Search: palestine icc

ICC involvement in South Ossetia would thus represent a considerable shift in policy toward the Court, perhaps opening the door to eventual ratification of the Rome Statute — which would be a very good thing, both for Russia and for the ICC. We will see what happens. Human Rights Watch has already publicly claimed that Russia is deliberately exaggerating the number of civilian casualties in South Ossetia. If that’s true, Russia’s ICC claims may prove to be all talk and no action. UPDATE: You can’t trust the media to get...

...strategy of the armed conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. The majority of these refugees have come from territory which, under the Assembly resolution of 29 November [1947], was to be included in the Jewish State […] It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine, and, indeed, at least offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees who have been rooted in...

As readers no doubt know, Fatou Bensouda announced yesterday that the OTP is opening a formal investigation into the situation in Palestine. Doing so was a foregone conclusion, given the Pre-Trial Chamber’s recent decision that the ICC has jurisdiction over crimes committed in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Regardless, even if the bulk of the work will fall to her successor, Karim Khan, Bensouda deserves credit for not being cowed by Israel’s ridiculous allegations of anti-semitism or by the US’s indefensible sanctions against her, which the Biden administration...

attempt to find a solution for the looming conflict and...transferred the question of Palestine to the United Nations." The future of Palestine's fate was then placed "into the hands of a Special Committee for Palestine, UNSCOP, none of whose members turned out to have any prior experience in solving conflicts or knew much about Palestine's history." It was UNSCOP that "recommended to the UN General Assembly to partition Palestine into two states, bound together federation-like by economic unity. It further recommended that the City of Jerusalem would be established as...

...violence, coexists with we condemn protests against genocidal violence. By promoting this cynical logic, academic institutions maintain that support for Palestine constitutes a negation of one’s civility and belongingness to these institutions. It is not an exaggeration to say that the treatment of pro-Palestine activists today is that of outlaws. Exclusion Through Faux Inclusion Palestinian scholars of international law are particularly vulnerable to the sharp end of this colonial enterprise, facing a paradoxical relationship with these institutions that is deeply troubling. On one hand, Palestinian scholars are courted as symbols...

...that the US government had officially recognized the State of Palestine in 1932: "The contention of the plaintiff that Palestine, while under the League of Nations mandate, was not a foreign state within the meaning of the statute is wholly without merit. . . . Furthermore, it is not for the judiciary, but for the political branches of the Government to determine that Palestine at that time was a foreign state. This the Executive branch of the Government did in 1932 with respect to the operation of the most favored...

This op-ed by a former ICTY and ICTR prosecutor argues that the ICC should move, at least some of their hearings and trials, to locations closer to the site of the alleged crimes. In the case of the ICC, this means spending some of the $600 million it has spent so far on facilities in Africa, where all of its current prosecutions are taking place. The Hague. . .is more than 6,000 kilometers away. Systematically holding trials at that distance makes no sense. Criminal justice in practice is an intensively...

...obtainable. Such double-standards are anathema to the functioning of a judicial institution. Facing the challenges ahead No one believes the Afghanistan investigation will be easy.  It will be complex, remote from The Hague, costly, and could result in adverse political repercussions by those who do not want to see the investigation proceed.  The Appeals Chamber, however is sending an important signal that the ICC should not be dissuaded from carrying out its mandate even in such circumstances. The ICC States Parties must now ensure that the Prosecutor has sufficient funding...

of the ICC practice in relation to the complementarity assessment are evident. Therefore, judicial review is required in view of the dramatic impact of the adopted complementarity assessment, on the present situation and beyond it, as the overly restrictive approach adopted by the Prosecutor in this situation may have grave consequences for other preliminary examinations and investigations. In light of the above, a new determination on the issue will only reinforce the Court and enhance confidence in the ICC Prosecutor’s independence, as the request notes referring also to the strong...

...apparent than in Clarke’s comparison of the ICC and the African Court. The ICC is not, in Clarke’s account, a-political but it appears to many as a “corruption of justice” (173) because it does not seek to identify and redress the deep conditions of violence in Africa. Indeed the politics of the ICC are politics in the derogatory sense: the ICC represents political interests of the global north, holding African but not European leaders accountable for violence and thereby undermining African political and economic self-determination (170). This is the so-called...

...from the specter of colonialism, the pervasive fear of double-standards to the detriment of Africans and what Mutua Makau famously calls the metaphor of “savages, victims and saviors”? After all, we should not forget that many will view the Lubanga judgment as confirmation that, to cite Rwandan President Paul Kagame, the ICC is “a new form of imperialism created by the West to control the world’s poorest countries.” This, in my view, is clearly over-stated, but it is hard to turn a blind eye to some facets of the ICC’s...

presumed weak and strong states to the extent that even when the Prosecutor sought to launch the first major investigation that implicates a major world power in Afghanistan, the result has been a strong rebuke from the US government. Even within the weaker states where the ICC has operated in most of its existence, state agents who have been targeted have found it easier to attack the ICC on the basis of perceived bias against weaker states. The pushback has resonated well especially when it is punctuated by sentiments of...