In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Criminal Law

24 Mar

At their most recent meeting, the judges of the ICC rearranged the composition of the Court's three Divisions.  The new composition is as follows: The judges assigned to the Pre-Trial Division are: Judge Hans-Peter Kaul (Germany), Second Vice-President of the Court; Judge Sylvia Steiner (Brazil); Judge Ekaterina Trendafilova (Bulgaria); Judge Fumiko Saiga (Japan); Judge Sanji Mmasenono Monageng (Botswana); and Judge Cuno...

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23 Mar

In its application for the arrest warrant, the Prosecution argued that the Sudanese government's genocidal intent could be inferred from, inter alia, the slow-death conditions in the IDP camps.  As part of that claim, the Prosecution pointed out the numerous ways in which Bashir's regime had hindered international efforts to provide the Darfuris in the IDP camps with humanitarian assistance. One...

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22 Mar

That is the conclusion of the most comprehensive study of the issue to date, "Confronting the Yugoslav Controversies: A Scholars' Initiative," conducted by Purdue University.  From the New York Times, which held follow-up interviews with some of the sources cited in the study: Charles W. Ingrao, the study’s co-editor, said that three senior State Department officials, one of them retired, and...

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18 Mar

The following is a guest post written by Kate Cronin-Furman and Amanda Taub, the brains behind the must-read blog wronging rights.  My thanks to them for contributing it. Two weeks ago, Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for the arrest of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.  (We’re sure you all remember; it was kind of a...

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14 Mar

In public, Sudanese government officials have uniformly defended Bashir against the supposed depredations of the ICC.  According to the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, however, they tell a different story in private: A minister with the president’s National Congress Party, NCP, said that members were left reeling by the announcement of an arrest warrant issued against Bashir by ICC judges...

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13 Mar

I am happy to report -- though some readers will no doubt be unhappy to hear -- that the OTP has requested leave to appeal the Pre-Trial Chamber's decision on the genocide charges.  The appeal cites my recent post on the majority's misunderstanding of the "reasonable grounds" standard, which is both a tremendous honor and a testament to the ever-increasing...

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11 Mar

Speaking of what Obama should do about Darfur, The New Republic is currently hosting a fascinating roundtable discussion on precisely that question.  Contributors include Alex de Waal, Eric Reeves, my former professor Alan Wolfe, Elizabeth Rubin, and Andrew Natsios. Not surprisingly, I agree with Eric Reeves, who both justifiably calls Darfur a genocide and defends the ICC arrest warrant.  Sadly, though,...

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11 Mar

Although Julian and I continue to disagree about the merits of the arrest warrant against Bashir, we agree on one thing: Obama's response to the expulsion of the humanitarian-aid groups has been appallingly weak.  I'm not surprised -- I never bought into the cult of Obama, particularly its naive belief that his foreign policy and national-security policy would be fundamentally...

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07 Mar

In 2003, near the beginning of the Iraq war, I posed the question in the New York Times Magazine – ‘Who owns the rules of war?’  At that time, I suggested, the rules of war, including their formation, restatements, enunciation, interpretation, etc., had been gradually been passing out of the hands of state actors, those which actually engaged in it, and...

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06 Mar

Everything you need to know about the majority's dismissive attitude toward the Prosecution's evidence of genocide is contained in this paragraph: 179. In relation to the alleged insufficient resources allocated by the GoS to ensure adequate conditions of life in IDP Camps in Darfur, the Majority considers that the Prosecution's allegation is vague in light of the fact that, in addition...

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