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25 Mar Rwanda Intends to Prosecute Bagambiki Following ICTR Acquittal
...gender crimes seriously enough. Here are some excerpts from a 2003 letter sent by the Coalition for Women’s Human Rights in Conflict Situations, an NGO with international memberhship, to Carla Del Ponte, the chief ICTR prosecutor: As your term comes to an end, we believe that your four-year record as ICTR prosecutor shows no concrete commitment to effectively developing evidence to bring such charges, despite the longstanding and overwhelming proof of sexual violence during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. We believe that the failure to implement effective measures that would have...
06 Jul Three Ways to Improve Victim Participation in the Rohingya Context
...potential violations of the Genocide Convention would mean victims who are the subject of the proceedings would reach into the millions and be scattered around the world. These are numbers the size of small cities. Recognising these challenges, this article aims to provide practical recommendations of what action can be taken now to better involve the victim community in an equitable and systematic way. Develop a long-term engagement plan Any strategy to facilitate the participation of victims must take a longitudinal approach. The community will be receiving information about the...09 Sep Burundi “A General Climate of Impunity” – the Latest UN Commission of Inquiry on Burundi Report
...President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for a controversial third term deemed by many to be unconstitutional thereby triggering protests and strong opposition to his bid for yet another term in office. Nkurunziza’s forces responded violently and swiftly. The situation attracted the attention of the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor and a preliminary examination was announced on 25 April 2016. At that point more than 430 persons had been killed and an estimated 3,400 people had been arrested whilst over 230,000 had fled the country. On 25 October 2017, the Prosecutor received authorisation...
02 Apr Symposium on Military AI and the Law of Armed Conflict: Front- and Back-End Accountability for Military AI
history,” in part because it focuses on “DARPA hard” (*cough**mindbogglingly implausible**cough*) research, like growing plants that sense national security threats (Advanced Plant Technologies (APT)), enabling scalable quantum computers (Optimization with Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (ONISQ)), and exploring space-based biomanufacturing methods to convert astronaut waste into useful materials (Biomanufacturing: Survival, Utility, and Reliability beyond Earth (B-SURE)). As relevant to this symposium, DARPA is at the forefront of U.S. military AI research and development. To address AI’s general inability to extrapolate from one scenario to another, the Science of Artificial Intelligence and Learning...03 Apr The Unattractive Question is Back: SCOTUS (Again) Considers Corporate Liability Under the Alien Tort Statute
...in the high court. Should the Court have agreed to hear the case? The Court’s decision to hear the case is a bit surprising given that it had refused to hear at least two cases raising the same issue in the previous two terms. On the other hand, the Court’s decision to hear the case is also quite understandable given the fairly sharp split between lower circuit courts on the question. Such an enduring split among the opinions of lower courts is always an important factor for the Court in...
05 Jun A War on a Virus? Human Rights, Biology and Reshaping Society
...spread of the virus worldwide; the issue at hand is the unchecked responses by states, that seem to ignore their negative obligations in the name of their public health statutes – provisions against arbitrary detention, expedited (or delayed) trials, non-refoulement because of closed borders, privacy, and so many others. Too often amiss from parliamentary review because not including the term of “state of emergency”, but rather “public health acts”, the legislation itself appears innocuous. In political speeches however, states are at war. French president Emmanuel Macron used the term no...31 Jan It’s Official: Antarctica Is (Not) a Foreign Country
If you earn income on a research expedition in Antarctica, can you claim a tax exemption for foreign earned income? The tax regulations allow an exclusion from gross income for any foreign earned income, but the latter term is defined as residency for a qualified period in a “foreign country.” The United States Tax Court ruled this week in Arnett v. United States that Antarctica is not a foreign country and therefore income earned there is fully taxable. “The term “foreign country” when used in a geographical sense includes any...
30 Jan Judge David Re Cautioned against Further Litigation, Proceeds with Further Litigation
[Cale Davis is a PhD candidate at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies at Leiden University in The Netherlands. He was previously a Prosecutor with the Northern Territory DPP and a Judge’s Associate at the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory in Australia. His research concerns prosecutorial discretion in international criminal justice.] If the Special Tribunal for Lebanon’s (STL) judiciary was hoping for a relaxed Christmas break and a slow January, they have been sorely disappointed. In a remarkable twist to the saga surrounding the appointment of judges...21 Mar Creating Strong International Commitments
...true of treaties), it is federal statutory law. Hence congressional-executive agreements offer one-stop shopping. Second, David and Marty raise questions about withdrawal. I again note that David and Marty do not argue that treaties create more lasting commitments—just that congressional-executive agreements and treaties are essentially the same in terms of their durability. Hence they apparently agree with me that durability is not an argument in favor of Article II treaties. I go a step further, however. I argue that congressional-executive agreements can be more durable than treaties. David and Marty...