Much has been made of how relations between the ICC have improved since the second term of Bush the Younger. I think we all expected that to change in the wake of Trump's election, particularly after the OTP announced its intention to investigate detention-related abuses in Afghanistan and in CIA black sites in Eastern Europe For a while, nothing much...
A number of commentators -- including me -- have questioned whether the OTP should open an investigation into Myanmar's treatment of the Rohingya if that investigation would be limited to the crime against humanity of deportation. Here, for example, is what I wrote in April: [T]here is the question of situational gravity. Should the OTP investigate the Rohingya situation if it...
[Emma Irving is an Assistant Professor of Public International Law at Leiden University.] The OHCHR Fact Finding Mission on Myanmar drew the world’s attention last week by issuing a report finding that genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity against the Rohingya and other ethnic groups took place in Myanmar last year. The Mission went further, drawing up a non-exhaustive list of...
Okay, it didn't directly say that. But that is the logical consequence of the Pre-Trial Chamber's new decision upholding the Court's jurisdiction over the deportation of the Rohingya from Myanmar. According to the PTC (para. 71), the crime against humanity of deportation (unlike forcible transfer) necessarily takes place in two states, because one of the essential elements of the crime...
[Austen Parrish is the Dean and James H. Rudy Professor at Indiana University Maurer School of Law. He is the author of Judicial Jurisdiction: The Transnational Difference. A draft of the article is available on SSRN.] This month, the American Law Institute will publish its Fourth Restatement of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States. It’s an impressive document,...
[Ian Johnstone is the Dean ad interim of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. This contribution is cross-posted here.] Tributes to Kofi Annan have poured in since his death on August 18, praising his diplomatic skills, his dignified leadership, and his basic human decency. Having worked with him closely from 1996 to 2000, first in the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations and...
[Massimo Frigo is a Senior Legal Adviser of the International Commission of Jurist’s Europe Programme.] In these days, the world saw unfolding before its eyes the absurd (yet not isolated) and Kafkaesque situation of an Italian Government trying to prevent a boat of the Italian coastguard to board an Italian harbor. What is worse is that the ship of the Italian coastguard...
[Alonso Gurmendi Dunkelberg is Professor of International Law at Universidad del Pacífico, in Peru.] After the social, political, economic, and humanitarian collapse of Venezuela at the hands of Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorial government, Latin America (and South America in particular) is facing an unprecedented migratory crisis it does not seem to be ready for. As of 2017, the International Organization for Migration...
[Sareta Ashraph is a barrister specialised in international law, and is currently focused on ISIS's crimes against the Yazidis. Sister Makrina Finlay OSB (DPhil Oxon, Modern History) assists Yazidi asylum seekers in Germany and Melinda Taylor is an international criminal law and human rights attorney, who provides voluntary assistance to asylum seekers through Advocates Abroad. The authors are currently exploring the...
[Luis F. Yanes is a Project and Research Assistant of the Essex Business and Human Rights Project and a PhD candidate at the Human Rights Centre of the University of Essex. You can find him on Twitter @LuisFYanes.] As we now know, on the 19th of July 2018, the first draft for a Business and Human Rights Treaty was published (draft zero)....
[Maitreyi Gupta is an International Legal Adviser for the International Commission of Jurists, Based in India.] The Supreme Court of India will soon deliver its judgment in a historic case -- Navtej Singh Johar et al v. Union of India and others -- on the criminalization of consensual same sex relations in the country. Branded outlaws by the law, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT)...
[Briony Potts is a Legal Adviser at the International Commission of Jurists] Sajid Javid, UK Home secretary, has undertaken an extraordinary move that suggests an unprecedented shift in the UK’s previously held position of an absolute stance against the death penalty. Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh were the last two men of a group known as “the Beatles”, so nicknamed because...
