In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Books

16 Aug

[Owiso Owiso is a Doctoral Researcher in Public International Law at the University of Luxembourg.] Inter-governmental organisations are often theatres of inter-state politics. Why then does the suggestion that the International Criminal Court (ICC) may not be any different bother observers so? Well, that is perhaps because the ICC is not just another ‘ordinary’ inter-governmental organisation. It is also, and perhaps primarily, a judicial mechanism. As...

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07 Aug

[Christian De Vos is a Senior Advocacy Officer with the Open Society Justice Initiative. He engages in advocacy across the Justice Initiative’s areas of work, with a particular focus on international justice and accountability for grave crimes.] It has been a pleasure to read the six reflections shared over the course of this symposium. I am grateful to Opinio Juris for hosting the discussion and to the...

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06 Aug

[Rod Rastan serves as Legal Advisor in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, where he deals with international law issues, in particular in relation to jurisdiction, admissibility and judicial assistance. The views expressed herein are solely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of the OTP or the ICC. ] It is fair to say that the...

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06 Aug

[Alexandra Huneeus is Professor of Law at University of Wisconsin Law School, where she directs the Global Legal Studies Center and Chairs the Human Rights Program.] Of the many innovations being advanced by Colombia’s peace mechanism (the Special Jurisdiction for the Peace, or SJP), one is the way it delineates its investigations. While some of its cases are organized by type of criminal activity – such as recruitment...

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05 Aug

[Judy Gitau is the Africa Region Coordinator for the global Women's Rights organization Equality Now, a lawyer, a published author in the fields of transitional justice and international criminal law and a member of Kenya's civil society.] In his book Complementarity, Catalysts, Compliance: The International Criminal Court in Uganda, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Christian De Vos illustrates what was intended by the legal rules under the...

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05 Aug

[Jacques B. Mbokani is a Professor of Law at the Université de Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo and a Consultant to Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa. A French version, provided by the author, appears below the English version of this post.] Introduction Christian De Vos's book on Complementarity, Catalysts, Compliance takes a fresh look at the relationship between the...

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04 Aug

[Pascal Kambale and Sharon Nakandha are human rights lawyers with the Open Society Africa Regional Office (OSF-AfRO) where they serve as Senior Advisor and Program Officer respectively. They lead AfRO’s work on justice and accountability.] The request to provide some thoughts on Christian De Vos’ book is timely as the ASP appointed group of independent experts continues it task of making “concrete, achievable, actionable recommendations aimed at...

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03 Aug

[Liana Georgieva Minkova is a PhD candidate at the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge, UK, and a full-award holder of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Doctoral Training Partnership.] In Complementarity, Catalysts, Compliance, Christian De Vos sets himself the challenging task of providing new insight into one of the most discussed aspects of the work of the International Criminal...

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29 May

[Sara Kendall is a Senior Lecturer in International Law at The University of Kent in the Faculty of Law. She is also Co-Director of The Centre for Critical International Law.] In early March 2020, the US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo gave a press briefing concerning the ICC Appeals Chamber’s decision on Afghanistan. As is widely known by Opinio Juris’s readership, the ICC’s prosecutor aimed to investigate...

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29 May

[Olaf Zenker is a Professor at the Department for Anthropology and Philosophy at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (Germany). He is a political and legal anthropologist researching (post-)conflict, inequality and justice in Africa and Europe, especially in contexts of normative pluralities including international criminal law.] Kamari Clarke’s Affective Justice is an impressive accomplishment and important contribution to the expanding field of the anthropology of justice, and of...

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28 May

[Christopher Gevers teaches international law and and legal theory in the School of Law, University of KwaZulu-Natal; his research focusses on Third World Approaches to International Law, critical race theory and law and literature.] This is the finest book on Africa’s relationship with the International Criminal Justice project that I have read; if not the last word on the subject, perhaps the first ‘sensible’ one. There...

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