In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Human Rights Law

24 Aug

[Kingsley Abbott (@AbbottKingsley) is the Coordinator of the International Commission of Jurists’ Global Accountability Initiative.] Whenever I meet policymakers to discuss accountability for the well-documented and widespread serious human rights violations in Myanmar, I get engaged in some version of the ‘peace vs justice’ debate: that since Myanmar has only recently emerged from a long period of military rule, perhaps we shouldn’t press too hard for accountability;...

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24 Aug

[Priya Pillai is an international lawyer, head of the Asia Justice Coalition secretariat, and a contributing editor at Opinio Juris.] It has been three years since the forced exodus of the Rohingya from Myanmar was at its zenith, as a result of international crimes committed in Rakhine state. With close to a million individuals forced to flee to Bangladesh and other...

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21 Aug

[Julianne Hughes-Jennett is a partner in Quinn Emanuel’s London office and the head of Quinn Emanuel’s Business and Human Rights Group. Laila Hamzi is a senior associate in Quinn Emanuel’s London office. Her practice focuses on international arbitration, public international law and business and human rights. Ram Mashru is an associate in Quinn Emanuel’s London office.  His practice focuses on...

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21 Aug

[Sue Farran is a Reader at Newcastle University Law School, with a particular interest in Pacific island states on which she has published widely, especially in the context of human rights, natural resources and environmental challenges. Rhona Smith is Professor of International Human Rights at Newcastle University and has worked on human rights capacity building across the Asia Pacific region. Sean Molloy is a Lecturer at Northumbria University...

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21 Aug

[Mona Ali Khalil is the Director of MAK LAW INTERNATIONAL; an Affiliate of the Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict; and a former Senior Legal Officer of the United Nations. She holds a B.A. and M.A. in international relations from Harvard University as well as a M.S. in Foreign Service and a Juris Doctorate from Georgetown...

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17 Aug

[Julia Emtseva is a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law.] Belarus, a country known as “Europe’s last dictatorship”, held a presidential election on 9 August amid decreasing support of Lukashenko’s leadership. According to election officials, he won 80.23% of the vote, while his main opponent, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, received 9.9%. Belarusians, however, said that election results were rigged. Ms. Tikhanovskaya rejected the...

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12 Aug

[David J. Scheffer is Visiting Senior Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations and Tom A. Bernstein Genocide Prevention Fellow, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and was the first U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues (1997-2001). The author’s observations and views in this article are solely his own and do not reflect any institutional position.] How will the survival and legacies of tens of millions...

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11 Aug

[Dapo Akande, Antonio Coco, Talita de Souza Dias, Duncan B. Hollis, Harold Hongju Koh, James C. O’Brien and Tsvetelina van Benthem.] The alarming spread of the global COVID-19 pandemic—now infecting nearly 19 million and claiming more than 700,000 lives worldwide—has made it increasingly urgent to define international law protections for the health care sector against malicious cyber operations. In May 2020, malicious cyberattacks on...

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10 Aug

[Nathaniel Berman is the Rahel Varnhagen Professor of International Affairs, Law, and Modern Culture at Brown University.] The Land between the River and the Sea, the land that cannot even be named without provoking heated controversy, has once again moved to the forefront of international debate. There are many possible explanations for this upsurge: perhaps the “Trump Plan,” perhaps Israeli threats...

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04 Aug

The United Nations Human Rights Committee has adopted General comment No. 37 on the right of peaceful assembly emanating from Article 21 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The final document was made available last week, and can be found here.    The adoption of this general comment – which is in effect an explanation or translation of Article 21...

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03 Aug

[Indrasish Majumder a third-year student pursuing B.A L.L. B (Hons) from National Law University Odisha, with a special interest in Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.] Two police officers block a woman’s path as she approaches the entrance of a hospital on the crowded streets of Panama clutching her purse and phone. “You! What are you doing? Today only women can be outside,” the woman (anonymous)...

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02 Aug

[Clare Brown is an Australian lawyer and Deputy Director of Victim Advocates International, based in Beirut.] On 28 July, CNN published an expose detailing the abuse of numerous Kenyan women by the Kenyan Consulate in Beirut, Lebanon. The women alleged that the Consulate had stolen money from them, physically assaulted them, and attempted to coerce them to perform sex work. The accusations, though alarming, are not...

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