eliav Lieblich, Andrew Bell, Sasha Greenawalt, Craig Martin, Ed Swaine -- have been having an interesting discussion on Twitter about two important issues concerning the use of force. The first is when IHL begins to apply in an IAC. The traditional position is that any use of interstate force triggers IHL and...

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24 Nov

A few days ago, I had the pleasure of giving an online lecture for the Iranian Center for International Criminal Law about the relationship between the US and the ICC. In the lecture, I trace the evolution of the US-ICC relationship and try to predict what that relationship will look like under President Biden. I also speculate about why Trump has...

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19 Nov

[Hadi Dadmehr is a PhD candidate in Public International law at the National University of Iran (SBU). Hadi was Head of the Department of Law at the University of Zabol, Iran,  for 6 years. You can find him on Twitter @HadiDadmehr.] Donald Trump, the 45th U.S. president, repeatedly claimed during his campaign rallies that the first call he would receive after winning the election would be...

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02 Nov

[Álvaro Rueda Rodríguez-Vila is a graduate in law (Bachelor, UNED) and in human rights (LL.M., Maastricht University).] In an article published on June 16, 2020, Dapo Akande argued that, assuming that Palestine is a state, the Monetary Gold principle is applicable to the International Criminal Court (ICC or the Court) in the situation of Palestine as to the determination of the Palestine territory because of the territorial dispute...

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26 Oct

[Michael Lysander Fremuth is Professor for Fundamental and Human Rights at the University of Vienna and Scientific Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Fundamental and Human Rights. Andreas Sauermoser is a researcher and PhD candidate in the Department Human Dignity and Public Security at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Fundamental and Human Rights. Konstantina Stavrou is a researcher and PhD candidate at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of...

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29 Sep

On 18 September, the Netherlands announced that it was initiating legal proceedings against Syria, based on the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT).  This move by the Netherlands brings many issues to the fore: the first is the scale and magnitude of torturebeing committed in Syria, documented in many reports and most recently in a court cases in Germany (under the aegis of...

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21 Aug

[Larry D. Johnson is an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Law School and the Former UN Assistant Secretary-General for Legal Affairs.] The US suffered a humiliating defeat on 14 August 2020 when the UN Security Council failed to adopt a US proposal to extend certain arms restrictions on Iran that are scheduled to be lifted soon pursuant to the “nuclear deal” (JCPOA) concluded in 2015 by China,...

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