Ambassador Rein Tammsaar, Estonia's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, has a new post at Just Security arguing in favour of a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression. He says many things I agree with, others that I don't. In this post, I want to address what the Ambassador says about the prospect of the General Assembly endorsing a...
[Alison Smith is the International Justice Director for No Peace Without Justice. She has worked and published on the rights of the child in accountability processes for twenty years, and participated in the consultations leading to the adoption of the OTP Children’s Policy.] It has been 20 years since the launch of “International Criminal Justice and Children” by UNICEF’s Innocenti Research Centre and No Peace Without Justice....
[Andrew Clapham is Professor of International Law at the Geneva Graduate Institute and the author of "Human Rights: A Very Short Introduction and War".] The arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova have generated a lot of talk about the absence of any obligation on Russia to comply due to Russia...
Jennifer Trahan is back with another post at Just Security that tries to argue a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression (STCoA) is superior to the internationalized (hybrid) tribunal favoured by (at least) the the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and most recently the US. It will take a couple of responses to cover all of the ways in which...
[Melissa Hendrickse (Twitter: @melhendrickse) is a legal adviser at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International, focusing on the intersection between racial and international justice. She has a background in critical race theory, third world approaches to international law and international human rights law. She is based in South Africa.] This April, UN member state delegates gathered in New York to start...
A remarkable amount of ink has been spilled concerning the ability of various types of aggression tribunals to set aside Vladimir Putin's personal immunity. I have contributed to the blot, most recently arguing that there would be no legal difference in that regard between a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression (STCoA) and an internationalized tribunal, as the hybrid...
[Mutondi Mulaudzi is a Judicial Fellow at the International Court of Justice and Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Witwatersrand, with research specializing in human rights law. Danielle Flanagan is a Judicial Fellow at the International Court of Justice, holding a J.D. and Certificate in Refugees and Humanitarian Emergencies from Georgetown University Law Center.] The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrants,...
[Ashira Vantrees is currently a practicing attorney in the United States and holds a JD from Florida International University College of Law.] Since the International Criminal Court’s (“ICC”) inception in 2002, it has been forced to continually evolve to address the complex nature of armed conflicts. This evolution has forced the Court to address how it includes crimes against and involving children; sexual...
On March 17, 2023, the Pre-Trial Chamber II of the International Court of Justice issued two arrest warrants against Russian President, Vladimir Putin, and his Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, for their alleged involvement in the “unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation”. The announcement was made on Twitter, by...
[Chidi Anselm Odinkalu (Twitter: @ChidiOdinkalu) is a Professor of Practice in International Human Rights Law at the Fletcher School. Sharon Nakandha (Twitter: @SherryKyama) is a Program Manager, Accountability and Justice with Open Society-Africa.] At the establishment of the International Criminal Court, (ICC) 25 years ago, then Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, Robin Cook, famously said of it that it “is not a...
[Dr. Ligeia Quackelbeen is an Assistant Professor in International and European Criminal Law (Tilburg University) currently researching problems of interpretation arising from inter alia the concurrence of legal regimes and examining these issues in light of the legality principle and fair labelling.] The Connection Between the Jurisdictional Assessment and Admissibility Test A second, more tentative, point that I want to raise is that I...
[Dr. Ligeia Quackelbeen is an Assistant Professor in International and European Criminal Law (Tilburg University) currently researching problems of interpretation arising from inter alia the concurrence of legal regimes and examining these issues in light of the legality principle and fair labelling.] On 9 February 2023, a communication was submitted to the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the ICC by the Belgian...