International Human Rights Law

Events Virtual Event on "Why Mechanisms and Not Tribunals?": The NYU School of Professional Studies (NYUSPS) Center for Global Affairs is pleased to announce a virtual event on "Why Mechanisms and Not Tribunals? - What the Syria, Iraq, and Myanmar Investigative Mechanisms say about the current state of International Justice." Join practitioners and critical thinkers in the field of international justice...

[Danya Chaikel is a Canadian lawyer who specialises in international criminal law, currently consulting with the Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice (WIGJ) on their Call it what it is campaign, an #ATLASToo admin, and an officer on the IBA’s War Crimes Committee. Thanks to Alix Vuillemin and Valeria Babără who helped with this post. Part I of this post can be found here.] IER report – a gamechanger? The IER Report was released...

[Danya Chaikel is a Canadian lawyer who specialises in international criminal law, currently consulting with the Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice (WIGJ) on their Call it what it is campaign, an #ATLASToo admin, and an officer on the IBA’s War Crimes Committee. Thanks to Alix Vuillemin and Valeria Babără who helped with this post] The next ICC Prosecutor has been chosen, following a prolonged election fraught with procedural controversies which ultimately overshadowed...

Jackie Dugard (Associate Professor, School of Law, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa; Jeff Handmaker (Senior Lecturer, International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University, The Netherlands) and Bruce Porter (Executive Director, The Social Rights Advocacy Centre, Canada) A growing number of medical, epidemiological and public health experts are warning of an emerging vaccine apartheid triggered by the dire humanitarian consequences from an unequal distribution of...

[Todd Carney is a student at Harvard Law School. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Public Communications. He has also worked in digital media in New York City and Washington D.C.] Though the whole world felt the weight of the Holocaust, some would argue that the Holocaust impacted Poland more than any other country. Though the world largely recognizes the atrocities that occurred in Poland...

[Ekaterina Aristova is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, University of Oxford and Carlos Lopez is a Senior Legal Advisor at the International Commission of Jurists.] The much-awaited judgment by the UK Supreme Court (SC) in Okpabi and others v Royal Dutch Shell Plc and another (Okpabi) was handed down in an online hearing on Friday 12 February 2021 some five years...

[Qetevan Qistauri is research assistant at the Regensburg University (Germany) with the main focus on International Human Rights Law.] ECtHR, Grand Chamber, Georgia v. Russia (II), No. 38263/08 Thursday 21 January 2021, the ECtHR decided on the interstate case under Article 33 ECHR Georgia v. Russia (II) in relation to the war in 2008, which had been dealt with by the Grand Chamber for several years. Although this...

[Andrew Forde  just passed his PhD viva at the Irish Centre for Human Rights focussed on The Application of the ECHR in Contested European Territories, with extensive professional experience in post-conflict regions in south eastern Europe and the south Caucasus principally with the Council of Europe.] Throughout the brutal six-week war in and around Nagorno-Karabakh which began on 27 September 2020, the former Human Rights Ombudsman of...

[Quazi Omar Foysal is a Lecturer in Law at American International University-Bangladesh (AIUB).] Introduction The atrocity crimes allegedly committed against Rohingyas in Myanmar have attracted unprecedented efforts to ensure justice and accountability at international and domestic levels. These efforts include but not limited to International Criminal Court (ICC), International Court of Justice (ICJ), two UN Human Rights Council bodies, an Argentine universal jurisdiction case, and several so-called military trials in Myanmar. Very...

The news from Myanmar since 1 February 2021 has been stark – the Myanmar military or the “Tatmadaw” has detained politicians and activists including Aung San Suu Kyi, declared a year-long state of emergency in which the senior general and head of the army, Min Aung Hlaing is essentially in charge of the country. There are reports coming in of force being used against...

[Coline Schupfer is an Associate Policy Officer at the Open Society Justice Initiative. You can find Coline on Twitter @colineschupfer. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not represent the position of any organisation.] The United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized...

Few things bother me more than journalists who seemingly cannot be bothered to accurately describe what the ICC does. Here is what Isabel Kershner, a Jerusalem correspondent for the New York Times, wrote about the Pre-Trial Chamber's recent decision that the Court has jurisdiction over the situation in Palestine (my emphasis): Dealing a severe diplomatic blow to Israel, the court ruled...