[Natalie Alkiviadou is a Senior Research Fellow at Justitia (Denmark) working on the Future of Free Speech Project.] I like social media. I am an avid fan of free speech (I research it for a living). I also like humour, parody and satire. I like to laugh (especially in current times I think it’s good for one’s health). I also like to be informed through laughter. But...
[Nasia Hadjigeorgiou is an Assistant Professor in Transitional Justice and Human Rights at UCLan Cyprus. Her monograph, published by Hart in 2020, focuses on the protection of human rights as a peacebuilding tool in four post-violence societies (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus, Northern Ireland and South Africa).] The Committee on Missing Persons The Committee on Missing Persons (CMP or Committee) in Cyprus is an institution that was formally established in...
By Laura Knöpfel (Senior Research Fellow Transnational Law Institute, Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London) and Carlos López (Senior Legal Adviser, International Commission of Jurists) With the rejection of the popular Business Responsible Initiative (RBI) in Switzerland, the parliamentary counterproposal is due to enter into force soon. The counterproposal introduces a new article 964 in the Swiss Code of Obligations to require...
By Laura Knöpfel (Senior Research Fellow Transnational Law Institute, Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London) and Carlos López (Senior Legal Adviser, International Commission of Jurists) On 29th November 2020, Switzerland narrowly rejected the popular Responsible Business Initiative (RBI) which would have obliged Swiss companies and the businesses they control anywhere in the world to respect human rights and environmental standards and introduced civil...
[Lys Kulamadayil is a SNSF Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Amsterdam Center for International Law.] Is the handshake between men and women a protected social practice under the German constitution and if so, should persons who refuse to shake hands be denied citizenship? A recent judgment by the Administrative Court of Baden-Württemberg affirming German authorities’ decision to deny a Muslim man German citizenship...
[Alessandro Pizzuti is co-founder of UpRights. Prior to forming UpRights, Alessandro worked as a legal officer at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon as well as at the International Residual Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.] On 14 October 2020, the Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA) announced...
By Karolína Babická, ICJ Legal Adviser The EU Counter-terrorism Directive On 15 March 2017 the European Union (EU) adopted EU Directive 2017/541 on Combatting Terrorism (“the Directive”)with a deadline for transposition into domestic law of 8 September 2018. The Directive aims principally to extend the scope of application of criminal law by Member States to terrorism related threats and activity within the EU. In...
[Henning Lahmann is a Senior Researcher at the Digital Society Institute ESMT Berlin.] Back in May, the German Federal Constitutional Court (the Court) held that the law for Germany‘s Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND) was unconstitutional in its current form due to insufficient legal protections for journalists who are not citizens and who work outside of Germany’s borders against surveillance measures, a judgment widely lauded for its expansive...
[Simon Bekaert is an Attorney at Law at the Bekaert Law Firm. This article was written in the context of the JUSTICE project, a cooperation of International Commission of Jurists – European Institutions (ICJ-EI), NJCM, Human Rights in Practice, Magistrats Européens pour la Démocratie et les Libertés, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna di Pisa, Juezas y Jueces para la Democracia and Neue...
[Malcolm Wu is an LL.M. candidate at the London School of Economics and Political Science.] Introduction As highlighted by Mudukuti and Gauci and Karageorgiou, the criminalisation of NGOs and human rights defenders (HRDs), notably within the context of search and rescue operations (SAR), has been on the rise in the EU since its migration crisis in 2015. A substantial role in this controversy belongs to the broadly-drafted Facilitation Directive 2002/90/EC which renders...
[Trung Nguyen is a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for Procedural Law.] With its appellate function came to a halt on the 10th of December 2019, the World Trade Organization (‘WTO’) is unlikely to be an attractive venue to settle international trade disputes at the moment or in the near future. The non-functioning of the WTO Appellate Body (‘AB’) presents the problem...
[Atul Alexander is an Assistant Professor of Law at the The WB National University of Juridical Sciences.] On 2nd July 2020, the Permanent of Court of Arbitration (PCA) had put out a six-page Award (extracts for advanced publication) on the 2012 Enrica Lexie incident. To put it in perspective the Enrica Lexie case arose in the backdrop of two Italian tankers...