Middle East

[Zachary D. Kaufman is Associate Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Houston Law Center. His full biography is available here.] On June 15 and 16, the Belgian Parliament held a hearing about the Islamic State’s genocide against the Yezidis in Iraq and Syria. I testified, as did, among others, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad, a survivor of the genocide....

[Dr. Mishana Hosseinioun is a lecturer in International Relations at the University of Oxford and a visiting fellow at the Centre for International Studies at the LSE. She is the president of the international justice consultancy MH Group, which submitted to the ICC an Article 15 Communication integral in opening the formal investigation into the situation in Palestine.] This May, the ongoing conflict in the Occupied Palestinian Territory...

[Ori Pomson is a member of the Israel Bar and currently an LLM candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Previously, he served for six years as an officer (rank of captain) in the Israel Defence Forces Military Advocate General’s Corps International Law Department, where he served as Assistant Legal Adviser for Cyber Affairs and Assistant Head of the Legal Development Section.] I. Introduction One of the...

[Ahmed Abofoul is a Research Assistant at Kalshoven-Gieskes Forum on International Humanitarian Law and a Guest lecturer of Public International Law at Al-Azhar University – Gaza. He worked as a Research Assistant to Dr. Robert Heinsch and Dr. Giulia Pinzauti in submitting their amicus curiae observations in the Situation in the State of Palestine to the Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court] Introduction: The Palestinian people...

[Michael Lynk is an Associate Professor of Law at Western University, London, Ontario. In May 2016, the UN Human Rights Council appointed Professor Lynk as the Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.] In late June 1980, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 476, amidst diplomatic reports that the Israeli Knesset was seriously debating a...

[John Quigley is Professor Emeritus at the Moritz College of Law of The Ohio State University.] Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons   The adoption by the United Nations Human Rights Council on 27 May 2021 of Resolution S-30/1 titled Ensuring respect for international human rights law and international humanitarian law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel opens an important avenue...

The Power of Depositary, ICC and Palestine’s Quest for Statehood [Saba Pipia is an Associate Professor at the Georgian-American University (Tbilisi, Georgia) and visiting Fulbright researcher at Michigan State University. He holds a Ph.D. degree from Tbilisi State University.] Photo credit: Saba Pipia On February 5, Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) of the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced its ruling confirming the Court’s jurisdiction to...

[Valentina Cadelo is a Legal Adviser at International Commission of Jurists' Middle East and North Africa Programme.] Today, Tunisia marked the third anniversary of the opening of trials before the Specialized Criminal Chambers (SCC), the very first example of domestic criminal trials related to past gross human rights violations in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region.  Three years ago, when...

[Frédéric Mégret is a Full Professor and Dawson Scholar and co-Director of the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, Faculty of Law, McGill University.] Photo credit: AP Photo/Adel Hana Concerned member of the public (CMP): Gaza! Civilians killed! Lots of them! WAR CRIME!!! LOAC expert: Well, not really. Actually it’s much more complicated than that. Let me explain how this works...

[Jeff Deutch, PhD, is Research Director at Mnemonic and co-founder of Syrian Archive. Libby McAvoy, Esq., is a legal fellow with Mnemonic and the Video as Evidence program at WITNESS.] Photo credit: Syrian Archive. Whether in Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Hong Kong, Myanmar, the United States, Nigeria, Brasil, or elsewhere, over the last ten years civil society actors have produced and shared more content...

[Dimitrios A. Kourtis, is a PhD candidate Aristotle University, Research Associate, Adjunct Lecturer, University of Nicosia.] Photo credits: Flickr, z@doune, CC Attribution 2.0 Generic. The Armenian Remembrance Day (24 April) marks the commemoration of the tragic events that took place against the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire in 1915. The persecutions, massacres, forceful deportations, and attempts to terrorize the Ottoman Armenian communities have...

The past few days have been dominated by the horrible images of destruction coming out of Palestine. As is painfully visible to anyone with an internet connection, Israel has been targeting residential and commercial buildings in Gaza under the argument that they are used by Hamas militants. As one tweet by the Israeli Defence Forces put it, according to Israel,...