On 22 January 2009, the Palestinian Minister of Justice, on behalf of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), lodged a declaration recognizing the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) (pictured left) ‘for the purpose of identifying, prosecuting and judging the authors and accomplices of acts committed on the territory of Palestine since 1 July 2002.’ On…

According to the time-honoured law of neutrality, the territory of neutral powers is “inviolable” (Art. 1 Hague “Convention (V) respecting the Rights and Duties of Neutral Powers and Persons in Case of War on Land, October 18, 1907). Parties to a conflict may therefore not use it in any conflict-related manner, e.g. to transport war material (…

The recent proposal by the Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide (IEP) to create a core international crime of ecocide displays great confidence in the regulatory potential of criminal law, but the proposal lacks sufficient reasoning and the drafters offer practitioners little help with the intricate problems arising from their draft definition.