In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Human Rights Law

05 May

Carsten Stahn, Jennifer Easterday, and Jens Iverson’s new edited collection Jus Post Bellum: Mapping the Normative Foundations is a terrific contribution to the Jus Post Bellum field. The 26 chapters (one authored by myself) address a range of central issues, including interrogating the structure, content, and scope of the three separate pillars of jus / post / bellum. While the contributing...

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05 May

[Carsten Stahn is Professor of International Criminal Law and Global Justice and Programme Director of the Grotius Centre for International Studies, Universiteit Leiden. Jennifer S. Easterday is a Researcher for the ‘Jus Post Bellum’ project at the Universiteit Leiden and an international justice consultant. Jens Iverson is a Researcher for the ‘Jus Post Bellum’ project and an attorney specializing in public international law, Universiteit Leiden.] As...

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28 Apr

I've been remiss in my blogging lately for a variety of reasons, but I can't let pass two interrelated decisions by Pre-Trial Chamber II (sitting as a single judge) in the criminal proceedings against Aimé Kilolo Musamba and Jean-Jacques Mangenda Kabongo -- Bemba's lead defence attorney and case manager, respectively. The two men, who are currently in custody, are accused of...

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28 Apr

Last week's NETmundial conference serves as a reminder of just how much the nature of cyberspace remains (at least theoretically) undetermined.  We still can't agree on what kind of resource cyberspace "is":  Is it a global public good as Sir Tim Berners Lee proclaimed (i.e., a res communis) or just a collection of technology subject to sovereignty regulation like so...

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23 Apr

[Paola Gaeta is a Professor at the Law Faculty of the University of Geneva, Adjunct Professor, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies and the Director of Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.] On 9th April, Pre-Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Court (‘the ICC’ or ‘the Court’) issued another decision concerning the lack of compliance by a State...

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18 Apr

As readers no doubt know, Ukraine has accepted the ICC's jurisdiction on an ad hoc basis for acts committed between 21 November 2013 and 22 February 2014. The self-referral has already led to a good deal of intelligent commentary -- see, for example, Mark Leon Goldberg's discussion of the politics of an ICC investigation here and Mark Kersten's convincing argument that Russia...

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18 Apr

So maybe the use of the Alien Tort Statute against corporations for overseas activities isn't fully dead. Yesterday, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has revived In re South Africa Apartheid Litigation, a twelve-year-old litigation that just won't die. A copy of the opinion can be found here. Most of the opinion deals with whether a corporation may be...

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12 Apr

I fully concur with Julian's recent post about the United Nations Headquarters Agreement. There is no question that the US decision to deny Aboutalebi a visa violates the Agreement itself. But I've seen suggestions, most notably by my friend John Bellinger, that the US is not violating domestic US law because the 1947 United Nations Headquarters Agreement Act (scroll down) contains a "security...

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30 Mar

Just follow the lead of Henry Okah, a Nigerian national recently convicted in South Africa (under universal jurisdiction) of terrorism-related offences in the Niger delta. Here are the key paragraphs from the trial court's decision: [28] The correctness of copies of 3 journals kept by the accused in his own handwriting was admitted. In these journals the accused made notes in from...

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26 Mar

John Louth at OUP passes along the latest potential twist in Moreno-Ocampo's career path: The former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Mr Luis Moreno Ocampo, has offered to represent the victims of Barlonyo Massacre in the court.Barlonyo village in Agweng Sub-county, Lira District is where more than 400 people were massacred by suspected Lord’s Resistance Army rebels on February...

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25 Mar

According to Lebanon's Daily Star, Libya intends to begin the trial on April 14, just a few weeks from now: Seif al-Islam Kadhafi, Saadi Kadhafi and former spy chief Abdullah Senussi are among more than 30 officials from the ousted regime who are to stand trial on charges ranging from murder to embezzlement. Former premiers Al-Baghdadi al-Mahmudi and Bouzid Dorda are also among those...

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24 Mar

For quite some time I zealously followed all of the various filings in the Libya cases -- by Libya, al-Senussi and Gaddafi, the Registry, the OPCV, everyone. I also regularly blogged about those filings. But I haven't lately, as consistent readers will know. The reason? The ICC judges seem to have lost all interest in actually making decisions. The record is quite...

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