In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Human Rights Law

16 Dec

[Barrie Sander is  a Postdoctoral Fellow at Fundação Getúlio Vargas, Brazil. This is the first part of a two-part post. Part two can be found here.] During a speech delivered at Georgetown earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg proudly proclaimed that “our values at Facebook are inspired by the American tradition”. What Zuckerberg failed to mention is that only a tiny fraction...

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16 Dec

[Barrie Sander is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Fundação Getúlio Vargas, Brazil and Yvonne McDermott is a Professor of Law at the Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law, Swansea University, UK.] In recent years, concerns have grown about the governance of the digital ecosystem and the social media platforms that have come to dominate it. The highly concentrated power and control of...

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12 Dec

On 11 December 2019, Myanmar presented its case before the International Court of Justice, in the matter of provisional measures brought by The Gambia in relation to the Rohingya, under the Genocide Convention. Even though the hearings were for a specific determination – that of provisional measures – the arguments presented by Myanmar are a glimpse of the legal strategy...

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11 Dec

Yesterday The Gambia commenced its arguments in the case against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice, relating to the application of the Genocide Convention and the Rohingya. After filing its application on 11 November, in which The Gambia initiated the case at the ICJ and also asked the court to order interim measures of protection, the hearings over three days are for a specific purpose – to...

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09 Dec

[Natasha Arnpriester an attorney with the Open Society Justice Initiative, where she focuses on criminal justice reform, anti-torture and citizenship. You can find her on Twitter: @NatashaArnpr] On 8 November 2019, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations and highest court for disputes between states, ruled that it has jurisdiction to hear Ukraine’s case against Russia for violations under...

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07 Dec

On Friday, the Assembly of States Parties unanimously adopted a Swiss proposal to extend the war crime of starvation to non-international armed conflict (NIAC). Previously, for reasons that seem to be largely accidental, the war crime only applied in international armed conflict (IAC). The new war crime is, of course, a welcome development. There is no justification for ever using starvation...

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04 Dec

As readers are no doubt aware, the OTP has once again declined -- now for a third time -- to open an investigation into Israel's violent attack on the MV Mavi Marmara. That decision was wholly expected; the only question was how the OTP would deal with the Appeals Chamber's recent decision in the Comoros situation, in which the Chamber...

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26 Nov

I have posted the first draft on SSRN. The article is entitled, intending to be provocative, "Genuine" Unilateral Humanitarian Intervention -- Another Ticking Time-Bomb Scenario. Here is the abstract: The activation of the crime of aggression at the ICC has renewed interest in one of the oldest and most fraught questions of the jus ad bellum: whether a state is entitled...

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26 Nov

[Alexandra Lily Kather, is a Legal Advisor, International Crimes and Accountability Program, European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR). Silvia Rojas Castro is a ECCHR Critical Legal Trainee, International Crimes and Accountability Program, and Vandita Khanna is ECCHR Critical Legal Training Alumn*, International Crimes and Accountability Program.] 75 years after the Malaya Lolas (“Free Grandmothers”) were sexually enslaved by the...

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25 Nov

[Solon Solomon is a Lecturer in the Division of Public and International Law at Brunel University London School of Law.] The last few days have seen a renewed legal interest in both sides of the Atlantic concerning the legality of the Israeli settlements. On November 12, the European Union’s court, the ECJ, held that products coming from these settlements must be labelled accordingly....

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