General

[Safia K Southey is a student at Columbia Law School, with experience at Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Center for Justice and Accountability, and the International Center for Transitional Justice. She focuses on international law, Middle East policy, and alternative justice mechanisms.] On March 11, 2025, something unusual happened—the International Criminal Court (ICC) secured the arrest of a former head...

[Laura van der Hoeven holds academic degrees in Public International Law and Business Administration. Her work focuses on the intersection of foreign relations and international law, with particular interest in security alliances, soft power diplomacy, and the application of international law to territorial disputes.] The ongoing conflict in the Gaza region has resulted in severe humanitarian and environmental losses. While international...

11 April 2025 We, Hungarian international lawyers, observing with great concern the recent international and domestic events, guided by the best of our knowledge, professional convictions, and social responsibility, issue the following statement on certain current issues with international law relevance. 1. Bowing our heads before the victims who suffered horrors shocking the conscience of humanity, we declare our firm commitment to...

[Andrew Forde is an Adjunct Lecturer at the Irish Centre for Human Rights.] In his famous poem, The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost laments the fact that travelling one road precludes travelling another but acknowledges that taking the road less travelled can make all the difference. The journey towards accountability for the crime of aggression has begun but we have reached a fork in the...

[Ozan Yildirim works as an Expert Associate in the Humanitarian Affairs Section of the Permanent Mission of Switzerland to the UN in Geneva and holds an LL.M. in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights from the Geneva Academy] This post is written in the author's personal capacity. When it comes to the disappearance of individuals, non-State actors around the world are increasingly...

[Lukas Willmer is a PhD candidate at Humboldt University Berlin, with a research focus on governmental status and recognition in international law] In September 2024, Australia, Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands announced their intention to initiate proceedings before the ICJ against Afghanistan for violations of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). The four states...

As I write these lines, the United States is fighting for the very soul of its democracy. Under dispute is whether their government can forcibly transfer a lawful resident – in this case a Latino with a tattoo – to a forced labour camp in El Salvador without any due process. For now, the US Supreme Court’s answer seems to be “no”, provided the...

[Anuja Jaiswal is a human rights consultant who has worked in various contexts, including Gambia, Ukraine, MENA, Myanmar, and North Korea. She studied at the University of Oxford and Columbia University, and has an LL.M in Transnational Crime and Justice.] Generally, there is an absence of adequate gender representation on the international bench. This gap has been identified by academics and...

[Ben Saul is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism] The Israeli human rights NGOs Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and Hamoked recently reported that around 6,800 Palestinians are detained by Israel outside the regular criminal justice process. Approximately 3,436 are held as “unlawful combatants” captured in Gaza – although...

[Mona Rishmawi is an international human rights lawyer and a former senior UN official. She worked in several conflict contexts including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Libya, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Syria.] This post is written in the author's personal capacity. Israel has resumed pounding Gaza. Civilian casualties are mounting, and humanitarian assistance once again is weaponized....

[Azadah Raz Mohammad is a legal advisor for the End Gender Apartheid Campaign and a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. She is the co-author of the Handbook on Universal Jurisdiction: Holding the Taliban Accountable for International Crimes. Akila Radhakrishnan is an independent human rights lawyer and gender justice expert. She is a legal advisor for the End Gender Apartheid Campaign.] Part I of this post...

[Azadah Raz Mohammad is a legal advisor for the End Gender Apartheid Campaign and a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. She is the co-author of the Handbook on Universal Jurisdiction: Holding the Taliban Accountable for International Crimes. Akila Radhakrishnan is an independent human rights lawyer and gender justice expert. She is a legal advisor for the End Gender Apartheid Campaign.] On March 8,...