Regions

Not surprisingly given where I perch on the political spectrum, I love protest songs. One of my favourite jogging playlists is a disparate collection of classics -- Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth," Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction," Country Joe and the Fish's "I Feel Like I'm Fixin to Die Rag," Paul Revere and the Raiders' "Indian Reservation," Phil Och's...

[Adv. Ido Rosenzweig is the chairman of ALMA –Association for the Promotion of International Humanitarian Law; Director of Research – Terror, Belligerency and Cyber at the Minerva Center for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions in the University of Haifa; and a PhD candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.] Recently the Palestinians submitted (for the second time) a declaration...

It looks like a big showdown is brewing between the President and Congress over Cuba policy (Here comes 2016 presidential candidate Rubio!).  Some legal commentators have argued, however, that President Obama already has the legal authority to lift all or most of the Cuba embargo without any further action by Congress.  Robert Muse, a lawyer whose practice is all about Cuba sanctions...

So this is a well-intentioned but problematic idea: The Palestinians want the International Criminal Court (ICC) to launch an investigation into the death of Yasser Arafat, a senior Fatah official announced on Sunday. Jamal Muheissen, member of the Fatah Central Committee, claimed that Israel was responsible for the death of Arafat, who died in November 2004. “This file will be presented to the...

According to this report in the Times of Israel, the Palestinian Authority would be willing to forego the ICC if Israel agreed to freeze its settlement activity: RAMALLAH — A senior Palestinian official said Sunday that the first subject to be brought before the International Criminal Court at The Hague in the Palestinian Authority’s legal campaign against Israel would be settlement construction. The...

Sorry, Lonely Planet, there's a new travel sheriff in town: Fox News. Witness this map, created by a guest on Fox & Friends to illustrate the eight "no-go" zones -- areas under de facto Muslim control -- in Paris (out of 741 in France itself): Peterson, a former Air Force pilot, went on to describe Paris as “pretty scary” and compared it to Afghanistan, Iraq,...

H-Diplo, part of H-Net, recently hosted a virtual roundtable on David Bosco's excellent book Rough Justice:The International Criminal Court in a World of Power Politics, published by Oxford last year. Erik Vroeten introduced the roundtable, and Sam Moyn, David Kaye, and I submitted reviews. David then wrote a response. Here is a snippet from Erik's introduction: It is my pleasure to...

[Catherine Harwood is a PhD candidate at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies at Leiden University] After over a decade of reports alerting the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) to serious human rights violations in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), in March 2013 the Council decided to establish an international commission of inquiry to investigate those allegations and to ensure “full accountability, in particular where these violations may amount to crimes against humanity”. Denied access to North Korea, the Commission travelled to several countries to hear from victims and witnesses. In a strong commitment to transparency, the Commission held public hearings and made many testimonies and exhibits available online. A year later, its report recorded a litany of serious human right abuses. The Commission found reasonable grounds to believe that North Korea had committed serious human rights violations and that many senior officials had committed crimes against humanity [para. 1225]. It issued a host of recommendations, including that the Security Council refer North Korea, a non-state party to the Rome Statute, to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Although the Commission dissolved upon the delivery of its report, its accountability recommendations reverberated beyond the HRC and have remained on the intergovernmental diplomatic agenda. This contribution discusses some interesting features of the Commission’s findings and tracks the consequences of its report – some of which have been curious and unexpected – before offering some thoughts as to the impact of the inquiry in relation to the goal of ensuring accountability.

This is quite big news, and I hope it doesn't get lost in the welter of voices discussing the collapse of the Kenyatta prosecution. Here is a snippet from the Washington Post: The prosecutor for the International Criminal Court told the U.N. Security Council on Friday she is stopping her investigations in Sudan’s chaotic Darfur region for now because no one...

Over at The National Interest, I have an essay considering the strategic implications of the Philippines arbitration claim against China.  I argue that the Philippines made a mistake by trying to force China into an arbitration under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and that their "lawfare" strategy is probably going to backfire. Due in part to domestic pressures for...