In my capacity as Special Adviser on War Crimes, I have been assisting the Prosecutor with the development of the OTP's forthcoming policy on Environmental Crimes Under the Rome Statute (ECP) -- a policy he announced in Paris last February. “Damage to the environment poses an existential threat to all life on the planet,” the Prosecutor said. “For that reason,...
[Juliette Rémond Tiedrez is a Legal Researcher at the International Commission of Jurists’ Middle East and North Africa programme.] The views expressed in this post are the author’s alone and do not represent any institutional position on the part of the International Commission of Jurists. On 4 October 2024, Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court (ICC) granted the Office of...
As pretty much everyone in the world knows by now, the ICC's Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) has issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the Palestine situation. (It issued one for Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri -- Deif -- as well.) Like the Office of the Prosecutor's applications, the PTC's decision...
[Z.M. Yacoob is a former Judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa] ‘The Court of the Citizens of the World’ – a people’s tribunal – was organized by the Cinema for Peace Foundation, relating to alleged crimes committed by Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China. The tribunal considered confirmation of an indictment for the crime of aggression,...
[Bhavani Fonseka is a constitutional law and transitional justice expert from Sri Lanka] ‘The Court of the Citizens of the World’ – a people’s tribunal – was organized by the Cinema for Peace Foundation, relating to alleged crimes committed by Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China. The tribunal considered confirmation of an indictment for the crime of aggression,...
[Stephen Rapp is a former US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice and former international prosecutor at the Rwanda and Sierra Leone tribunals] ‘The Court of the Citizens of the World’ – a people’s tribunal – was organized by the Cinema for Peace Foundation, relating to alleged crimes committed by Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China. The tribunal considered...
[Teresa Quadt is a PhD student at the University of Malta researching crimes against humanity in the context of migration. She works for the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre on universal jurisdiction cases and is a member of the expert commission on asylum at Amnesty International, Germany.] Since 2019, the Central Mediterranean migration route, including the transit through Libya, has been...
[Jake Okechukwu Effoduh is an Assistant Professor at the Lincoln Alexander School of Law of Toronto Metropolitan University, where he teaches Critical Approaches to Data, Algorithm and Science in the Law. He has been an international human rights lawyer for fourteen years.] Introduction The pace at which Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming the face of almost every human activity cannot be ignored or...
[Dr Letizia Lo Giacco is Assistant Professor of Public International Law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies of Leiden University] A default mode to understand and reflect on the activity of the International Criminal Court (ICC, ‘the Court’) is from the standpoint of international criminal law. This comes of course quite natural, being the Court a permanent pivot in the international criminal justice...
[Souheir Edelbi is a Lecturer in the School of Law at Western Sydney University] Palestinian victims have faced double standards and unnecessary procedural hurdles at the ICC, leading to a 'state of exception' where standard legal procedures are either suspended or circumvented. Ardi Imseis has critically examined this phenomenon in relation to the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP), specifically Prosecutor Bensouda's...
[Dr Iryna Marchuk is an associate professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark) Dr Aloka Wanigasuriya is an assistant professor at the Department of Law at the University of Southern Denmark (Denmark)] Introduction The international law community is abuzz with the news of ratification of the Rome Statute (RS) by the Ukrainian parliament on 21 August 2024, which was symbolically...
[I serve as the ICC Prosecutor's Special Adviser on War Crimes. This post is written in my academic capacity and does not reflect the position of the Office of the Prosecutor.] It is being widely reported that President Zelensky has submitted the Rome Statute to Ukraine's parliament for ratification. If so, that is great news: although Ukraine's two Art. 12(3) declarations...