In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Criminal Law

30 Oct

[Adrián Agenjo Aguado is a PhD candidate and Teaching Fellow at the Universitat de Barcelona and the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. This post draws on a work-in-progress paper on neutral and professional contributions and complicity in international criminal law presented at the University of Bologna and the European University Institute in October 2026.] When I read the Prosecution’s responses to the questions...

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29 Oct

[William Fortin is a PhD researcher at Tilburg University.] On 5 June 2026, a woman from the Dutch town of Naaldwijk, Ayada K., was sentenced to 7 years’ imprisonment by the District Court in The Hague for the following offences: participating in a terrorist organization; carrying out preparatory acts to commit terrorist offences; putting her minor son in a helpless condition...

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21 Oct

[Ashley S. Kinseth is an international human rights lawyer working on atrocity crimes and statelessness and a member of the Genocide Experts Working Group convened by Genocide Watch. She has conducted field research in Myanmar's Rakhine State and in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh and India.]  In Part I, I described the elaborate system of permits, arbitrary taxes, village labor quotas, and...

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21 Oct

[Ashley S. Kinseth is an international human rights lawyer working on atrocity crimes and statelessness and a member of the Genocide Experts Working Group convened by Genocide Watch. She has conducted field research in Myanmar's Rakhine State and in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh and India.]  Rohingya fleeing Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State pay $300 to $500 for documents to get past Arakan...

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16 Oct

[Zachary Marcone is a U.S. lawyer and degree candidate at Stanford Law School.] On 9 October 2026, the United States sanctioned the International Criminal Court (ICC) as an institution. Although the United States previously sanctioned individual ICC prosecutors and judges, this is the first time it has specifically targeted the institution itself. The U.S. sanctions are an existential threat to the...

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25 Sep

[Jens Iverson is an assistant professor of international law at Leiden University.] In November 2025, I wrote on this site about The Power and Responsibility of the EU to Protect the ICC from US Sanctions. There I discussed issues such as the use of the Anti-Coercion Instrument, (AKA “the Big Bazooka”), the Extraterritoriality (Blocking) Statute and the European Commission supported Digital Commons European Digital Infrastructure Consortium...

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21 Sep

[Godfrey Odongo is a nonresident senior fellow with the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council.] Introduction Africa has witnessed several intractable armed conflicts, political crises and upheavals. including examples over the last four decades such as the 1994 Rwandan genocide and previous armed conflicts dating back to the 1990s. The International Committee of the Red Cross estimated in 2025 that Africa...

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19 Sep

The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran (IIFFM), created by the Human Rights Council, has released a new report. It's a depressing read, painstakingly cataloging Iran's human-rights violations and analysing two airstrikes carried out by the United States on 28 February 2026 -- the notorious attack on the the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab, which...

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18 Sep

[Jessica Dorsey is an Assistant Professor of International Law at Utrecht University School of Law and Managing Editor of Opinio Juris.]The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran (FFMI) released its 18-page report to the Human Rights Council on 17 September 2026. In the report, among other findings, the Mission outlines reasonable grounds to believe that the United...

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17 Sep

[Veronika Vozniuk is a Ukrainian legal and policy professional working on issues related to international humanitarian law, human rights, and the legal consequences of armed conflict.] Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine has made significant efforts to investigate and prosecute individuals responsible for war crimes committed on its territory. The scale of the alleged crimes is immense and continues...

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06 Sep

Like most academics these days, I am very concerned about students misusing large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and ClaudeAI when they write papers for me. I don't teach very often in my current position, but I do supervise masters theses. And there have been a number over the past few years that I suspected were written, in whole or...

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04 Sep

[Ezequiel Jimenez Martinez is an Adjunct Professor at the Pompeu Fabra Law Faculty, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Law Research and Policy. He is the author of Governing the International Criminal Court: the History and Practice of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute (Brill, 2025). Sergey Vasiliev is a Professor of International Law at...

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