Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response
04 Nov The Role of Transparency in Australia’s Response to War Crimes in Afghanistan
[ Fiona Nelson is Acting Executive Director at the Australian Centre for International Justice. Kobra Moradi is a lawyer at the Australian Centre for International Justice.] November 2020 saw the publication of a redacted version of the Afghanistan Inquiry Report by the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force. The Inquiry was set up in 2016 to investigate potential war crimes and other serious misconduct by Australian Special Forces in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016. It ultimately found credible evidence of war crimes including cruel treatment as well as 39 unlawful...08 Jun A Response to Jean Allain and Ryszard Piotrowicz
worsening of the plight of asylum seekers and refugees; and, (v) the proposed ‘quagmire’ of human trafficking is a fallacy. To suggest that efforts to stamp out trafficking are in opposition to core human rights goals is to misunderstand, completely, both the nature of the phenomenon and the central place of human rights in any effective and credible response. Both respondents nevertheless raise questions on several aspects of my critique. The following counter-response is provided with an accompanying observation that the issues raised do not call into question any of...
30 Jul COVID-19 and Courts Symposium: The Active Role of the Nepalese Judiciary in Guiding Nepal’s COVID-19 Response
bring Nepali citizens who are willing to come to Nepal on the border of Nepal and India”. Second and Third Wave: Managing the deficiencies in the Executive’s COVID-19 responses Another issue in regard to Nepal’s COVID-19 response is the absence of pandemic-specific law, or other appropriate legal framework to respond to the pandemic. The Nepal government used the decades old Infectious Disease Act, enacted in 1964, to coordinate its responses to COVID-19. The use of this outdated, broadly worded and inadequate law was challenged in a petition to the Supreme...
02 Nov The Legality of a SADC Intervention in Cabo Delgado in the Absence of Mozambican Consent
...launched dozens of attacks across the province, resulting in over two thousand deaths and the displacement of some 250,000 people. As the intensity of insurgent activities continue, so too does pressure on a regional response from SADC. In particular, suggestions forwarded on a SADC response include not only fact-finding missions and humanitarian assistance, but the possibility of a regional military intervention. While the SADC legal framework provides for a military intervention in cases of intrastate conflict such as the one ongoing in Cabo Delgado; whether Mozambique will be open to...
07 Dec The Hostage Situation in Gaza and the Responsibilities of the International Community
...grounds for international intervention in the hostage situation. In examining which steps can be used, it may be helpful to turn to the response of states to the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a framework of reference. We are aware of the eyebrows that may be raised in response to this comparison, in light of the ongoing Israeli occupation of the West Bank. However, no other acts are relevant to the fact that the crimes committed by Hamas constitute grave violations of international law that warrant international response. In arguing...
26 May 40 years’ Worth of Footage from Syria Alone: Global Documentation Requires Commensurate Global Justice
...What about when key infrastructure like bridges are systematically destroyed, thereby impeding the delivery of food, humanitarian aid, and medical supplies? Again, larger scale, archive-wide investigations can better encompass the full scope, impact, and experience of such documented harms. The current global justice reality simply is not adequate to meet the demands implicit in the extensive quantity — and quality — of content that documenters continue to share open source, from a variety of places and contexts. In today’s justice dynamic, civil society has already stepped up in unprecedented ways,...
31 Jul Internships in International Criminal Justice Institutions
...to is the working conditions of interns in international criminal justice institutions, which generally allow them to work without payment. Indeed, paragraph 19 of the Interim Report states that the experts “wished to have a comprehensive understanding of the challenges facing the Court and the Rome Statute system from all levels: elected officials, management, and staff, including junior staff, from both the P-levels and G-levels; from headquarters and field offices.” Absent are interns and visiting professionals, as well as environmental support staff and the people who work, presumably on contract,...
19 Apr ICC Sanctions Symposium: The United States of America, Racism and Sanctions Meet at the International Criminal Court
...precarious line of caution and subservience and be relegated to the margins if they are racialised as non-White or are nationals of states considered non-Western. International criminal justice remains one of the most paternalistically unrepresentative ‘branches’ of international law. That these sanctions were imposed in the first place and that they remained in place for so long have changed how the ‘subaltern’ will henceforth interact with international criminal justice in general and the ICC in particular. For instance, those who desire to lend their skills, knowledge, expertise and time in...
09 Apr Missing: Asian Women on the International Bench
on research I conducted as part of the Asia Justice Coalition’s Women in International Justice & Accountability (WIJA) project. The WIJA project aims to empower women leaders in Asia and develop their leadership in international law. I examined the gender and regional representation of judges at four international courts and tribunals. I focused on judges because they optically hold the most important role in courts and are the ‘face’ of judicial work. Given their impartial and representative mandate, judges should ideally represent the global character of international justice. Practically, data...
17 Dec The Trump Administration’s Subversion of the State Department’s Human Rights Reporting (Part 2)
[ Jessica Zhu graduated with honors from Stanford University and is now a student at Stanford Law School, where she is executive editor of the Stanford Law Review. Beth Van Schaack is a Distinguished Fellow with Stanford’s Center for Human Rights & International Justice and the former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice. She is a co-founder and principal with the Alliance for Diplomacy & Justice.] This is a two-part post analyzing the degradation of the U.S. State Department’s annual human rights reports under U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Part...