Events On 21 October 2020, the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute is co-hosting a virtual side event with the UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights to mark the launch the following day of her pathbreaking new report to the General Assembly on CLIMATE CHANGE AND CULTURAL EXTINCTION: A Human Rights Crisis. The negative impacts of climate change on the enjoyment...
[Tamsin Phillipa Paige is a Lecturer at Deakin Law School. Douglas Guilfoyle is an Associate Professor at UNSW Canberra and Rob McLaughlin is a Professor at the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources & Security, University of Wollongong.] In Part One of this blog series we considered the ways in which international law addresses severing submarine data cables outside armed conflict,...
[Lena Trabucco is a Research Assistant at the Centre for Military Studies at the University of Copenhagen. She is also a PhD candidate at Northwestern University and the University of Copenhagen.] On September 16, 2020, the US Defense Department (DoD) announced the launch of the AI Partnership for Defense – a multi-national partnership which will “engage military and defense organizations from more than...
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...
[Florence Shako is a Lecturer at Riara Law School, LLM (LSE), LLB (UoN), Advocate, MCIArb, CS, CPA.] Formal education was introduced in Kenya by Western missionaries, as an instrument for advancing the civilising mission. However, in the years of colonial rule, no facility for legal education was established. This is curious given that the period witnessed significant expansion of public as well as private institutions, and...
[Andrea Farrés is a young international lawyer specialized in IHL, international security and human rights issues.] With the fog of war getting thicker and thicker, commanders and politicians are naturally inclined to search for tools to get guidance on how they can better comply with the international humanitarian law (IHL) targeting principles, specifically the principle of distinction. To distinguish a civilian from a combatant, or a person who is taking...
[Larry D. Johnson is an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Law School and the Former UN Assistant Secretary-General for Legal Affairs.] The US suffered a humiliating defeat on 14 August 2020 when the UN Security Council failed to adopt a US proposal to extend certain arms restrictions on Iran that are scheduled to be lifted soon pursuant to the “nuclear deal” (JCPOA) concluded in 2015 by China,...
[Dapo Akande, Antonio Coco, Talita de Souza Dias, Duncan B. Hollis, Harold Hongju Koh, James C. O’Brien and Tsvetelina van Benthem.] The alarming spread of the global COVID-19 pandemic—now infecting nearly 19 million and claiming more than 700,000 lives worldwide—has made it increasingly urgent to define international law protections for the health care sector against malicious cyber operations. In May 2020, malicious cyberattacks on...
Call for Papers Special Edition: The Business and Human Rights Regime in the Americas: The Revista Internacional de Derechos Humanos (RIDH) is pleased to announce a call for papers for the Special Edition of The Business and Human Rights Regime in the Americas. Given that the Special Rapporteur for Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Rights of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights...