In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Latin & South America

01 Jul

[Kate McInnes is a practicing lawyer based in Vancouver, Canada, and a student in the M.Sc. in International Human Rights Law program at the University of Oxford] In 2023, 25 people in the border town of Ciudad Juárez died by feminicidio, or feminicide — the highest number in Mexico, which itself is a global epicentre of gender-based violence. The year began...

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28 Jun

[Dr Shea Elizabeth Esterling is a Senior Lecturer Above the Bar in the Faculty of Law, University of Canterbury (Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand), Co-Chair of the American Society of International Law Rights of Indigenous Peoples Interest Group (2021-24) and Chair of the Cultural Heritage and the Arts Interest Group (2024-27). She is the author of Indigenous Cultural Property and International Law:...

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31 May

[Benjamin Meret is a PhD Candidate and teaching assistant at the University of Geneva. He holds an MA in international law from the Geneva Graduate Institute of international and development studies.] On the evening of January 9th, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa declared that the country’s armed forces were in an internal armed conflict against various criminal groups. This followed several critical...

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31 May

[Lucas Carlos Lima is a professor of international law at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais] It was expected that the advisory opinion on the climate emergency and human rights requested by the Republic of Colombia and the Republic of Chile to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (‘IACtHR’ or ‘Court’) would attract a high level of participation. While the 2017 Advisory...

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20 Feb

[Samriddhi Guha is a fourth year law student at O.P Jindal Global Law School] In 2012, Colombia adopted measures to protect the paramo ecosystem through the National Development Plan 2014-2018 (‘Plan’) that came into force in 2016. The Plan prohibited ‘agricultural activities and exploration for or exploitation of non-renewable natural resources, and ‘construction of oil and gas refineries’ in the paramos...

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19 Oct

[Stefano Angeleri (X/Twitter: @StefAngeleri) is a EU’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at Queen's University Belfast and visiting scientist at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University] Funding: This research was supported by funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 101032116—HEAVEN. During the last 8 years, 7.7 million people have fled Venezuela...

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12 Sep

In recent days, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva has generated much controversy by declaring that, should Russian President, Vladimir Putin, visit the G20 Meeting in Brazil in 2024, he would not be arrested, in defiance of the existing International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrant against him. Eventually, Lula backtracked, stating the arrest was not up to him, but Brazil’s judiciary. In so doing,...

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16 Aug

[Keshav Somani is as an Associate with the Dispute Resolution team of S&R Associates, New Delhi] Introduction The International Court of Justice on July 13, 2023, delivered its judgment in the case concerning Question of the Delimitation of the Continental Shelf between Nicaragua and Colombia beyond 200 Nautical Miles from the Nicaraguan Coast (Nicaragua v. Colombia). The Court concluded by thirteen votes...

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23 May

[Nina Bries Silva is a former human rights lawyer and PhD candidate in law at the European University Institute (EUI) focusing on the Colombian transitional justice process and indigenous ontologies.] On March 8, 2023, in Bogotá, the Colombian Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) held a press conference unveiling its indictment in the macro-case 05. It charged 10 former commanders of two...

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15 May

[Carlos Lusverti is the Latin America Legal advisor with the International Commission of Jurists] The principle of presumption of innocence in criminal cases is core to the rule of law. It is also a universally recognized general principle of law, incorporated into general international human rights treaties, the Venezuelan Constitution and domestic law as part of the Criminal Proceedings Code. However,...

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17 Mar

[Alejandra Ibarra Chaoul is a journalist and executive director of Defensores de la Democracia, a Mexican nonprofit focused on preventing violence against journalists via memory-building and new narratives for social change.] With 14 journalists killed in Mexico in 2022, the country sustained its place as the world’s deadliest for media workers, even surpassing countries at war, like Ukraine or Yemen, according...

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