In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Symposia

18 Dec

[Dearbhla Minogue is a Legal Officer for the Global Legal Action Network and Ruwadzano Patience Makumbe is a Zimbabwean lawyer and currently a Hillary Rodham Clinton Global Challenges Programme Scholar at Swansea University.] Digital technologies have empowered citizens to not only be consumers of information but also creators and distributors, making it possible for ordinary people to highlight human rights violations across the world. As has been the case...

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18 Dec

[Shakuntala Banaji is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Ram Bhat is a PhD candidate in the department of media and communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science and co-founder of Maraa, a media and arts collective in India.] In late 2018, WhatsApp awarded us one...

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17 Dec

[Shannon Raj Singh is an attorney specialized in international criminal law and human rights; she is currently a Visiting Fellow of Practice at Oxford's Institute for Ethics, Law & Armed Conflict and an Associate Legal Officer at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in The Hague. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the...

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17 Dec

[Barrie Sander is  a Postdoctoral Fellow at Fundação Getúlio Vargas, Brazil. This is the second part of a two-part post. Part one can be found here.] Rising concerns and frustrations about the role of Facebook in exacerbating tensions within conflict-affected and atrocity-afflicted communities have coincided with growing pressure for the platform to adhere to a human rights-based approach to content moderation....

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16 Dec

[Barrie Sander is  a Postdoctoral Fellow at Fundação Getúlio Vargas, Brazil. This is the first part of a two-part post. Part two can be found here.] During a speech delivered at Georgetown earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg proudly proclaimed that “our values at Facebook are inspired by the American tradition”. What Zuckerberg failed to mention is that only a tiny fraction...

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16 Dec

[Barrie Sander is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Fundação Getúlio Vargas, Brazil and Yvonne McDermott is a Professor of Law at the Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law, Swansea University, UK.] In recent years, concerns have grown about the governance of the digital ecosystem and the social media platforms that have come to dominate it. The highly concentrated power and control of...

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18 Oct

In this final contribution to the symposium, I will discuss compensation practices by national militaries and their link to accountability.  It is perhaps not surprising that creative remedial responses to claims by individuals and other third parties against IOs have not emerged in the context of mass torts. The stakes are high, and there is a tendency to reign in precedent-setting gestures of good will. ...

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17 Oct

[August Reinisch is Professor of International and European Law at the University of Vienna and Member of the International Law Commission. Clemens Treichl is an associate in the international arbitration group at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP. The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP or any of its affiliates.] On February 27,...

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16 Oct

[Carla Ferstman is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Essex School of Law. She has worked in the human rights field for 25 years, with NGOs, intergovernmental organisations and in private practice.] Where do individuals who suffer harm as a result of the negligence or malfeasance of the UN go to seek redress? Sadly, there is nowhere for them to go. Maybe I...

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15 Oct

[Kristina Daugirdas is a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School.] Absent a contractual relationship, individuals who have been harmed by the acts of international organizations rarely have access to institutions to hear their claims. National courts are often unavailable on account of organizations’ immunities. Some organizations have established alternative mechanisms to resolve such claims. The World Bank Inspection...

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14 Oct

In 2017, Seton Hall Law School hosted a symposium on UN Accountability.  Two years ago, the conversation was largely about the Haiti cholera case against the UN , and other mass torts.  A video of the event, including a powerful Keynote Speech by Philip Alston is available here. After the event, Prof. Fréderic Mégret and I, and a number of other speakers, decided to further...

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04 Oct

[Phil Clark is a Professor of International Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London. An Australian by nationality but born in Sudan, Dr Clark is a political scientist specialising in conflict and post-conflict issues in Africa, particularly questions of peace, truth, justice and reconciliation. This is the final post in our symposium on...

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