In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Courts & Tribunals

24 Aug

[Priya Pillai is an international lawyer, head of the Asia Justice Coalition secretariat, and a contributing editor at Opinio Juris.] It has been three years since the forced exodus of the Rohingya from Myanmar was at its zenith, as a result of international crimes committed in Rakhine state. With close to a million individuals forced to flee to Bangladesh and other...

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21 Aug

[Oumar Ba is an Associate Professor of International Relations at Morehouse College.] To write is a privilege. To be read, an honor. It takes unbounded generosity to critically engage with a book and offer an incisive critique in the midst of a global pandemic that has upended our lives.  For that, I owe a profound debt of gratitude to my brilliant colleagues who have made this...

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20 Aug

[Dr Sithembile Mbete is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Political Science, University of Pretoria.] In his book States of Justice: The Politics of the International Criminal Court, Oumar Ba masterfully engages the politics of international justice by examining how weaker states have used the International Criminal Court (ICC) to advance their security and political interests in a manner that belies the ‘justice cascade’ argument made...

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19 Aug

[Kelly-Jo Bluen is a PhD candidate at the London School of Economics and the editor of Millennium: Journal of International Studies responsible for the conference and special issue on knowledge production in International Relations. She works on race, gender, coloniality, and international justice.] In States of Justice, Oumar Ba provides a crucial latticework for thinking through the relationship between states and...

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19 Aug

[Ezéchiel Amani Cirimwami is a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law. He is also completing a joint PhD in international law at the Université Catholique de Louvain and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He is a sitting judge and a former Deputy Public Prosecutor in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.] I was thrilled when invited to provide some...

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18 Aug

[Nestor Nkurunziza is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Burundi (on leave for doctoral research at the University of Ottawa)]. Much has been written on the crisis with the ICC in recent literature. However, Oumar Ba’s ‘States of Justice’ brings a great contribution to the existing scholarship, both in terms of the conceptual framework used and the relevance of the case studies...

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18 Aug

[K.K. Sithebe is a PhD Candidate at the University of Pretoria and a Research Advisor, South African Human Rights Commission.] Professor Oumar Ba’s States of Justice provides much needed scholarship on the subject of international criminal justice and self-referrals. Prof. Ba provides a meticulous account of how individual African states, particularly Uganda, have since exploited the self-referral mechanism as envisaged in the Rome Statute. Further, this fine scholar...

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18 Aug

[Emma Charlene Lubaale is an Associate Professor of Law at the Faculty of Law of Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa.] This is an unusual piece of work. As opposed to merely engaging with theoretical rules and existing literature on the subject of complementarity; means of triggering the ICC’s jurisdiction; interaction between states and international law, etc., the author has apparently set himself the excellent task of...

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17 Aug

[Nabil M. Orina is a Lecturer at Moi University, School of Law (Kenya) and a Doctoral Candidate at City University of Hong Kong.] Various studies have theorised the relationship between the ICC (the Court) and states. In these studies, scholars have sought to understand what normative effect the Court has on situation countries through the principle of complementarity (see, for instance, Nouwen). It is apparent...

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17 Aug

[Melissa L. Simms is currently a Legal Officer with the United Nations and formerly with the International Criminal Court. The views expressed in this post are those of the author and do not reflect the views of the United Nations or the ICC.] Oumar Ba, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Morehouse College in Atlanta, United States has certainly stoked interest...

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16 Aug

[Owiso Owiso is a Doctoral Researcher in Public International Law at the University of Luxembourg.] Inter-governmental organisations are often theatres of inter-state politics. Why then does the suggestion that the International Criminal Court (ICC) may not be any different bother observers so? Well, that is perhaps because the ICC is not just another ‘ordinary’ inter-governmental organisation. It is also, and perhaps primarily, a judicial mechanism. As...

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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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