In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Regions

24 Oct

[Frédéric Mégret is an Associate Professor of Law at McGill University Faculty of Law.] On the 26th September, a group of diligent Haitian lawyers headed by human rights defender Patrice Florvilus requested an emergency injunction (“en référé”) before the Tribunal de Première Instance de Port-au-Prince against the State of Haiti, that would compel it to trigger the creation of the...

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22 Oct

Since February 21st, 2018, Rio de Janeiro has been under military intervention. Brazilian President, Michel Temer, has tasked the armed forces with ending the “serious endangerment of public order” caused by the drug war between various armed gangs and paramilitary militias in Rio’s favelas, or shantytowns. The use of armed forces for control of crime is not a strange occurrence...

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18 Oct

This post is a continuation of the analysis of proceedings at the Philippine Supreme Court, relating to the withdrawal of the Philippines from the International Criminal Court. C. R.A. 9851: A Double Bind? The sufficiency of the “The Philippine Act on Crimes Against International Humanitarian Law, Genocide and Other Crimes Against Humanity” or R.A. 9851 in addressing mass atrocity crimes was...

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18 Oct

The Philippine Supreme Court has just completed hearings in a legal challenge relating to the Philippine withdrawal from the International Criminal Court. On the heels of the South African High Court ruling against the withdrawal from the ICC on the grounds of unconstitutionality and thereby invalidatingthe withdrawal, this case in the Philippines bears watching. I attended the three days of hearings...

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16 Oct

[Victor Kattan is Senior Research Fellow of the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore where he heads the Transsystemic Law Cluster. He is also an Associate Fellow of NUS Law and an associate (non-resident) member of Temple Garden Chambers in London.] Palestine’s Application Instituting Proceedings against the United States of America (U.S.) at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 28 September has produced much commentary in a short...

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19 Sep

The International Commission of Jurists organised a fascinating side-event yesterday at the Human Rights Council. Here is the ICJ's background statement: Particularly when crimes under international law are perpetrated on a large scale in situations of crisis, there is an urgent need to preserve evidence for use in eventual criminal proceedings, whether at the International Criminal Court or other national or...

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06 Sep

Okay, it didn't directly say that. But that is the logical consequence of the Pre-Trial Chamber's new decision upholding the Court's jurisdiction over the deportation of the Rohingya from Myanmar. According to the PTC (para. 71), the crime against humanity of deportation (unlike forcible transfer) necessarily takes place in two states, because one of the essential elements of the crime...

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28 Aug

[Massimo Frigo is a Senior Legal Adviser of the International Commission of Jurist’s Europe Programme.] In these days, the world saw unfolding before its eyes the absurd (yet not isolated) and Kafkaesque situation of an Italian Government trying to prevent a boat of the Italian coastguard to board an Italian harbor. What is worse is that the ship of the Italian coastguard...

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27 Aug

[Alonso Gurmendi Dunkelberg is Professor of International Law at Universidad del Pacífico, in Peru.] After the social, political, economic, and humanitarian collapse of Venezuela at the hands of Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorial government, Latin America (and South America in particular) is facing an unprecedented migratory crisis it does not seem to be ready for. As of 2017, the International Organization for Migration...

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08 Aug

[Maitreyi Gupta is an International Legal Adviser for the International Commission of Jurists, Based in India.] The Supreme Court of India will soon deliver its judgment in a historic case -- Navtej Singh Johar et al v. Union of India and others -- on the criminalization of consensual same sex relations in the country. Branded outlaws by the law, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT)...

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