[Sergey Sayapin LLB, LLM, Dr. iur. is an Assistant Professor in International and Criminal Law at KIMEP University’s School of Law, Almaty, Kazakhstan, since 2014, and Director of the LLB in International Law Programme.] Introduction On 25 November 2018, Russia attacked and seized three Ukrainian navy vessels, which were on their way from Odessa to Mariupol. Russia´s Federal Security Service...
I wasn't feeling particularly well on my recent long flight from Buenos Aires to Amsterdam, so I took advantage of my sickness to binge watch all eight episodes of BBC2's international criminal justice drama, Black Earth Rising, which focuses on the 1994 Rwandan genocide. I wasn't expecting much, because BER was billed as a drama about the ICC. But I was...
Cocaine is a big problem in Latin America. According to the UN, 99.5% of worldwide coca cultivation is concentrated in just three countries: Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. Under pressure from the Global North, Latin American nations have reduced the problem to a plan to contain cocaine flows through mostly violent means, to disastrous humanitarian consequences. In several states, violence has...
[Mona Ali Khalil is an internationally recognized public international lawyer with 25 years of UN and other experience dealing with the rule of law and international peace and security efforts including peacekeeping, sanctions, disarmament and counterterrorism.] In the face of a veto by any permanent member of the UN Security Council blocking enforcement action against the mass atrocities in Palestine, Myanmar,...
Between 1980 and 2000, Peru went through what Peruvians call “La Época del Terrorismo”, or “The Era of Terrorism”. In those years, the Shining Path, a Maoist-inspired terrorist group, launched an attack on Peruvian democracy seeking to establish a Khmer-Rouge-like dictatorship. According to Peru’s Truth & Reconciliation Commission, its Supreme Court, and The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the “Era...
[Patryk I. Labuda is a Hauser Global Fellow at New York University School of Law.] News broke on Saturday, November 17, that the Central African Republic (CAR) had transferred Alfred Yekatom, alias ‘Rombot’ or ‘Rambo’, to the International Criminal Court (ICC). According to the arrest warrant, Yekatom has been charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes for acts allegedly committed...
[Jutta Brunnée is Professor of Law and Metcalf Chair in Environmental Law, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto. This essay is based on a keynote presentation given at the annual conference of the Canadian Council on International Law in Ottawa, on November 2, 2018. It draws in part on Jutta Brunnée, “Multilateralism in Crisis,” forthcoming in American Society of International Law,...
[Jutta Brunnée is Professor of Law and Metcalf Chair in Environmental Law, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto. This essay is based on a keynote presentation given at the annual conference of the Canadian Council on International Law in Ottawa, on November 2, 2018. It draws in part on Jutta Brunnée, “Multilateralism in Crisis,” forthcoming in American Society of International...
[Dimitrios Kourtis is a PhD cand. (Intl Law) at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece and Fellow of the Hellenic Foundation for Research & Innovation.] The purpose of the present post is to briefly discuss certain arguments, based on the 1953 London Agreement and the 1990 Two-Plus-Four Treaty, asserted by Germany on different occasions aiming at the dismissal of the legal validity...
[Renata Nagamine is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil.] On October 28th, 2018, Brazilians chose their president for the next 4 years. The running candidates were Universidade de São Paulo Professor Fernando Haddad and Captain Jair Messias Bolsonaro, a congressman in his 7th mandate who emerged as a prominent extreme-right figure during the impeachment of former President Dilma...
[Rita Siemion is International Legal Counsel at Human Rights First.] In his new book, The Trump Administration and International Law, former State Department Legal Advisor and Yale law professor Harold Hongju Koh tackles, among other issues, how to finally end America’s post-9/11 wars. In offering a blueprint for the Trump Administration, Koh hits some important nails right on the head. Most...
[Daphne Eviatar is the Director of Amnesty International USA's Security with Human Rights Program.] Harold Hongju Koh has written an impressive and disturbing account of many of the ways the Trump administration has undermined global institutions and subverted the international rule of law. He also offers some hope for those of us watching with horror as the current administration regularly upends...