In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Regions

22 Dec

[Lucy Geddes is an Australian human rights lawyer and is currently the head of Legal Action Worldwide’s Sri Lanka office.] On  19 November 2020, the Australian Chief of Defence Force announced the findings of Brereton Report which allege the existence of credible evidence of war crimes perpetrated by the Australian Defence Force in Afghanistan. The release of the Report, following a four year inquiry commissioned by the...

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22 Dec

[Audrey Wabwire is A Nairobi-based media manager at Human Rights Watch.] What’s the path to justice after years of conflict, during which widespread atrocities were committed? This is a question that South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, confronts. After nearly seven years of conflict ended with the signing of a peace deal in September 2018, South Sudan finally established a transitional national unity government earlier this...

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22 Dec

The International Court of Justice has just issued a press release, relating to the implementation of provisional measures orders before the court. This new development is important, and relates directly to The Gambia v Myanmar, before the court currently, and a case in which the ICJ has issued an order for provisional measures on 23 January 2020.  What’s new? First, a bit about the development. Based...

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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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18 Dec

By Laura Knöpfel (Senior Research Fellow Transnational Law Institute, Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London) and Carlos López (Senior Legal Adviser, International Commission of Jurists) With the rejection of the popular Business Responsible Initiative (RBI) in Switzerland, the parliamentary counterproposal is due to enter into force soon. The counterproposal introduces a new article 964 in the Swiss Code of Obligations to require...

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17 Dec

By Laura Knöpfel (Senior Research Fellow Transnational Law Institute, Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London) and Carlos López (Senior Legal Adviser, International Commission of Jurists) On 29th November 2020, Switzerland narrowly rejected the popular Responsible Business Initiative (RBI) which would have obliged Swiss companies and the businesses they control anywhere in the world to respect human rights and environmental standards and introduced civil...

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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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11 Dec

[Danilo Ruggero Di Bella is a lawyer at Bottega Di Bella.] The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic or Western Sahara is one of the seventeen Non-Self-Governing Territories (NSGTs) that remain yet to be decolonized, according to Chapter XI of the UN Charter. Originally, a Spanish protectorate who proclaimed its independence in 1976, Western Sahara has been recognized as a State by several countries. However, two third of its territory...

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10 Dec

[Keaton Kidist Allen-Gessesse is a Johannesburg-based human rights lawyer with a focus on gender and sexual rights in Africa.]   As with all crises, it is the most marginalized amongst us who have disproportionately suffered the dire consequences of this global pandemic.   The world has watched in horror as internal migrants walked thousands of kilometers across India, African-Americans died of COVID-19 at frighteningly higher death rates,...

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10 Dec

[Letlhogonolo Mokgoroane is an activist advocating for Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression (SOGIE) rights. They are also a founding member of the Cheeky Natives Podcast.] The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented global challenge that has exacerbated inequalities already prevalent in all regions of the world. In March 2020, the United Nations Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and...

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