04 Nov My Talk on the ICC’s Investigation into the Situation in Georgia
I’m in the middle of a week-long trip to Georgia, where I’m giving nine lectures in five days to the military and university students. (Thanks, Anna Dolidze, Deputy Minister of Defence and friend-of-OJ!) I’m talking about perfidy a couple of times, but most of the lectures — not surprisingly — are about the OTP’s request to open a formal investigation into the situation in Georgia. I’ve greatly enjoyed the lectures I’ve given so far, at Free University Tbilisi and at the Ministry of Defence. The questions have been uniformly intelligent and challenging. Today I’m heading to Gori to give lectures at the National Defence Academy.
In any case, a reader emailed me and asked whether I could send her the notes of my talk and the accompanying PowerPoint slides. I was happy to oblige, and I thought I might upload both to Opinio Juris, in case anyone else would like to see them. The notes are here, and the accompanying PowerPoint slides are here.
This is fantastic! Thanks a lot!
Brilliant, thank you!Response…
The notes and slides are interesting and helpful, however one thing needs to be noted: the ethnic cleansing charge is actually the easiest to prove at the ICC. No actual access to S.Ossetia is needed (at least necessarily) as it would disclose nothing at this stage (after 7 years from the conflict) except the destruction of dwellings belonging to ethnic Georgians and that evidence is easily and readily available through satellite data from before and right after the conflict, plus there are witnesses, audio/video material (statements of s.ossetian leadership for instance), etc.
I agree that the crimes against humanity charges will be the easiest to prove and thus the most likely to be pursued by the OTP. The question, of course, is whether they’ll be able to get their hands on the perpetrators — that’s what I mean by them being difficult to investigate. I’ll make that more clear in my talk tomorrow!
Great post Kevin – thanks!
Those 162 pages would have otherwise turned to dust on my desk.
Kevin for president!