For two years, selective leaks of information have led to a deluge of breathless media reports about the serious misconduct the Prosecutor allegedly committed against a member of his staff. I won't repeat those allegations here -- you can find them for yourself -- but they have always focused on nonconsensual sexual conduct, including sexual assault and rape. The Bureau...
[Ezequiel Jimenez Martinez has a PhD in International Law, is a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Law Research and Policy and an Associated Senior Lecturer at the Pompeu Fabra Law Faculty. He is the author of Governing the International Criminal Court: the History and Practice of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute (Brill, 2025). All...
[Akila Radhakrishnan is an independent human rights lawyer and gender justice expert. She is the former President and Legal Director of the Global Justice Center. Payal Shah is an international legal expert on gender, health, and conflict. She serves as the Director of Research, Legal, and Advocacy at Physicians for Human Rights.] In this post, we delve into how reproductive violence can support findings...
[Akila Radhakrishnan is an independent human rights lawyer and gender justice expert. She is the former President and Legal Director of the Global Justice Center. Payal Shah is an international legal expert on gender, health, and conflict. She serves as the Director of Research, Legal, and Advocacy at Physicians for Human Rights.] Today marks the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in...
There is a rumour circulating in ICC circles that the Bureau is having buyer's remorse about a paper it drafted and adopted earlier this year concerning the procedure that would apply to the investigation of the Prosecutor. I've been told by various journalists that the procedures paper says the ASP must hold two votes, not one, over the Bureau's recent...
[Sabrina Ochoa is a Fellow at the Institute for Current World Affairs (ICWA), a graduate of Harvard Law School, and a licensed member of the New York bar] In April 2026, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court released its judgment on the challenge to the Court’s jurisdiction in the case of The Prosecutor v. Rodrigo Roa Duterte in the Situation in the Republic...
[Thairi Moya Sánchez is Professor of Public International Law at the Complutense University of Madrid] In Aeschylus’ tragedy Eumenides, the transition frompersonalvengeance to adjudication before a newly constituted court dramatizes a foundational intuition of the rule of law, namely that even the gravest conflicts ought to be resolved through a visible, constrained and reasoned institutional sequence rather than by discretionary power....
[Gerhard Kemp is professor of criminal law at UWE Bristol and serves on the board of directors and executive committee of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town] The recently adopted “Death Penalty for Terrorists Law” (unofficial translation, here) was met with widespread condemnation by governments (e.g., here, here), civil society and human rights groups (e.g., here), the UN High...
What follows is a long written interview I conducted with Sareta Ashraph, a barrister at Garden Court Chambers in London and the co-founder of ATLAS Women, "a global community of female-identifying lawyers, activists, and jurists with expertise in various facets of public international law." Ashraph is currently serving as Lead Counsel for Karim Khan, the Prosecutor of the ICC, in...
[Sayed Hussein Anosh is the Executive Director of Human Rights Defenders Plus (HRD+). Kate McInnes practices international human rights law and international criminal law at Arendt Chambers.] Gender persecution has been the defining feature of Taliban rule since its return to power in 2021. Afghan women and girls continue to be subjected to what commentators have described as one of the worst reversals of rights...
[Chuka Arinze-Onyia is a doctoral student researching universal jurisdiction at Griffith University Law School] Only weeks after the Nigerian government entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the ICC to prosecute crimes committed by Boko Haram and the Nigerian military, the Nigerian Airforce on 11 April 2026, launched airstrikes that killed over 100 people and injured several others. There will be...
[Girmay Tesfakiros Meressa holds an LL.M. in International Operational Law and is a legal practitioner. His research interests include the law on the use of force, international humanitarian law, and international criminal law, with a particular interest in the legal regulation of contemporary armed conflicts] Introduction A recent investigation by Reuters alleges that Ethiopia constructed a secret facility used to train fighters...