In association with the International Commission of Jurists

North America

06 Apr

Photo credit: University of Toronto [Vincent Wong is a Canadian Lawyer and PhD Student at Osgoode Hall Law School, where he examines barriers to education for undocumented youth in Canada and the relation of those exclusions to racialized divisions of labour. Vincent was previously an Adjunct Professor and William C. Graham Research Associate at the International Human Rights Program at the...

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16 Feb

[Paolo Caroli is a Fellow at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Humboldt-University of Berlin.] If the US were a Netflix saga, the current season would be the most captivating: the killing of George Floyd and the following BLM protests, a pandemic which has already killed more Americans than WWII, the storming of the Capitol, the (now ex-)President of the United States banned from all social media....

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08 Jan

[Parisa Zangeneh is a PhD student at the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland, Galway and the Editorial Assistant of Opinio Juris, and Sharon Pia Hickey is an international human rights lawyer focusing on the death penalty, gender equality, and the rule of law. Both authors are former employees of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide.] Lisa Montgomery, a severely...

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24 Nov

[Assistant Professor at the Poznań Human Rights Centre, Institute of Law Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences.] The Trump administration’s ‘family separation policy’ has been widely reported and criticized (see for example here and here). Recently, the public learned of the policy’s horrible long-term effects: in October 2020, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) revealed that parents of 545 children...

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19 Nov

[Hadi Dadmehr is a PhD candidate in Public International law at the National University of Iran (SBU). Hadi was Head of the Department of Law at the University of Zabol, Iran,  for 6 years. You can find him on Twitter @HadiDadmehr.] Donald Trump, the 45th U.S. president, repeatedly claimed during his campaign rallies that the first call he would receive after winning the election would be...

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17 Nov

[Chiara Redaelli is a Research Fellow at the Geneva Academy, where she works for the Rule of Law in Armed Conflicts (RULAC) and the Disruptive Military Technologies projects.] Over the past days, the world has been closely following the US presidential election. On Saturday, November 7, after days of uncertainty, Joe Biden won the election. As it is well-known, concerns related to the coronavirus pandemic and the risk of potentially...

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24 Oct

[Kathryn Hampton is a senior program officer with Physicians for Human Rights, based in New York City.] On 31 August, a Portland, Oregon, police officer was filmed by a journalist as the officer ran after retreating protestors in a Black Lives Matter protest: he is shown tackling one protestor to the pavement at a full run and then repeatedly punching him. The protestor was pinned...

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14 Aug

[Carlos G. Guerrero Orozco is a Mexican lawyer who holds a Master’s degree in government and public administration. Since 2015, he has been the chair of the board of DLM (Derechos Humanos y Litigio Estratégico Mexicano), a civil society organization that demands accountability in Mexico with a human rights perspective. Emiliano J. Polo Anaya and Paulina Lucio Maymón contributed to...

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13 Aug

[Susan M. Akram is Clinical Professor at Boston University and Director of the International Human Rights Clinic at the Law School. Gabor Rona is Professor of Practice at Cardozo Law School and former International Legal Director of Human Rights First.] In his Executive Order 13928 (EO) issued on June 11, 2020, President Trump declared the investigation by the International Criminal Court...

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08 Aug

The Gambia initiated legal proceedings in the United States a few months ago against Facebook, in order to compel the company to hand over information related to its ongoing case against Myanmar, relating to the Rohingya, before the International Court of Justice.  This legal strategy is in accordance with a provision of U.S. law - §1782 of the U.S. Code, a federal statute which permits the compelling of testimony,...

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02 Jul

A couple of days ago, Iran issued an arrest warrant for Donald Trump, alleging that he is responsible for murder and terrorism in connection with the drone strike that killed General Qassem Soleimani last January. Practical problems aside -- Interpol has already refused to issue a Red Notice for Trump's arrest -- there is an important legal barrier to prosecuting Trump:...

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