[Aakash Chandran (@ChandranAakash) and Varun Nambiar are Delhi based lawyers and researchers. They each hold an LL.M. in International Law from the Faculty of Legal Studies, South Asian University, New Delhi, India.] In June earlier this year, the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the disputed border between India and China caught the attention of the world amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The...
[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...
On 18 September, the Netherlands announced that it was initiating legal proceedings against Syria, based on the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT). This move by the Netherlands brings many issues to the fore: the first is the scale and magnitude of torturebeing committed in Syria, documented in many reports and most recently in a court cases in Germany (under the aegis of...
[Agata Kleczkowska is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Law Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland.] Introduction On 9 August 2020, presidential elections were held in Belarus, governed since 1994 by Alexander Lukashenko. This time, however, Belarusians did not believe in the overwhelming victory of the authoritarian president, and, certain of the victory of the opposition leader, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, began mass...
[Jan-Michael Simon is a Senior Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law. This post will not focus on the substantive findings of the FFM-Venezuela, but rather on whether the FFM-Venezuela had been mandated to identify individuals allegedly responsible for crimes against humanity. It will argue that by having carried out an extensive interpretation...
Yesterday, the Netherlands and Canada announced that they would be supporting The Gambia formally, in its application before the International Court of Justice. The full statement can be found here. This does not come as a complete surprise. There have been discussions regarding the role that other states may play for sometime now, and this is a welcome development. The last state...
The contributions in the symposium this past week have brought up multiple issues and perspectives, pointing to challenges in the quest for justice and accountability for the Rohingya, and the role of international law. Rather than go over what has been highlighted already, here are a few reflections, linked to the international legal developments and the wider context. There is little...
[Laetitia van den Assum is a diplomatic expert who has served as Netherlands ambassador on four continents. She was also a member of the Rakhine Advisory Commission, chaired by the late Kofi Annan.] Myanmar’s reluctance to embrace its rich ethnic, religious and cultural diversity remains the biggest stumbling block towards peace, stability and development. It stands in the way of other major challenges, particularly high inequality and an...
[Param-Preet Singh is associate international justice director at Human Rights Watch.] Three years ago, my organization reported on the brutal campaign of Myanmar’s military, also known as the Tatmadaw, as it committed countless atrocities and forced more than 740,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to Bangladesh. In September 2018, the UN’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission urged the investigation of the Tatmadaw’s generals for war crimes, crimes against humanity and...
[Simon Adams is the Executive Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect.] “We believe that mass killings and ethnic cleansing are underway across Rakhine State, and that there may be genocidal intent on behalf of the authorities.” That was my concluding comment at an informal briefing for members of the UN Security Council on the morning of 8 September 2017. The meeting took place...
[Akila Radhakrishnan (@akilaGJC) is the President of the Global Justice Center, where she directs GJC’s work to establish legal precedents protecting human rights and ensuring gender equality.] This August marks not only the 3rd anniversary of the start of the Rohingya genocide, but also the 6th anniversary of the start of the Yazidi genocide. Beyond starting in the same month, these...
[Shannon Raj Singh is a member of Guernica 37 International Justice Chambers and a Visiting Fellow of Practice at the Oxford Programme on International Peace and Security.] The seat of the International Criminal Court, in the rain-soaked Hague, is located approximately 8,000 kilometers from Cox’s Bazar, as the crow flies. For many Rohingya victims of atrocities located in the refugee camps there, that distance is simply...