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Search: Syria Insta-Symposium

07 Mar

...southern Somalia. Middle East and Northern Africa At least nine civilians have been killed and dozens more wounded after mortar rounds and rockets were fired on a mainly Kurdish residential quarter in the northern city of Aleppo, according to the Syrian Kurdish YPG group. February marked the highest number of home demolitions in the occupied West Bank since the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) began recording in 2009, according to a recent statement. Libyan forces based in the city of Misrata have carried out air strikes...
07.03.16 | |

30 May

...non grata. Interestingly, Belgium can’t expel the Syrian ambassador, because he is also ambassador to the EU and there is no agreement on diplomatic sanctions against Syria within the EU. Foreign Policy has more on what expelling a diplomat entails and the five worst atrocities of the Syrian uprising. Two Danish brothers of Somali origin have been arrested in Denmark connected with allegedly planning an al-Shebab terrorist plot. A former Rwandan school teacher living in Canada pleaded not guilty yesterday to involvement in the Rwandan Genocide; his charges are one...
30.05.12 | |

03 Aug

Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has quit as Syria’s peace envoy after becoming frustrated with “finger-pointing” at the UN while the battle in Syria rages on. IPS offers more context here. China has expressed its regret. Meanwhile, a UN resolution on Syria goes to the General Assembly today, criticizing the Security Council for failing to take action and denouncing the use of force on civilians by the Syrian government. The UN Security Council did, however, demand and end to foreign support of rebels in the Democratic Republic of the...
03.08.12 | |

01 Aug

...have rallied against the alleged mistreatment of young people in detention, including the hooding and physical restraint of teens, amid calls for an inquiry into the abuse to be expanded and the United Nation High Commission on Human Rights called on Australia on Friday to compensate children abused in prison. UN/World The U.N. Deputy Special Envoy for Syria on Sunday held talks with Syrian officials in Damascus to sound out their position on how to break an impasse hindering the proposed resumption of peace talks around the end of August....
01.08.16 | |

02 Apr

...those leaders tomorrow if it had them in custody. Indeed, Fatou Bensouda has already mentioned the possibility of such nationality-based prosecutions. Moreover, a Security Council referral may be more trouble than it’s worth. John himself notes a major problem: if the territorial parameters of any such referral exposed members of the Syrian government to ICC jurisdiction, Russia and/or China would almost certainly veto the referral. And what if the referral exposed Syrian rebels to ICC jurisdiction? I can’t imagine the US, France, and the UK would be too keen about...
02.04.15 | |

10 Apr

[Kingsley Abbott is the International Commission of Jurists’ Senior Legal Adviser for Global Redress and Accountability & Saman Zia-Zarifi is the Secretary General of the International Commission of Jurists. This is the first part of a two-part post.] Introduction The International Independent Investigative Mechanism for Syria and the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar are recent examples of States responding to situations where avenues for accountability for crimes under international law are otherwise limited. Both mechanisms, created respectively through the United Nations General Assembly and the United Nations Human Rights Council...
10.04.19 | |

28 May

The African Union has accused the ICC of targeting Africans on the basis of race and it called for an end to prosecution of Kenya’s president and his deputy over crimes against humanity. Fighting rages on in Syria and more reports of the use of chemical weapons by Syria’s President Al-Assad have surfaced as well. The EU has lifted its arms embargo to the Syrian rebels, which paves the way for individual EU member states to supply the rebels with weapons. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay spoke...
28.05.13 | |

29 Aug

The UK has put a proposed resolution before the Security Council on Syria calling for military action to protect civilians, perhaps delaying US action. China has also called for restraint and calm in the situation, saying any intervention in the region would only make the turmoil worse. Human Rights Watch has a statement on possible intervention in Syria calling on all parties to follow international humanitarian law and for the situation to be referred to the ICC, and the Arms Control Blog offers an analysis of a new potential rationale...
29.08.13 | |

17 May

here. Kevin added the Security Council’s refusal to pay for any expenses related to an ICC investigation in Syria as another reason to be skeptical about the likelihood of a referral. More on Syria in a two-part guest post by Naz Modirzadeh who responded to the open letter to the UN on humanitarian access to Syria. Deborah shared her opinion on the Al Nashiri case and the question whether an armed conflict existed. In another guest post, Ezequiel Heffes offered four arguments why international humanitarian law covers detention in non-international...
17.05.14 | |

31 Aug

of Egyptian president Mohammed Morsy’s decorum on the world stage in light of how he presented himself at the recent Non-Aligned Movement summit in Tehran. One example of this was calling for intervention in Syria saying that the “oppressive regime” in place there must go. At Justice in Conflict, Mark Kersten offers an analysis of Assad supporters in Syria calling to allow the ICC to investigate the situation in the war-torn country. Julian Assange gave a speech yesterday in which he said he sees six months up to a year...
31.08.12 | |

25 May

...to make. The good news is that in the past fifteen years the secondary boycott against Israel has died a quiet death. According to official reports from the United States, of the twenty-two members of the Arab League, only three countries–Iraq, Libya, and Syria–continue to enforce a secondary boycott. Even then, it appears that only Syria is serious about it. USTR has recently stated that the secondary boycott “has extremely limited practical effect overall on U.S. trade and investment ties with most Arab League countries.” As a practical matter, we...
25.05.10 | |

09 Jul

Survivors of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre re-enacted their escape in Bosnia this weekend ahead of Ratko Mladic’s trial, which resumed today at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Tomorrow, the International Criminal Court will deliver the sentence and reparations order for Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, convicted March 14, 2012 of conscripting and enlisting child soldiers and using them to participate in hostilities. Reuters offers an analysis showing that the crisis in Syria reflects the limitations of Turkish power. Additionally in Syria news, amid President Al-Assad leveling...
09.07.12 | |