In association with the International Commission of Jurists

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08 Apr

[David M. Crane was the Chief Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone from 2002 until 2005.] I have had the rare privilege of being one of four individuals to actually found an international tribunal, literally from the ground up, and manage it to success. The international war crimes for West Africa, called the Special Court for Sierra Leone, has been taunted as one...

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08 Apr

[Luis Moreno Ocampo is the Founding Chief Prosecutor of the ICC (2003-2012)]. In late 2020, the third International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor will be appointed. One thing is certain: she/he will face new challenges. Should the new Prosecutor open an investigation in Venezuela? Or against British personnel in Iraq? Burundi, Philippines or Georgia? What should be the focus of the Afghanistan and Palestine investigations? At the beginning of...

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08 Apr

[Kevin Jon Heller is Associate Professor of Public International Law at the University of Amsterdam and Professor of Law at the Australian National University; Mark Kersten is a researcher based at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto and creator of the blog Justice in Conflict; Patryk I. Labuda is a Postdoctoral Researcher at...

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07 Apr

[Matiangai Sirleaf is a Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Her expertise includes public international law, global public health law and international human rights law.] Part I of this post details how European powers enacted treaties that prioritized diseases considered most relevant to protecting Western colonial interests. It helps to elucidate how the racialization of diseases...

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07 Apr

[Matiangai Sirleaf is a Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Her expertise includes public international law, global public health law and international human rights law. Part II is found here.] The President of the United States has problematically utilized geographic references for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) to play on anxieties of the racialized other, the foreigner...

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07 Apr

[Gina Heathcote is a Reader in Gender Studies and Public International Law at SOAS University of London and author of Feminist Dialogues on International Law: successes, tensions, futures (OUP 2019) and Michelle Staggs Kelsall is a Lecturer in Public International Law at SOAS University of London and Co-Founder of ATLAS (Acting Together: Law, Advice, Support) whose mission is to empower,...

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07 Apr

[Marina Aksenova is a Professor of Comparative and International Criminal Law at IE Law School, Madrid.] Legal studies condition lawyers to think about international law as progressing in a linear fashion with the gradual evolution of its various institutions in parallel with the development of the body of applicable law – treaties, custom and the general principles of law. At the same time, if one looks at the...

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07 Apr

[Alonso Gurmendi Dunkelberg is currently Professor of International Law at Universidad del Pacífico Law School in Lima, Peru.] The COVID-19 pandemic can be understood through various different frameworks. It can be a vindication of anti-neoliberalism, a resurgence of nationalism, or even an opportunity to criticize or praise democracy and autocracy. The issue of framing is an increasingly important, if underestimated, meta-discussion...

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06 Apr

[Margherita Melillo is a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for Procedural Law, and a PhD candidate at the European University Institute.] Introduction With the return to our normal lives depending on the development of an effective treatment and/or a vaccine for COVID-19, science has never seemed so important. The paradox has been brilliantly encapsulated by an unnamed Spanish researcher that became immediately widely popular on...

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06 Apr

[Gayle Manchin is the Vice Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, appointed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. James W. Carr is a Commissioner of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, appointed by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.] How far can a government limit religious freedom in the name of fighting the coronavirus (COVID-19) under international law?...

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06 Apr

[Sam Zarifi is the Secretary General of the International Commission of Jurists and Kate Powers is a student at the University of Michigan School of Law and a Legal Intern at the International Commission of Jurists.] As of 8:00 am CET this morning, the Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases tracker  by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University in the US...

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06 Apr

[Martin Scheinin is a Professor of International Law and Human Rights at European University Institute and a former UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-terrorism.] Earlier contributors have highlighted that in addition to permissible restrictions (or limitations) upon human rights, applicable in perfectly normal situations, some human rights treaties also allow for the more far-reaching option of a State to derogate from some of its obligations...

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