In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Emerging Voices

07 Oct

[Mohsen al Attar is Associate Dean of Learning & Teaching at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University as well as a Contributing Editor to Opinio Juris] Israel’s latest bombardment of Gaza—a fifth since its false disengagement in 2006—has once again exposed the catastrophic failures of international law in protecting the world’s most vulnerable from militarism and settler-colonialism. While purportedly targeting resistance, a dubious goal...

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07 May

A forthcoming symposium coordinated by Mohsen al Attar and Nciko wa Nciko African peoples and states have long stood in solidarity with the liberation struggle of Palestinians. Following each proclamation of independence across the continent, African leaders demanded the same for Palestine, a place that encapsulated anti-colonial resistance to Western (racial) imperialism. As Nelson Mandela powerfully declared: ‘our freedom is incomplete...

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23 Aug

[Demetra Loizou is a Lecturer in International Law and Legal Skills at the University of Central Lancashire, Cyprus.]  Article 8 of the Rome Statute, which sets out the war crimes within the ICC’s jurisdiction, is inextricably linked to the general IHL regime. Paragraph 2(a) refers to the grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions (international armed conflicts). Paragraph 2(c) is concerned with the serious violations of Common Article 3 (CA3)...

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23 Aug

[Nina Mileva and Marina Fortuna are doctoral candidates at the University of Groningen, performing research within the TRICI-Law Project. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (Grant Agreement No. 759728).] In international law interpretation is the process through which the interpreter attempts to determine the true...

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22 Aug

[Michael W.R. Adams is a J.S.D. candidate at Columbia Law School.] Increasingly, states across Europe and in the Commonwealth of Nations have adopted laws permitting the ‘denationalization’, or stripping of citizenship, from so-called ‘foreign fighters’ in the interests of national security. Denationalization has antecedents going back to the states of the ancient world. States have historically employed denationalization as a response to...

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21 Aug

[Caroline Omari Lichuma is a PhD Candidate at the Georg-August Universität Faculty of Law (at the Chair of Public and International Law) and a Lecturer from Riara Law School in Nairobi, Kenya.] Material inequality or (extreme) economic inequality has been touted as one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century. Wealth is hemorrhaging upwards rather than trickling down. In a world where the rich get richer,...

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21 Aug

[Camila Teran is a lawyer with a LLB in Law and a LLM in International Criminal Law, both from the University of Sussex.] The ICC’s current crisis bears witness to the contentious relationship between the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC (OTP) and States. The OTP’s progress is further frustrated by the small window triggering the admissibility phase that would allow the Prosecutor to formally investigate Colombia....

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19 Aug

[Mark Chadwick is a Lecturer in Law at Nottingham Law School, Nottingham Trent University.] Universal jurisdiction remains a contested area of international law.  By permitting domestic legislatures and courts to exercise jurisdiction over heinous international crimes, regardless of “where the crime was committed, the nationality of the alleged or convicted perpetrator, the nationality of the victim, or any other connection to...

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19 Aug

[Petra Molnar is a Lawyer and Research Associate at the International Human Rights Program, University of Toronto Faculty of Law. This post is based on author’s research at the University of Cambridge.] Detention of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border; wrongful deportation of 7,000 foreign students accused of cheating on a language test; racist or sexist discrimination based on social media profiles – what do these examples...

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16 Aug

[Sienna Merope-Synge is a Staff Attorney with the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH). In partnership with its Haiti-based partner, the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, IJDH advocates, litigates, builds constituencies and nurtures networks to create systemic pathways to justice for marginalized Haitians and to hold international human rights violators accountable for their actions in Haiti.] In 2017, in the...

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15 Aug

[Catherine Savard is a LL.M. student at Université Laval and assistant coordinator of the Canadian Partnership for International Justice. While she collaborated to the legal analysis on genocide of Canada's National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, the present post is written in a personal capacity and entirely independent of the Inquiry’s works.] Canada’s National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) delivered its Final Report...

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15 Aug

[Anji Manivannan is the Legal Director at People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL) and a Senior Programs Officer at the World Federalist Movement - Institute for Global Policy (WFM-IGP).]  Introduction May 18th marked the tenth anniversary of the end of the 26-year-long armed conflict between the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The GoSL’s victory came with the deaths of 70,000–140,000...

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