Themes

[Emiliano J. Buis is Professor of Public International Law at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and at the Central University of the Province of Buenos Aires (UNICEN). He is also a Researcher at the National Research Council for Science and Technology (CONICET).] Introduction The monumental volumes entitled International Conflict and Security Law: A Research Handbook, edited by Sergey Sayapin, Rustam Atadjanov, Umesh Kadam, Gerhard Kemp, Nicolás Zambrana-Tévar and Noëlle...

[Judge Zak (Zakeria M.) Yacoob is a Retired Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa.] The Court of the Citizens of the World – a peoples tribunal – was organized by the Cinema for Peace Foundation, relating to the crime of aggression in Ukraine. The tribunal considered charges brought against Vladimir Putin for the crime of aggression presented by...

[Stephen Rapp is a former US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice and former international prosecutor at Rwanda and Sierra Leone tribunals.] The Court of the Citizens of the World’ - a peoples tribunal - was organized by the Cinema for Peace Foundation, relating to the crime of aggression in Ukraine. The tribunal considered charges brought against Vladimir Putin for the crime...

[Sarah Zarmsky is an Assistant Lecturer and PhD Candidate at the University of Essex Human Rights Centre with a focus on the intersections between new and emerging technologies, human rights, and international criminal law. She is also a Visiting Scholar at the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley. (Twitter: @SZarmsky)  Judy Mionki is an International Criminal and Human...

[Ruwadzano Patience Makumbe is a human rights lawyer. Edward Kahuthia Murimi is a Kenyan lawyer. They are both currently undertaking PhD research as part of the ‘DISSECT: Evidence in International Human Rights Adjudication’ Project (funded by ERC) at the Human Rights Centre, Ghent University (Belgium).] Introduction  In November 2020, a conflict broke out in the Tigray region of Ethiopia pitting the Ethiopian...

[Isabella Regan is a PhD candidate in criminology at Erasmus School of Law (Rotterdam, NL), researching public-private power dynamics within online open-source investigations of international crimes.] This blog arises from her thesis on public-private power dynamics within online open-source investigations of international crimes. All comments and feedback are welcome at regan@law.eur.nl.   Over the past decade, online open-source information – such as...

[Vidhya Ramalingam is the Founder and CEO of Moonshot.  Raquel Vazquez Llorente is the Head of Law and Policy, Technology Threats & Opportunities, at WITNESS. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.] This piece is a conversation between two professional communities that use open source information in overlapping contexts, yet are rarely in dialogue. The...

[Kate Pundyk is the former Open Source Investigation Lead at the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab and previously worked at the Berkeley Human Rights Center. She is currently studying at the Oxford Internet Institute on a Rhodes Scholarship.] Author’s note: I am grateful to Adriano Belisario and Jorge Ruiz Reyes for their conversations conceptualizing this article, as well as those who agreed...

[Cris van Eijk is an international lawyer researching what it means to make space 'common', and how international law works to effect that. He holds a BA and LLM in International Law from Leiden University, and a BA in Law from the University of Cambridge.] Introduction Satellite imagery is one of the most important sources of data in open-source intelligence, and today...

[Raquel Vazquez Llorente is the Head of Law and Policy, Technology Threats & Opportunities at WITNESS. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.] Information available on the internet can open a window into international crimes and human rights violations occurring in countries otherwise closed to investigators. Social media platforms have become unforeseen repositories of...

[Raja Althaibani is a Senior Program Manager at WITNESS, who manages the organisation’s MENA program and projects in Syria and Yemen, and specialises in community-based documentation in conflict zones.] [Libby McAvoy is a Legal Advisor for Mnemonic where she specialises in digital evidence archives, litigation support, and open source investigations into international crimes and human rights violations.] [Dalila Mujagic is the Legal...