Regions

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...

It so happens that I have been researching the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission at the same time that the Senate has published an alarming report of abuse and torture committed by Americans in the name of national security. Without equating South African apartheid with the Bush Administration's policies and practices, I thought that a few insights from...

I am very rarely shocked, but that was my response to yesterday's editorial in the New York Times by Anthony Romero -- the Executive Director of the ACLU -- arguing that Obama should pre-emptively pardon all of the high-ranking officials responsible for the Bush administration's systematic torture regime at Guantanamo Bay, Bagram, Abu Ghraib, various Eastern European black sites, etc. Here is a...

I haven't had time to comment on the collapse of the ICC Kenyatta prosecution last week.  But friend of blog and Northwestern University law professor Eugene Kontorovich has some interesting thoughts over at National Review.  Read the whole thing, but suffice to say, Eugene thinks this is pretty big body blow to the whole idea that the ICC can be an effective...

As a number of commentators have recently noted, the latest report on the OTP's preliminary-examination activities indicates that the OTP is specifically considering whether US forces are responsible for war crimes relating to detainee treatment in Afghanistan -- something it only hinted at in its 2013 report. Here are the relevant statements (pp. 22-23): 94. The Office has been assessing available information relating to...

I'm sure most of us will go see the live-action movie version of PADDINGTON, which recently hit the big screen. And we will do so, of course, because we are interested in what Paddington's residence status says about the UK's harsh immigration laws. Fortunately, Colin Yeo has prepared a nice primer for us at the Free Movement blog, run by...