Note: although I serve as Special Adviser to the ICC Prosecutor on War Crimes, I was not involved in the Al Hassan case. The Trial Chamber released its 822-page (!) judgment in the Al Hassan case yesterday. Al Hassan was convicted of a number of serious crimes, including the crime against humanity of torture and the war crimes of torture and...
Note: I serve as Special Adviser to the ICC Prosecutor on War Crimes. Twitter is awash with commentary about tweets issued by the Registry that explain the difference between arrest warrants and summonses. Many people have speculated that perhaps the tweets are related to the Palestine situation. Any such speculation is unwarranted, as the tweets are part of a long-scheduled series...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. Events Online symposium 'Futureproofing human rights, developing thicker forms of accountability': With this symposium on 18 June 2024, we aim to strengthen human rights law by identifying means or mechanisms that ensure a thicker form of accountability that it can face up...
[Kateryna Busol is a Ukrainian lawyer and an Associate Professor at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy] This post forms part of the Opinio Juris Symposium on Reproductive Violence in International Law, in which diverse authors reflect on how the International Criminal Court and other jurisdictions have responded to violations of reproductive health and reproductive autonomy. The symposium complements a one-day...
[Valeria Babără works as Legal and Advocacy Officer with the Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice, where she monitors and researches developments on the prosecution and adjudication of gender-based crimes, and contributes to legal publications including 'The Hague Principles on Sexual Violence' and 'Judicial Approaches to SGBC at the ICC'.] This post forms part of the Opinio Juris Symposium on Reproductive Violence in International...
[Benjamin Meret is a PhD Candidate and teaching assistant at the University of Geneva. He holds an MA in international law from the Geneva Graduate Institute of international and development studies.] On the evening of January 9th, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa declared that the country’s armed forces were in an internal armed conflict against various criminal groups. This followed several critical...
[Lucas Carlos Lima is a professor of international law at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais] It was expected that the advisory opinion on the climate emergency and human rights requested by the Republic of Colombia and the Republic of Chile to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (‘IACtHR’ or ‘Court’) would attract a high level of participation. While the 2017 Advisory...
[Full disclosure: I serve as the Prosecutor's Special Adviser on War Crimes.] In this post I want to provide an overview of the Rome Statute's principle of complementarity. The principle has been consistently misrepresented by politicians and journalists since word first got out that the Prosecutor, Karim Khan KC, intended to seek arrest warrants in the Palestine situation not only for...
[Dearbhla Minogue is a senior lawyer at the Global Legal Action Network and a consultant solicitor with Bindmans LLP. Leanna Burnard is a lawyer at the Global Legal Action Network and a consultant with Bindmans LLP.] The authors represent the World Uyghur Congress before the UK Court of Appeal. The commission of atrocities, including correctional forced labour, by the Chinese government against the Uyghur...
[Swati Singh Parmar is an Assistant Professor (International Law) at Dharmashastra National Law University, India. She has an interest in international legal theory and Critical International Law.] “Let Us All Agree to Die a Little”: TWAIL’s Unfulfilled Promise, published in the Harvard Journal of International Law on 11 April 2024 by Professor Naz Khatoon Modirzadeh, is bound to have the readers...
[Chuka Arinze-Onyia is a Nigeria-based lawyer with an avid interest in international criminal justice and other adjacent subjects] Introduction Race and nationality play critical roles in understanding and experiencing international criminal justice. While international justice may ultimately aim to address prohibited crimes committed anywhere in the world without regard to the status of the perpetrator or victim, in practice however, it continues...
[Subash Jai Devaraj is a 2020 University of London LLB Graduate currently employed with the Malaysian Bar Council as a Law, Policy and Special Projects Officer. He is a Fellow at the Centre for International Law Research and Policy (CILRAP) as well as a volunteer at the Platform for Peace and Humanity.] Introduction With Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine and the...