Search: palestine icc
28 Feb Brazil and the War in Ukraine: Between Apology and Utopia
Brazil is back. After four years of retrenchment, the new Lula government seems ready to assume, once again, a key position in the international stage. This is a role that Lula knows how to play well. His previous government created the now defunct Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), meant as a counter-weight to a US-dominated OAS. By the time he left office, the region had even recognised the State of Palestine, a clear sign of how much he had successfully de-US-ified South America. Now that he is back in...
05 Apr Everybody Knows About Racism, Goddam! Pathways in the Struggle Against the Racialised Universe of International Law
...in International Law at the Institute of Law, Birzeit University Institute of Law and Assistant Editor of the Palestine Yearbook of International Law. Claire Smith is a PhD candidate at the University of Amsterdam. ** A note on language: we intentionally tie racist action to people, noting Bonilla-Silva’s observation of the intellectual tendency to have racism without racists. This act presents racism as a disembodied phenomena rather than attributable to people, undermining the humanity of those who suffer it. *** We explore these themes as part of our project, provisionally...09 Jul Meanwhile, over at ABC News…
Diane Sawyer had a hard-hitting report tonight at ABC News on the recent hostilities between Israel and Palestine. The segment opens with her saying, “We take you overseas now to the rockets raining down on Israel today as Israel tried to shoot them out of the sky.” As she speaks, a video box next to her shows explosions on an urban landscape. Sawyer then shows a still photo of two haggard men carrying clothes in front of a destroyed building and says, “here is an Israeli family trying to salvage...
08 Oct Rethinking International Law After Gaza Symposium: The Palestinian Genocide and the Colonial Core of International Law
...peoples. Colonial genocides have been committed in the global geography of the colonized world. Colonial genocides are not the make of states against minorities. By contrast, empires, colonial companies, and occupying states or settler colonial states have perpetrated colonial genocides against indigenous peoples. We can count among them the colonial genocide in Palestine. As it has happened for the past five centuries, the Palestinian Genocide shows that European settler colonialism continues to perform one of its historical tasks: genocide. Empires and former empires like the US, the UK, and France...
22 Feb Of Anti-Colonialism and International Legal Pedagogy: Can we Visualise a Post-Westphalian World?
...territory, effective government, and capacity to enter international relations. It also manifests upon declaration, with or without the recognition of others, at least according to the Convention. In realpolitik, the picture is murkier. For example, Palestine meets the criteria, and it declared statehood in 1988. In addition, over 130 states recognise it as a state. Yet, it continues to wallow in a state of not-quite-statehood, Israel and its occupying cabal dictating life and death to gruesome effect. Closer to home, we recall Catalonia held a referendum and, with overwhelming popular...22 Nov Overcoming the Veto to Save Lives
[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, Syria and Yemen and elsewhere, is the international community helpless to help – failing to fulfill its responsibility to protect? Proponents of the use of force for purposes of...
26 Apr Symposium on Boyd van Dijk’s Preparing for War: The Geneva Conventions and the Future of International Humanitarian Law
...pressure from the ICRC and France (and given the absence of supporters of the arch-occupier paradigm in the Conference), rather than blocking the debate, the UK “started thinking about how to use it for its own purposes while attenuating its effects on Britain’s interests in the context of growing East-West tensions and the violent insurgency in Palestine” (p. 75). In order to achieve progress, the ICRC, in turn, sought to balance these concerns with the human rights demands of Nazi victims. The result was a draft that incorporated “only a...
08 Jun Black Lives Matter, the USA and the UN Convention against Racial Discrimination
...ICERD. Articles 11-13 ICERD lay out the procedure, which applies to all State parties to the ICERD without the need for a declaration of consent to proceed. Such a practice was only exercised for the first time in 2018 where three inter-State communications were submitted: State of Qatar vs. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, State of Qatar vs. United Arab Emirates and State of Palestine vs. State of Israel (see here). The Committee initially decided to not take decisions due to “the legal complexity of the issues broached and a lack...
05 Apr Of Palestinian Liars and Israeli Saints: Confronting Anti-Palestinian Racism in International Law
...is for us to acknowledge that the epistemic injustice we have normalised has created conditions for the savagery Israel perpetrates today. “Dominant hearers must recognise that epistemic environments in which marginalised individuals can speak are notably few and dispersed and may constitute substandard spaces for these individuals to be heard.” The epistemic environment cultivated by international law has long been a hostile space and, judging by the ICC prosecutor’s tolerance for a mushrooming catalogue of war crimes, at least when Russia is not involved, it will remain so. In light...
15 Nov Israel’s Brazen Attack on Al-Haq – Troubled from Apartheid Charges, Armed with Terrorism Designations and Blessed by U.S. Silence
...and human rights activities, and its long-lasting constructive engagement with the ICC. Having a closer look at how Israel strategized its most recent attack, Al-Haq’s General Director, Shawan Jabarin’s statement only proves how anxious and desperate Israel is to obliterate the Palestinian CSOs: The recent allegations against Al-Haq and fellow organizations are a result of the Israeli failure to challenge the work of the organization on the basis of law or evidence, deciding instead to use its political power as an occupying colonial regime with the ability to create the...