Public International Law

[Mischa Gureghian Hall is a W.M. Keck Research Fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles] After a considerable delay, Trial Chamber X of the International Criminal Court (ICC) delivered its much-anticipated trial judgment in the Al Hassan case. While preliminary engagement with the judgment (including on this blog) has surrounded the Chamber’s unclear approach to gender-based persecution, it can be easy to...

[Eva Buzo is a barrister and Executive Director of Victim Advocates International. Clare Brown is a Senior Legal Officer and Gender Advisor for Victim Advocates International. Kate Gibson is an international criminal lawyer and Senior Counsel to Victim Advocates International. Pia Conradsen is Rohingya Victim Coordinator of Victim Advocates International.] On 28 June 2024, the Argentine Prosecutor Guillermo F. Marijuán asked...

[Ayesha Malik is Deputy Director at the Research Society of International Law where she leads the Conflict Law Centre. She is also Adjunct Faculty at the Lahore University of Management Sciences where she teaches international criminal law to undergraduate students.] On April 1, Israel attacked Iran’s consulate in Damascus killing Iranian generals and military officers. Nearly two weeks later, Iran responded...

Note: although I serve as Special Adviser to the ICC Prosecutor on War Crimes, I was not involved in the Al Hassan case. The Trial Chamber released its 822-page (!) judgment in the Al Hassan case yesterday. Al Hassan was convicted of a number of serious crimes, including the crime against humanity of torture and the war crimes of torture and...

[Yvonne McDermott is a Professor of Law at the Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law, Swansea University, UK and Principal Investigator of the TRUE project. Stephen Sharp Queener is an associate of the Law program at the Starling Lab for Data Integrity, a Masters Student in Public Policy at Stanford University, and a current Fulbright Student Scholar in Germany. Basile Simon is...

[Fred Abrahams covered the Kosovo conflict for Human Rights Watch. He wrote the book Modern Albania and co-wrote A Village Destroyed: War Crimes in Kosovo. Marija Ristic covered Serbian war crimes trials as a journalist for local and international media.] This April, a modest courtroom in Belgrade, Serbia, offered a lens into the global debate on justice for atrocity crimes. The case dealt...

[Toby Cadman, co-founder of The Guernica 37 Group and joint head of Guernica 37 Chambers. Dr Tomas Hamilton, Guernica 37 Chambers and Adjunct Faculty at the University of Amsterdam. In recent allegations that Israeli officials interfered with the ICC’s work on Palestine, +972 Magazine, Local Call, and the Guardian documented a nine-year, state-orchestrated campaign of spying, hacking and intimidation against the Court. Described as...

[Benjamin Meret is a PhD Candidate and teaching assistant at the University of Geneva. He holds an MA in international law from the Geneva Graduate Institute of international and development studies.] On the evening of January 9th, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa declared that the country’s armed forces were in an internal armed conflict against various criminal groups. This followed several critical...

[Patricio Trincado Vera is a Research Assistant at the Transboundary Legal Studies Department at Groningen University.] March 2024 was a month with significant advances in the area of human rights and environmental protection on a regional level. The European Court of Human Rights has been at the centre of the debate with the three judgements on climate change and environmental issues...

[Megan Karlshøj-Pedersen is a Policy Specialist at Airwars, working across the U.K., U.S., the Netherlands and other European countries. Jessica Dorsey is an Assistant Professor of International and European Law at Utrecht University and the Managing Editor of Opinio Juris. Both authors are part of the civil society and academic consortium advising the Dutch Ministry of Defence described in this...

[Megan Karlshøj-Pedersen is a Policy Specialist at Airwars, working across the U.K., U.S., the Netherlands and other European countries. Jessica Dorsey is an Assistant Professor of International and European Law at Utrecht University and the Managing Editor of Opinio Juris. Both authors are part of the civil society and academic consortium advising the Dutch Ministry of Defence described in this...