Many of us were profoundly saddened on Monday 31 May to hear of the passing of a titan – Judge James Crawford SC AC FBA* – and a mentor, colleague and friend to many. I do not wish my recollections to intrude on tributes from family or his closest friends, but I would like to add my pebble of remembrance...
[Roojin Habibi, Tim Fish Hodgson, Benjamin Mason Meier, Ian Seiderman and Steven Hoffman] The COVID-19 pandemic unequivocally reveals that human rights, the rule of law, democratic institutions and global solidarity are essential to effective public health emergency preparedness and response. Reiterated throughout discussions in the World Health Assembly (WHA) between 24 and 31 May 2021, there is now clear global consensus on the need to strengthen international...
[Helen Stamp is a PhD candidate in the Minderoo Tech & Policy Lab at the University of Western Australia and researches concepts of control, responsibility, and accountability regarding the development and use of autonomous vehicles and autonomous weapons.] The ongoing discussions by the international community regarding the challenges posed by emerging technologies and the application of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) to the use...
[Karolina Aksamitowska is a Swansea University Research Excellence Scholar at the Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law, Swansea University, Wales, UK.] The book that is the focus of this symposium, Ensuring Respect for International Humanitarian Law, is an important contribution to international law and practice. Generating respect for international humanitarian law (IHL) is one of the most difficult challenges faced by...
Call for Papers Two-day international conference on secondary sanctions: On Thursday 2 and Friday 3 December 2021, the Ghent Rolin-Jaequemyns International Law Institute (GRILI) and the Utrecht Centre for Regulation and Enforcement in Europe (RENFORCE) will host a two-day international conference on secondary sanctions. The conference seeks to explore both the international legal framework governing such sanctions and the potential remedies to challenge them, as well as...
[Ata R. Hindi is Research Fellow in International Law, Institute of Law at Birzeit University. Twitter: @atarhindi] Eve Massingham and Annabel McConnachie’s edited volume, Ensuring Respect for International Humanitarian Law, is a meticulous and necessary contribution to the study and practice of international humanitarian law (IHL). The volume focuses on Common Article 1 (CA1) to the four Geneva Conventions (GCs), which...
Photo credit: Harold Stern The world has lost James Crawford, a luminary of international law in the truest sense of the word. Indeed, Judge Crawford was one of the few people alive who could rightly be called a luminary of international law, or a luminary of any field at all. He was, to use Professor Iain Scobbie’s phrase, one of the...
The Power of Depositary, ICC and Palestine’s Quest for Statehood [Saba Pipia is an Associate Professor at the Georgian-American University (Tbilisi, Georgia) and visiting Fulbright researcher at Michigan State University. He holds a Ph.D. degree from Tbilisi State University.] Photo credit: Saba Pipia On February 5, Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) of the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced its ruling confirming the Court’s jurisdiction to...
[Dr Ray Murphy is Professor at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland Galway. ] Leanne Smith’s chapter seeks to examine the complexities posed by ensuring respect for IHL in the peacekeeping context. It also explores the relationship between humanitarian actors and peacekeepers. A real strength of the chapter is that much of it is written from what the author refers to on page 153 as a...
[Parisa Zangeneh is a PhD student at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland, Galway, where she is a recipient of the Hardiman Scholarship.] In 2020, the volume Ensuring Respect for International Humanitarian Law was published as part of the Routledge Research in the Law of Armed Conflict Book Series. Edited by Eve Massingham and Annabel McConnachie, the book explores the various ways in which Common Article 1 (CA1) of...
[Dr Rosemary Grey is a lecturer at Sydney Law School.] Last week’s hearing in the Abd-al-Rahman case, one of the ICC’s long-awaited ‘Sudan’ cases, marks a step forward in the Court’s practice in prosecuting gender-based crimes. It is the first ICC case in which crimes committed exclusively against men and boys have been expressly charged as gender-based crimes (specifically, as persecution on intersecting...
[Valentina Cadelo is a Legal Adviser at International Commission of Jurists' Middle East and North Africa Programme.] Today, Tunisia marked the third anniversary of the opening of trials before the Specialized Criminal Chambers (SCC), the very first example of domestic criminal trials related to past gross human rights violations in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region. Three years ago, when...