A Critical Assessment of the Appeals Judgment in the Haradinaj Case

Introduction On 21 July 2010 the ICTY Appeals Chamber partially quashed the acquittals of Ramush Haradinaj (Kosovo’s ex-Prime Minister and former commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) for the Dukagjin zone), Idriz Balaj (former KLA member, commander of the Black Eagles unit), and Lahi Brahimaj (former deputy commander of the KLA Dukagjin Operative Staff, [...]

Diamonds, Celebrities and the Charles Taylor trial

The courtroom used by the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) in The Hague (Leidschendam) has rarely, if ever, been so busy with journalists from all over the world following the Charles Taylor trial. The eagerly awaited testimonies of Naomi Campbell and Mia Farrow have been widely broadcast by the international media. Unfortunately however, with [...]

New FIDH Report and the Prospects of International Justice

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 [...]

Book Review: Solon Solomon, The Justiciability of International Disputes – The Advisory Opinion of Israel’s Security Fence as a Case Study

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. [...]

New Bottle, Old Wine: Israel Forms an Investigation Committee on the Gaza Flotilla Attacks

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 [...]

ICC’s Review Conference: Will Two Weeks Be Enough?

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 [...]

The Kosovo Issue: What Should Kosovo and Serbia Discuss?

The dispute between Serbia and Kosovo is among the most complex and yet to be resolved political issues in Europe. Kosovo, an independent country for over two years, is formally recognized by 69 UN countries, which include 22 of the 27 EU countries and all of its neighbors. It joined the International Monetary Fund and [...]

Is there a need to establish new international courts?

New initiatives have been aired recently in high political circles about creating two new courts to deal respectively with piracy off the Horn of Africa (stemming from Somalia), which continues to make headlines, and nuclear security issues. Not long ago, there was a Dutch proposal that the UN should support the establishment of a tribunal [...]

South North Dialogue on the Al-Bashir Arrest Warrant

Africa Legal Aid  (ALFA) will be holding a one day conference in The Hague on 26 April 2010,  titled “Al-Bashir Arrest Warrant: The World vs Africa or the African Union vs the People of Africa.” The aim is to explore the South/ North dimensions of the emerging regime of international criminal justice and discuss the views [...]

The ICC and Afghanistan: A Moment of Opportunity for Justice

In today’s International Herald Tribune, Candace Rondeaux and Nick Grono of the International Crisis Group argued that the International Criminal Court (ICC) should formalize their investigation of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan, now that the Taliban’s military chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar has been arrested in Pakistan. I believe formalizing such an [...]

Accountability Now! – A Conference on the Goldstone Report

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 [...]

Paper on the Issues Arising out of the Palestinian Declaration to the ICC under Art. 12(3) of the Rome Statute

Al-Haq, a Palestinian NGO based in the West Bank, has recently published a paper authored by Michael Kearney and Stijn Denayer on “Issues Arising from the Palestinian Authority’s Submission of a Declaration to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court under Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute” (a matter we have previously covered here). The [...]

One Year After The Gaza Conflict: A Persistent Quest for Justice

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 [...]

The Will to Intervene Project

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 [...]

UN Movie ‘Walled Horizons’ Marks Five Years to the ICJ Wall Opinion

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 [...]

The Geneva Conventions at Sixty: A Tribute to their ‘Humanitarian Character’

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 [...]

Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs releases its own report on the Gaza conflict

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 [...]

Reality TV Catching up with the Terrorists

If you fancy combining the job of hunting down terrorists with a career on TV then The Wanted, aired on NBC Monday night, might just be something for you. NPR has the story. Maybe some of our American-based readers who happened to watch it can shed some light on the programme. In the programme, the [...]

The International Day of Justice: African Union Decision in Libya Inimical to the ICC and International Criminal Justice

Friday, 17 July 2009 is International Justice Day, which this year marks the 11th anniversary of the adoption of the Rome Statute. As the rest of the world celebrates the advancement of international justice and the efforts of ending impunity for gross violations for human rights, it is unfortunate that Africa’s premier organisation has taken [...]

Gaza Conflict Aftermath: so far “the international community has failed spectacularly”

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 [...]

Universal Jurisdiction Once Again Under Threat

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 [...]

The UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza conflict commences its work

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 [...]

International Law Foundations of Palestinian Nationality: A Forgotten Basis for the Resolution of the Palestinian Refugee Question

The question of the Palestinian refugees from 1948 onwards is often righteously seen at the crux of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the discussion surrounding this issue is too often politicised to the degree that there is no sight of the actual applicable international legal framework. Professor Mutaz Qafisheh presently a professor of international law at [...]

John Ruggie’s 2009 report on Business and Human Rights

Professor John Ruggie, the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary General on human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises (hereinafter J. Ruggie), and his team, have recently published 2009 report on ‘Business and human rights: Towards operationalizing the »the protect, respect and remedy« framework« (U.N. Doc. A/HRC/11/13/, 22 April 2009). In his [...]

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