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17 Jun Understanding the Bolivian Coup: Latin American Democracy and the Cold War Paradigm
the government obstructed the work of human rights organizations, looking to de-legitimize them. Similarly, opponents frequently accused him of harassment through use of spurious judicial charges. For many, including close supporters, Morales had “distorted his essence” by pursuing a policy of “the ends justify the means”. The final straw came when Morales refused to acknowledge defeat in a 2016 referendum. 51.3% of Bolivians refused to approve a constitutional amendment eliminating presidential term limitations. Morales vowed not to respect the results, arguing before the Constitutional Tribunal that term limitations were contrary...29 Jan Elongated Imminence and Operational Realities
window of opportunity to strike operational members of groups that are actively engaged in planning and executing attacks against Americans. And he has acknowledged that this position requires a broader reading of the term “imminence” than is found in typical situations. But is this truly unrecognizable “imminence”? First of all it must be recognized that, like the term “proportionality”, “imminence” is an important term in two different areas of international law, and it carries different meanings in these different contexts. Imminence is at the core of the jus ad bellum...
17 Mar Legally Defining Ecocide: Implications for Addressing Environmental Racism and Prioritizing Human Health in International Law
...of fifty in 2019, proposed an amendment to the Rome Statute with the following definition of ecocide: “Ecocide is the extensive damage to, destruction of or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been severely diminished”. This definition has evolved and one explicit meaning for the term does not exist—hence the necessity of the new panel. The term ecocide, for many, will quickly conjure up shocking images of...
17 Mar International Law for a Fragile World: Ecological Risk and the Limits of Consent-Based Governance
...to prevent harm from materialising. Climate change disrupts this framework at a fundamental level. Many of its most consequential effects are irreversible on human timescales: species extinction cannot be undone; the melting of glaciers and ice sheets commits the planet to centuries of sea-level rise; once triggered, coral reef collapse cannot simply be reversed through later compliance. Yet much of international climate law continues to operate as if prevention were still the central task. Emission reduction targets, nationally determined contributions, and long-term temperature goals are framed around avoiding future catastrophe...
02 Nov Who Is Afraid of a Truth Commission? The Narratives of the Opposition to the Final Report of the Colombian Truth Commission
[Adriana Rudling is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Chr Michelsen Institute, Bergen Norway. Post-Doctoral Visiting Fellow at the Instituto Pensar, Bogota, Colombia working on issues relating to the interactions between victims and transitional justice mechanisms.] Eduardo González Cueva once told me the worst thing that can happen to a truth commission is that nobody talks about it, that it goes by unnoticed. This has certainly not been the case of the Colombian Commission for Clarification of Truth, Coexistence, and Guarantees of Non-Repetition, known locally as the CEV, so far. The...06 Sep The G-20 Meetings, Summarized
politically helpful to say that Sarkozy and Merkel had brought about a cap on greedy banker salaries. For the US and Britain, the issue of banker compensation is not absolute compensation as such, it is the structure of incentives vis a vis risk, and long term risk versus short term compensation. That is almost certainly the predominant view among financial regulation experts in the US, at least, and the predominant view among the Obama senior economics team. On capital standards for financial institutions, more agreement was reached in principle because...11 Mar Dealing with Iran: A Primer on the President’s Options for a Nuclear Agreement
Without weighing in on the merits of any deal with Iran on nuclear matters, I’ll express some frustration over the rhetoric used in the current firestorm between the White House, 47 Senators (plus Governors Perry and Jindal), Iran’s Foreign Minister, and the 4th Estate on what kind of deal the United States might conclude with Iran and the so-called P5+1 (the UK, France, China, Russia and Germany). There seems to be a great deal of confusion and conflation of issues in terms of the legal logistics of concluding any deal....
25 Nov Symposium on Open Source Investigation Labs: University Open Source Investigation Labs: A Conversation Between Queen’s University Belfast and the Hertie School
researchers in essential verification skills. In 2023, the Hertie School DVC became the first EU-based corps, founded by a good friend and colleague, Pablo Maristany de las Casas, who had completed his professional year at Amnesty International, alongside Marija Ristic, the DVC manager at Amnesty. The initiative emerged from a pressing reality: a global shift toward conservative and authoritarian governance and a corresponding rise in human rights violations in the last decade. I joined as a researcher in the founding cohort and was elected co-coordinator for the 2024 cohort alongside...
12 Aug Reducing the Funding Gaps for Atrocity Victims
...social bond but of relatively small size—26 million Swiss Francs—that underwrites the building of three new rehabilitation centers in Africa. At the end of the bond’s five-year term, four European countries and the “la Caixa” Foundation will pay the ICRC funds destined for repayment of all or only a part of the principal of the bond to the social investors depending upon the outcome. The better the results in terms of victims treated, the more these “Outcome Funders” pay in and thus the better the return for the social investors....13 Dec What Is Going On in Peru?
...a hardliner retired General accused of human rights violations during Peru’s armed conflict and ties to Peru’s reactionary right – hardly something that the protesters will accept. Recently, Peru Libre, Vladimir Cerrón’s party, has tried to unsuccessfully censure Williams Zapata’s chairmanship, in order to secure it for itself. While this would be accepted by the protesters, it would also place the Presidency in the hands of the same authoritarians that doomed Castillo’s government to begin with. Short term solutions are, therefore, not easy to find. One mid to long-term solution...