Major news out of the ICC today: the OTP has formally asked the Pre-Trial Division to determine whether the Court has jurisdiction over the deportation of the Rohingya from Myanmar to Bangladesh. Here is the introduction of the OTP's brief: 1. The Prosecution seeks a ruling on a question of jurisdiction: whether the Court may exercise jurisdiction over the alleged deportation...
[Nikola Hajdin is a doctoral candidate in international law at Stockholm University and a fellow at the Stockholm Centre for International Law and Justice] On December the 14th, 2017, the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute adopted a resolution that activates the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) jurisdiction over the crime of aggression (CoA). After the adoption of aggression amendments...
[Talita de Souza Dias is a DPhil Candidate and a Tutor in Public International Law and International Criminal Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford.] In the past few weeks, there have been a series of news reports on the role that data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica played in the outcome of the 2016 US elections, which led to Donald...
Elena Chachko has an interesting post at Lawfare discussing Israel's recent public acknowledgement of what the international community has long known: that it was responsible for the 2007 attack on the Al-Kibar nuclear reactor in Syria. Although I agree with much of Chachko's post, I would take issue with what she says about how the failure of states to condemn...
I am delighted to announce that my law school is advertising six new positions to start in September 2018 -- five PhD and one postdoc. The postdoc will be public international law with a focus on international economic law: The vacancy is for a Postdoctoral researcher in Public International Law. The researcher should have a background in International Economic Law (broadly understood)...
[Karl Kemp is a freelance South African journalist whose work has appeared, inter alia, in VICE and Rolling Stone magazine.] The controversy and angst engendered by the subject of unpaid internships is nothing new to my generation. In 2015, an UN intern in Geneva was found sleeping in a tent next to the city’s eponymous lake, unable to afford housing, having...
[Tim Fish Hodgson is a Legal Adviser for the International Commission of Jurists in Johannesburg, South Africa.] A Kenyan Court of Appeal decision handed down last week has, once again, reaffirmed the Kenyan government’s international obligation to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir should he ever return to Kenya. The Court concluded “the Government of Kenya by inviting al Bashir to Kenya...
As Patryk Labuda noted earlier today on twitter, the Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) has ordered the OTP to provide it with additional information concerning the investigation in Afghanistan. Here are the key paragraphs of the order: 3. The Chamber observes that the Prosecutor seeks authorisation to initiate an investigation for crimes committed on the territory of Afghanistan from 1 May 2003 onwards,...
[Ian Seiderman is the Legal and Policy Director, International Commission of Jurists] Andrew O’Hehir, an ordinarily astute analyst of US political skullduggery, adopts a contrarian posture when it comes to Trump, Trumpism and the rule of law. He thinks that all the brouhaha about trampling on cherished rule of law traditions misses the point. What’s so precious anyway, he suggests, about...
Nikolas Stürchler, the Head of International Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Justice Section at the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, has a new post at EJIL: Talk! discussing the ASP's decision to completely exclude states parties from the crime of aggression unless they ratify the aggression amendments -- the "opt-in" position advocated by a number of states, most notably...
At Lawfare yesterday, two law professors at West Point defended the US's right to attack North Korea if it tests another nuclear weapon or fires another missile into Japanese waters: North Korea is extraordinarily close to becoming a global nuclear power. This very real possibility has reportedly resulted in the United States debating a limited military strike dubbed the “bloody nose” strategy. In...
Justice in Conflict has a guest post today from a scholar who has written a book about the Lubanga trial. I think the post makes some excellent points about the problems with the trial. But I have serious reservations -- acknowledging that I have not read the book -- about the author's take on why the trial did not focus...
