In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Human Rights Law

29 Aug

[David L. Attanasio is a professor of international law at the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University in Bogotá, Colombia] The last few years have seen a rapidly changing landscape for serious human rights violations in the Americas.  Instead of government abuses committed in the alleged fight against left-wing guerilla groups, militarized criminal organizations now perpetrate many, if not most, serious human rights violations...

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28 Aug

http://youtu.be/HRIF4_WzU1w Fifty years ago today, on the morning of August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King looked out from his suite at the Willard Hotel as crowds began mulling around the Washington monument. He had stayed up until four in the morning drafting and redrafting his speech. As King looked on, his aides were furiously typing the finished draft for...

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27 Aug

[Matiangai Sirleaf  is a Sharswood Fellow, University of Pennsylvania Law School. B.A. New York University; M.A. University of Ghana-Legon; J.D. Yale Law School] The knee-jerk reaction to institute formal transitional institutions like trials or truth commissions following massive violence needs to be seriously rethought.  For one, it is not evident that societies recovering from mass atrocity will undoubtedly want to pursue...

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27 Aug

Yes, the title is intended to be provocative. And yes, I think chemical weapons are indeed terrible. But statements like this -- offered by John Kerry in thinly-veiled support for using military force against the Syrian government -- still give me pause (emphasis mine): What we saw in Syria last week should shock the conscience of the world. It defies any...

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26 Aug

[Travel and other expenses related to my participation in the "100 Years Peace Palace" program provided by the Government of the Netherlands and Radio Netherlands Worldwide] August 28th will mark the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Peace Palace at The Hague. In commemoration of this, the Government of the Netherlands and Radio Netherlands Worldwide have brought a group of...

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26 Aug

[Drew F. Cohen is a law clerk to the Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa.  He is also a contributing columnist for US News and World Report where he writes about comparative constitutional law, international human rights and global legal affairs.] Recently, Botswana called on the South African Development Community (SADC) to open an investigation into voting irregularities in the recent Presidential election in Zimbabwe...

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23 Aug

My friend Dapo Akande has a superb post at EJIL: Talk! discussing whether the ICC could prosecute the use of chemical weapons by the government in Syria. I agree almost entirely with Dapo's analysis, but I do want to offer a couple of thoughts about his discussion of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties: The argument that chemical weapons are...

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22 Aug

[Dr. HJ van der Merwe is a Lecturer in Public Law Studies at the Law Faculty of the University of the Western Cape, South Africa] The degree to which states are able and willing to dynamically reflect international criminal norms within their domestic legal systems is crucial to the success of the project of international criminal justice. This is exemplified by...

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21 Aug

[Sven Pfeiffer is an Associate Expert at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The views expressed in this post are those of the author, writing in his personal capacity, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations.] National authorities are increasingly involved in the fight against impunity for perpetrators of genocide, war crimes and crimes against...

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