In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Criminal Law

09 Sep

On 4 September last week the UN Commission of Inquiry on Burundi released its latest report. The situation in Burundi continues to warrant deep concern as grave human rights violations persist. Experts estimate that it may only get worse as the 2020 elections draw closer. After all, it was a political crisis in 2015 election cycle that catapulted the small...

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09 Sep

[Mark Kersten is a consultant for the Wayamo Foundation and a law student at McGill University. He is also author of the book, 'Justice in Conflict - The Effects of the International Criminal Court's Interventions on Ending Wars and Building Peace'.]  It isn’t for a lack of attention. Violence in Libya is covered almost daily in major newspapers and media outlets....

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26 Aug

A few months ago, I was invited by the Polish Ministry of Justice to participate in a one-day conference on the responsibility of lawyers for judicial crimes, part of Poland's Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Stalinism and Nazism. The Ministry asked me to discuss American prosecutions of Nazi lawyers at the Nuremberg Military Tribunals -- something I wrote...

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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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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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21 Aug

I have uploaded a new article on the crime of aggression to SSRN. Here is the abstract: Immediately after the historic adoption of the aggression amendments on 14 December 2017, a number of participants in the negotiations expressed their belief that activating the crime of aggression would help deter states from engaging in the illegal use of force. Unfortunately, the version...

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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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13 Aug

[Owiso Owiso is a Doctoral Researcher in Public International Law at the University of Luxembourg and a member of the PhD Academy of the Cross Cultural Human Rights Centre, VU Amsterdam.] Introduction With the celebratory dust finally settled, stakeholders are beginning to take stock of the performance of the greatest achievement of the international criminal justice movement, the permanent International Criminal Court (ICC). Tough questions are now...

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09 Aug

[Victor Kattan is a Senior Research Fellow of the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore where he heads the Transsystemic Law Cluster. He is also an Associate Fellow of NUS Law. This is the second part of a two-part post.] Recognition of Palestine’s Statehood Since 1988, 138 states (72 per cent of UN members) have recognised a Palestinian state in the territories occupied by Israel on 4 June 1967. The...

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09 Aug

[Victor Kattan is a Senior Research Fellow of the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore where he heads the Transsystemic Law Cluster. He is also an Associate Fellow of NUS Law. This is the first part of a two-part post.]  The post in Opinio Juris submitted by Steven Kay QC and Joshua Kern of 9 Bedford Row based on their Article 15 Communication to the Prosecutor...

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