Siddharth S Aatreya is an Advocate (India) and Future Trainee Solicitor at the London office of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP. All opinions expressed here are strictly personal. Shamima Begum was born a British citizen in Britain. At the age of 15, she left Britain for Syria, where she joined the ISIL. She subsequently married an ISIL fighter in Syria and gave...
[Parisa Zangeneh is a PhD student at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland, Galway, where she is a recipient of the Hardiman Scholarship.] Photo: Parisa Zangeneh The story begins with an invitation of sorts. An invitation to enter the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, where the trial of Hans Frank for crimes against humanity committed during the Holocaust was...
[Todd Carney is a student at Harvard Law School. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Public Communications. He has also worked in digital media in New York City and Washington D.C.] Though the whole world felt the weight of the Holocaust, some would argue that the Holocaust impacted Poland more than any other country. Though the world largely recognizes the atrocities that occurred in Poland...
[Ekaterina Aristova is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, University of Oxford and Carlos Lopez is a Senior Legal Advisor at the International Commission of Jurists.] The much-awaited judgment by the UK Supreme Court (SC) in Okpabi and others v Royal Dutch Shell Plc and another (Okpabi) was handed down in an online hearing on Friday 12 February 2021 some five years...
[Qetevan Qistauri is research assistant at the Regensburg University (Germany) with the main focus on International Human Rights Law.] ECtHR, Grand Chamber, Georgia v. Russia (II), No. 38263/08 Thursday 21 January 2021, the ECtHR decided on the interstate case under Article 33 ECHR Georgia v. Russia (II) in relation to the war in 2008, which had been dealt with by the Grand Chamber for several years. Although this...
[Victoria Priori is a PhD student in International Law at the Graduate Institute of Geneva.] The case R v Reeves Taylor before the UK Supreme Court brought to the forefront the issue of whether the infliction of serious mental or physical suffering by members of non-state armed groups amounts to torture, as defined in section 134 of the UK Criminal Justice Act (CJA) implementing the definition of the...
[Andrew Forde just passed his PhD viva at the Irish Centre for Human Rights focussed on The Application of the ECHR in Contested European Territories, with extensive professional experience in post-conflict regions in south eastern Europe and the south Caucasus principally with the Council of Europe.] Throughout the brutal six-week war in and around Nagorno-Karabakh which began on 27 September 2020, the former Human Rights Ombudsman of...
[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...