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To mark the 61st anniversary of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 – a truly momentous event – the ICRC has released a new database on customary IHL. The database is a particularly exciting new source of information which offers new useful materials and resources for eager international law practitioners and scholars. The ICRC’s press release [...]
Filed under: International Humanitarian Law, Public International Law | Leave a Comment »
The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), a major umbrella NGO for over 160 different organisations, recently (July 2010) launched “Corporate Accountability for Human Rights Abuses: A Guide for Victims and NGOs on Recourse Mechanisms“. The guide is comprised of five sections. Each examines a different type of instrument, including intergovernmental mechanisms, legal options, mediation [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, International Criminal Law, International Humanitarian Law, Public International Law, human rights and business, international justice | Leave a Comment »
Solon Solomon, The Justiciability of International Disputes – The Advisory Opinion of Israel’s Security Fence as a Case Study (Jerusalem: Wolf Legal Publishers, 2009) ISBN: 978-90-5850-437-1 By Dr. Fozia Nazir Lone Assistant Professor, City University of Hong Kong, fnlone@cityu.edu.hk Solon Solomon, in this book presents a comprehensive legal description on the justiciability of international disputes. [...]
Filed under: Book review, Human Rights, ICJ, International Court of Justice, International Courts, International Humanitarian Law, International and national law, International terrorism, Middle East Crisis, Public International Law, Responsibility to protect, United Nations, international justice | Leave a Comment »
On 13th June 2010, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office published its draft resolution on “The Appointment of an Independent Public Commission, Headed by Former Supreme Court Justice, Jacob Turkel, to Examine the Maritime Incident of 31 May 2010″ (available here). This is Israel’s response to the calls by the international community, including the UN and [...]
Filed under: International Humanitarian Law, Middle East Crisis, Public International Law, international justice | 3 Comments »
On 29 May 2010 the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, consisting of six civilian ships and 700 human rights activists and journalists from over 40 countries, set sail for the Gaza Strip carrying over 10,000 tonnes of aid and supplies for Gaza’s civilians. The purpose of the Flotilla was twofold: (1) to bring much needed supplies for [...]
Filed under: International Humanitarian Law, Middle East Crisis, Public International Law | 11 Comments »
Dominik’s earlier post calls attention to a very important event, the ICC’s Review Conference which starts today in Kampala, Uganda. The agenda for the conference includes a stocktaking exercise, including discussion of the impact of the Rome Statute system on victims and affected communities; and, issues of peace and justice, including managing the challenges of integrating [...]
Filed under: ICC, ICC Review Conference, International Courts, International Criminal Law, International Humanitarian Law, Peacekeeping, Responsibility to protect, international justice | 2 Comments »
Accountability Now! A Symposium on Human Rights and International Justice Tuesday, 12th January 2010, 2-4pm Main Theater, Abu Dis Campus, Al-Quds University, Palestine On occasion of the one year anniversary of Israel’s 22-day-long offensive on the Gaza Strip, and the momentum towards accountability created by the report of the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Gaza Conflict [...]
Filed under: Conference, Human Rights, International Criminal Law, International Humanitarian Law, Middle East Crisis, international justice | 1 Comment »
Yesterday, on 27 December 2009, one year had passed since the commencement of the devastating atrocities of Israel’s 22-day-long assault on the occupied Gaza Strip (otherwise known as Israel’s Operation “Cast Lead”). There has indeed been a notable amount of writing done about the conflict and its context over the past year (we have also [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, International and national law, Middle East Crisis, international justice | 1 Comment »
Michael Lewis, Eric Jensen, Geoffrey Corn, Victor Hansen, Richard Jackson and James Schoettler , The War on Terror and the Laws of War: A Military Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2009) ISBN13: 978-0-19-538921-0ISBN10: 0-19-538921-2 This book is written by six American legal scholars with experience as members of the legal profession in the US armed forces. [...]
