Europe

[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...

[Mohamed Rafik is a criminal defense attorney in the Netherlands and an active member of the working group on Criminal Law of the Dutch section of the International Commission of Jurists (NJCM). This article was written on behalf of the NJCM in the context of the JUSITICE project, a cooperation of International Commission of Jurists – European Institutions (ICJ-EI), NJCM,...

[Kawser Ahmed is an Advocate of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh. He is currently serving as a Consultant to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bangladesh on human rights and international law.] Introduction A few months back, the Government of Maldives declared that it would join The Gambia before the ICJ in challenging Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya population during an army crackdown in 2017 under the Genocide...

[Danilo Ruggero Di Bella is a lawyer at Bottega Di Bella.] This analysis outlines how Greece could raise a claim under the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) against Turkey, following the latter’s trespass on Greek continental shelf. The analysis starts off reporting the recent developments in the Aegean Sea concerning the escalation of the conflict between the two countries. Then it argues why the ECT may play a...

[Kai Ambos is the Chair for Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Comparative Law, International Criminal Law and Public International Law, at the Faculty of Law of Georg August Universität Göttingen and a Judge at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers. The author thanks...

[Bede Sheppard (@BedeOnKidRights) is the children’s rights deputy director at Human Rights Watch, where he specializes in the issue of attacks on students, teachers, and schools. He has conducted investigations in Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Japan, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Nigeria, the Philippines, Poland, Thailand, South Africa, Ukraine, and Yemen.] The European Court of Human Rights found on 19 September that Finland violated its positive...