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From AllAfrica.com: Today, International Criminal Court (ICC) judges in The Hague delivered the Court’s first verdict—a finding of guilt against former Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga. Prosecutors accused Lubanga of the war crimes of conscripting, enlisting, and using children under the age of 15 years for combat purposes while he served as political head of the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC) rebel group in the Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Lubanga denied all allegations against him, insisting that he gave orders for children not to be involved...

has served as refuge for Arabs in the Gaza Strip, in the West Bank of the Jordan River, and in the portion of Jerusalem that came under Jordan’s control in 1948. The ICC has already had occasion to rule on the status of these three territories. In Decision on the ‘Prosecution request pursuant to article 19(3) for a ruling on the Court’s territorial jurisdiction in Palestine’ (2021), Pre-trial Chamber I found that the territorial jurisdiction of Palestine “extends to the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely Gaza and the...

...connotations, mirrored in the warm reception of (white, European, Christian) Ukrainian war victims in what, for other (racialized) refugees, remains impervious Fortress Europe. Conversely, across the decolonizing world, in activist circles, among civil society, and even for progressive international lawyers, Palestine is not just a place and not just a conflict. Rather, Palestine is a metaphor of the colonial in a supposedly postcolonial present. Palestine is giving us a preview of the brutality of the high-tech wars of tomorrow, while demonstrating the fragility of the Western liberal democratic values of...

...in solidarity with those fighting for justice in Palestine. In the following essay, I offer brief remarks on the value of legal scholarship and conferences in challenging established power structures, the necessity of anti-zionist—by which I mean anti-racist—activism in the struggle to liberate Palestine, and the implications of an incontrovertible consensus beyond the West. Throughout, I draw on the symposium’s texts, which I had the pleasure of editing, and observations from the conference, which I was honoured to speak at.  Activism and Critical Legal Scholarship International law has a Jekyll...

of Palestine by over two-thirds of UN members, its membership of international organizations and courts, and its accession to major multilateral treaties demonstrates that its statehood enjoys quasi-unanimous support. And we must remember that the recognition of Palestine in 2012 was not of a new state, but of a state that already existed, as Palestine had applied for membership in the UN in September 2011. A final word on self-determination. The UN Partition Plan, which was explicitly mentioned in Resolution 67/19, and in Palestine’s application for membership of the UN,...

liberation movements classified as proscribed organizations. I then explain that despite the adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism by many British universities in 2020, organising events on the conflict in Palestine that predated the adoption of the IHRA definition was already fraught with difficulties, as demonstrated by the cancellation of a conference at the School of Law at the University of Southampton almost a decade ago.    I end by suggesting that the situation in the UK is in some ways worse when organising events on the Question of Palestine...

Myanmar. In such a circumstance, it can be impossible for businesses and third-party states to comply with human rights while operating in, or selling weapons to, that state. The Due Diligence Impact of Targeting Al Haq When it comes to business and human rights in Palestine, there is simply no substitute for Al Haq. I know of no other NGO based in Palestine with the knowledge and competency it has evidenced over the years. The impact of designating Al Haq a terrorist organisation is that the due diligence ecosystem is...

...committed across Palestine.  Crucially, our analysis cannot begin on 7 October 2023, but must consider the patterns of gender and reproductive violence that are integral to the infrastructure of Israeli apartheid and occupation. Within these systems women’s bodily and reproductive autonomy are systematically curtailed. As Ammal Awadallah, the executive director of the Palestinian Family Planning and Protection Association (PFPPA), has stated: what is happening now in Gaza is an accumulation of years of neglect and a lack of resources in Palestine’s health system, particularly reproductive care, as a result of...

Every nine-years a new prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is selected. The 2021/2020 ICC prosecutorial elections saw the appointment of the ICC’s third prosecutor and an unprecedented discussion about the high moral character requirement. Common sense and article 42(3) of the Rome Statute require the prosecutor and deputies to be persons of high moral character, yet this election cycle marked the first time civil society action and the allegations of harassment and other forms of workplace misconduct catapulted the requirement, (and how it can to be assessed) to...

Eugene Kontorovich argues today at Volokh Conspiracy that Israel could minimize the likelihood of an ICC investigation into its transfer of Israeli civilians into the West Bank by emphasizing Turkey’s similar transfer of Turkish civilians into Northern Cyprus, which it has been illegally occupying for more than four decades. Here are the key paragraphs: Cyprus was a state with clear borders when Turkey invaded in 1974, and is a charter member of the ICC. If anyone should be loosing sleep over settlements suits in the ICC, it would be Turkey....

its investigation into Myanmar on the crime of forced displacement, is the ICC opening the doors to an examination of various states’ immigration policies? (Almost certainly, Myanmar will argue that the Rohingya are not lawfully present in Myanmar—most Rohingya having had their citizenship stripped through a series of prejudicial citizenship laws—thereby requiring a future ICC inquiry into Myanmar’s domestic citizenship laws.) While immigration is an area historically relegated to the sovereignty of individual states, perhaps the ICC is signaling that even abusive immigration practices are not safe from international accountability....

As I have noted before, human-rights groups have consistently and justifiably criticized the ICTR for failing to take seriously the systematic sexual violence committed against women during the 1994 genocide. Similar criticisms are now being leveled at the ICC regarding its investigation of the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Congolese activists have launched an appeal at the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute those in their country who use rape as a weapon of war. “Why does the ICC judge (militia chief) Thomas Lubanga for enrolment of child...