With all the talk of the End of Treaties and Treaty Survival, it's worth noting that the wheels of multilateral treaty-making have not come to a complete stop. Earlier today, the ILO adopted a Protocol to ILO Convention No. 29, the 1930 Forced Labour Convention. On paper, the 1930 Convention was a success -- it currently has 177 parties. But it's...
I want to call readers' attention to a remarkable Israeli NGO, Breaking the Silence, which collects the testimony of Israeli soldiers about the brutalization of Palestinians during the occupation. Here is the NGO's self-description: Breaking the Silence is an organization of veteran combatants who have served in the Israeli military since the start of the Second Intifada and have taken it upon themselves to...
I had a good chuckle this morning when I read Libya's latest attempt to avoid complying with its obligation to surrender Saif Gaddafi to the ICC. (Which, of course, it may be genuinely unable to do, given that he's still being held in Zintan. But that's another story.) The source of my amusement is Libya's new excuse for not being able to...
The New York iteration of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival will be held June 12-22. A list of films to be screened in New York is available here. HRW explains the goal of the festival: Through our Human Rights Watch Film Festival we bear witness to human rights violations and create a forum for courageous individuals on both sides of...
Lawfare reports today on a study published in Political Science Quarterly about how ordinary Pakistanis view US drone strikes in their country. According to the post, the study "[c]hallenge[s] the conventional wisdom" that there is "deep opposition" among Pakistanis to drone strikes and that "the associated anger [i]s a major source of the country's rampant anti-Americanism." I don't have access to the...
On May 19, the Legal Directorate of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office held their 2nd Annual International Law Lecture. The lecture was delivered by Peter Maurer, the President of the ICRC, who spoke on "War, Protection and the Law: The ICRC's approach to International Humanitarian Law." More information about the speech is available at EJIL: Talk!, but I thought it...
One of the great advantages of being a legal academic is the ability to get involved in actual litigation. I have consulted on a number of cases at the ICTY, ICTR, and ICC over the years, most obviously serving as one of Radovan Karadzic's legal associates, but it's been a while, and I've been itching to get back in the game. So I...
Colum Lynch reports today at FP.com that the United States is pushing for the creation of a hybrid international criminal tribunal for Syria by...
Just a reminder to readers: the ICRC's phenomenal database of customary international humanitarian law is available for free online -- and includes a great deal of information that is not available in the two printed volumes. Here is the ICRC's description: Today, the ICRC has made available on its online, free of charge Customary IHL database an update of State practice...
[Gabor Rona is the International Legal Director of Human Rights First.] What is the source of the power to detain in an armed conflict that is not between states (non-international armed conflict, or NIAC)? Where is the relevant law on grounds and procedures for such detention found? Torture and drones aside, this is probably the most vexing, most controversial, and most...
Germain Katanga will be sentenced tomorrow, having been convicted of crimes on the basis of an uncharged, unlitigated mode of participation that the Pre-Trial Chamber assured the defence would not be at issue in the trial and that the Trial Chamber first mentioned more than six months after the 30-month trial ended. The Trial Judgment is a horrorshow, replete with statements...
As I've noted before, Ukraine's Constitutional Court has held that the Ukraine cannot ratify the Rome Statute because -- in the words of the ICRC -- "the administration of justice is the exclusive competence of the courts and...
