Crimes Against Humanity

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Violations of International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Committed in Ukraine since 24 February 2022: Summary of the Report by a Mission of Experts under the OSCE Moscow Mechanism

April 19, 2022

On 13 April 2022, we presented the report of our mission on Ukraine to a special session of the Permanent Council of OSCE. Based on this presentation, the following contribution summarizes the establishment and mandate, methodology and findings of our 94 pages Report. Establishment and mandate On 3 March 2022, Ukraine, supported by 45 OSCE participating States, resorted to Paragraph 8 of the Moscow Mechanism (see for its rules here) of the human dimension of the OSCE providing for the invitation of a Mission of Experts to address a particular question on its territory relating to the human dimension of the OSCE. Different from the previous adversarial use as in the cases of Chechnya or Belarus (see here), when a group of participating States had initiated the mechanism against the will of the state investigated, this was theoretically a cooperative use of the mechanism because the state concerned itself had invited the mission (although in reality the report concerns largely violations by another…

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Prosecuting Atrocity Crimes Committed in Northern Ethiopia: The Need for Special National Prosecution Mechanism

April 4, 2022

Over the last four years, serious human rights violations and abuses, have been committed in Ethiopia in and outside of the context of an armed conflict. These violations may constitute international crimes, such as crimes against humanity, war crimes and torture. The situation particularly worsened and garnered international attention after an armed conflict broke out in Tigray on…

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Crimean Tatars: Eight Years of Anything but Marginal Resistance

March 25, 2022

On 3 March 2022, Professor Alain Pellet published a reflection on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, drawing parallels to the 2014 occupation of Crimea. With the eighth anniversary of the Crimean ‘referendum’ approaching, this post will respond to Prof. Pellet’s thoughts on the Crimean Tatars and their ‘marginal’, according to Prof. Pellet, reaction to Russia’s activities in Crimea…

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Aggression against Ukraine: Avenues for Accountability for Core Crimes

March 3, 2022

The unprovoked attack by Russia against Ukraine should be qualified as a crime against peace, or the crime of aggression, as defined in Article 6(a) of the IMT Charter and in Article 8bis of the ICC Statute. There are also allegations of war crimes as the Russian armed forces have targeted…

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UN Security Council Referrals to the ICC and the Principle of Legality

November 12, 2021

Introduction On 1 November 2021, the Appeals Chamber (AC) of the International Criminal Court (ICC) rendered an interesting judgment relating to a jurisdictional challenge brought by the Defence in the case of Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rhaman (“Ali Kushayb”). The challenge is noteworthy because it confronted the Court with novel issues of law relating to the…

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