Filed under: Book review, International Humanitarian Law, International terrorism, Relevant Literature | 1 Comment »
In a recent judgment of the Israeli Supreme Court, HCJ 7001/09 Kareem AlKanua v Commander of the Army Forces in Gaza et al. (rendered by Justice Levi on 26 October 2009) the petitioner a Palestinian resident of the Gaza Strip, requested the Court to oblige the state to allow him to enter Israel for the [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, International and national law, Middle East Crisis, Public International Law | 4 Comments »
Administrative detention has been a contentious topic for international lawyers since its invocation by governments claiming that it is a principal tool in the often-lawless global ‘War on Terror’. Despite the popularity that this mechanism has earned amongst a growing number of states, principally those participating in the ‘War on Terror’, it has been neglected [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, International and national law, International terrorism, Middle East Crisis, Public International Law, Publications | Leave a Comment »
Driven by the perceived failures of the old democracies (in particular the USA and Canada) to obviate the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity and other gross violations of human rights in different parts of the world during the twentieth and twenty first centuries, leading academics at the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, Responsibility to protect, international justice | 1 Comment »
On 9 September 2009, the Israeli Supreme Court published its judgment in the case of HCJ 11344/03 Mayor of Jayyus et al. v. Commander of the Armed Forces in the West Bank et al. (available in Hebrew), where the route of the Separation Wall that Israel has been constructing since the end of the second [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, International Court of Justice, International Humanitarian Law, International and national law, Middle East Crisis, Public International Law | Leave a Comment »
No week passes without a newspaper article, television news or a documentary describing the plight of “climate refugees”. In this post, I would like to explain why, in my opinion, “survival migrants” is a more adequate term than “climate refugees” from a humanitarian and legal protection perspective. Secondly, I would like to examine to what [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, Guest Blogging, Human Rights, International Environmental Law, International Humanitarian Law | Leave a Comment »
The Report of the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict headed by Justice Richard Goldstone was released on 15 September 2009 together with a set of recommendations by the mission’s experts for the way forward in bringing justice to victims and perpetrators to justice (our previous coverage of the fact-finding mission’s work can be [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, Middle East Crisis, Public International Law, United Nations | Leave a Comment »
July 2009 was the fifth year ‘anniversary’ of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) Advisory Opinion on the Consequences of the Construction of a Separation Wall in the occupied Palestinian territories, rendered by the Court on 9 June, 2004. In its Advisory Opinion, the ICJ found that the Israeli construction of the Wall within the [...]
Filed under: ICJ, International Humanitarian Law, Middle East Crisis, Public International Law, international justice | 3 Comments »
On 12 August 2009, just a few days back, was the 60th anniversary of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which presently constitute the foundational codifications of the legal regime of the laws of war or international humanitarian law (IHL). The symbolic value of these fundamental legal instruments of international humanitarian law, and general public international law [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, Public International Law, international justice | 1 Comment »
On 30 January 2009, the Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has released its own report on the ‘Operation in Gaza 27 December 2008 – 18 January 2009: Factual and Legal Aspects‘. There are a number of points that merit mentioning that shall be highlighted in the following. Interestingly, the report starts off by noting that [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, International and national law, Middle East Crisis, Publications, international justice | 2 Comments »
In past weeks various UN spokespeople have been issuing rare condemnations of Hezbollah’s violations of Resolution 1701. The Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Michael Williams, has said that there were “clearly” violations of the resolution on the part of the organisation; meanwhile Haaretz reports on Alain Le Roy, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, accusing Hezbollah of maintaining [...]
Filed under: International Humanitarian Law, Middle East Crisis, Peacekeeping, Public International Law, United Nations | Leave a Comment »
Two reports have been recently released by the fact-finding missions posted by the major international NGO, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) to the Gaza Strip and South Israel following the 22-day war that took place in the region between December 2008 and January 2009. The Amnesty International investigation team arrived in the Gaza [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, International and national law, Middle East Crisis, Non Governmental Organizations, Public International Law, Publications, United Nations, international justice | 3 Comments »
On 10 June 2009, the Israeli Supreme Court (HCJ) rendered another stultifying judgment with regards to the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT), this time on the evacuation of what the Court refers to as ‘unauthorised settlements’ or squats in the occupied West Bank. It should be noted as a point of clarification that the state and [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, International and national law, Middle East Crisis, Non Governmental Organizations, Public International Law | Leave a Comment »
By Sharon Weill and Valentina Azarov Currently, the fate of one of the only remaining venues that offers a redress mechanism for Palestinians is at stake. It is one that can bring accountability of Israeli officials and decision-makers who committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. The amendment of universal jurisdiction laws, often incommensurably restricting [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, International Criminal Law, International Humanitarian Law, International and national law, Middle East Crisis, Public International Law, Responsibility to protect, international justice | 4 Comments »
On 3 April 2009, the President of the Human Rights Council established an international independent Fact Finding Mission with the mandate “to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law that might have been committed at any time in the context of the military operations that were conducted in Gaza during [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, Middle East Crisis, Public International Law, United Nations, international justice | Leave a Comment »
The Israeli Supreme Court has recently rejected a petition that was filed by two NGO demanding that a criminal investigation be conducted into the 2004 Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip, including, amongst other atrocities, the indiscriminate killings that took place in Rafah and the disproportionate damage incurred by the population of the southern [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, Middle East Crisis, Non Governmental Organizations, Public International Law, Publications, international justice | 1 Comment »
