In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Public International Law

29 Sep

On 18 September, the Netherlands announced that it was initiating legal proceedings against Syria, based on the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT).  This move by the Netherlands brings many issues to the fore: the first is the scale and magnitude of torturebeing committed in Syria, documented in many reports and most recently in a court cases in Germany (under the aegis of...

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25 Sep

[Agata Kleczkowska is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Law Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland.] Introduction On 9 August 2020, presidential elections were held in Belarus, governed since 1994 by Alexander Lukashenko. This time, however, Belarusians did not believe in the overwhelming victory of the authoritarian president, and, certain of the victory of the opposition leader, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, began mass...

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20 Sep

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) has been in discussions with Facebook regarding the human rights impact of Facebook’s operations around the world, with a particular emphasis on situations such as Myanmar, where there are credible reports of international crimes. This Q&A is a result of the ongoing deliberations and is focused on Myanmar and Facebook’s approach to the multiple legal issues that have...

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19 Sep

[Ambassador Stephen J. Rapp is a Senior Visiting Fellow of Practice, Oxford Programme on International Peace and Security, Blavatnik School of Government; Distinguished Fellow, Simon Skjodt Center for Genocide Prevention, US Holocaust Memorial Museum; Advisory Board, IBA War Crimes Committee and Human Rights Institute; Chair, Commission on International Justice and Accountability; former US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice (2009-2015).  Federica D’Alessandra is the Executive Director, Oxford Programme on International Peace...

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18 Sep

[Federica D’Alessandra is the Executive Director, Oxford Programme on International Peace and Security, Institute for Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict (ELAC), Oxford Blavatnik School of Government; immediate past Co-Chair & Advisory Board, IBA War Crimes Committee; Council, IBA Section on Public and Professional Interest & Human Rights Institute. Ambassador Stephen J. Rapp is a Senior Visiting Fellow of Practice, Oxford...

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18 Sep

[Federica D’Alessandra is the Executive Director, Oxford Programme on International Peace and Security, Institute for Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict (ELAC), Oxford Blavatnik School of Government; immediate past Co-Chair & Advisory Board, IBA War Crimes Committee; Council, IBA Section on Public and Professional Interest & Human Rights Institute. Ambassador Stephen J. Rapp is a Senior Visiting Fellow of Practice, Oxford...

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18 Sep

[Ruti Teitel is the Ernst C. Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law, New York Law School; and a Visiting Fellow, London School of Economics and the author of Transitional Justice (OUP, 2000).] I am extraordinarily honored by these contributions, which reflect a daunting range & depth of scholarly reflection.  The perspectives are as diverse geographically as in disciplinary approach.  I have been challenged to...

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18 Sep

[Cheng-Yi Huang is a Research Professor, Institutum Iurisprudentiae, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. From 2016 to 2018, Mr. Huang served as the chairperson of Taiwan Association for Truth and Reconciliation, the first NGO advocating for transitional justice in Taiwan. He was one of the appointed experts providing legal opinion on transitional justice for the Constitutional Court in the case which lead to Interpretation No. 793 of 2020 August.] When...

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17 Sep

[Valeria Vegh Weis is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin an Associate Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History and a Professor of Criminology at Buenos Aires University.] Introduction Re-reading Ruti Teitel's Transitional Justice makes for an even more moving experience than expected. The book, written nearly 20 years ago, set the basis for a ground-breaking field of study, bringing to light important legal, political,...

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17 Sep

[Arnaud Kurze is an Associate Professor of Justice Studies at Montclair State University.] Introduction “It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have,” James Baldwin wrote in No Name in the Street over half a century ago, describing his childhood memories in Harlem and events that painstakingly scarred his memory, including Martin Luther King and Malcolm X’s deaths (Baldwin...

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17 Sep

[Iavor Rangelov is Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at the London School of Economics and Chair of the Board of Governors of the Humanitarian Law Center, Belgrade.] The publication of Ruti Teitel’s Transitional Justice coincided with the emergence of the former Yugoslavia from a decade of war and repression that had transformed the region’s social and political landscape. The hostilities and...

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16 Sep

[Danielle Celermajer is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney.] When Transitional Justice was published twenty years ago, its principal and most explicit contribution was its incisive articulation of a sophisticated theoretical framework for a range of real-world institutional innovations that had emerged as nations around the world were seeking to grapple with their violent pasts. There was already at...

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