Crimes Against Humanity

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Chechnya’s Anti-Gay Purge: Crimes Against Humanity

May 9, 2017

Despite widespread condemnation from the U.N., Council of Europe, E.U., United States, and other countries, a brutal campaign against gay men in Chechnya continues. The abuses take the form of abduction-style detention, enforced disappearances, torture, and killings. Considering the systematic features and the brutality of the abuses, Chechnya’s anti-gay campaign amounts to crimes against humanity, and it demands proper condemnation and response from the international community. Crimes against humanity, as an international crime, has been defined in various statues and law commissions’ proposals since 1945. They each have their own distinctive feature tailored to the specific historical context during which they were drafted. For example, the Nuremberg Charter and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Statute’s definition require the element “in armed conflicts”, while the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) Statute requires a discriminatory intent. This note uses the definition in Article 7 of the Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court (ICC): “any of the acts when committed as part of a widespread or…

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The Evacuation of Eastern Aleppo: Humanitarian Obligation or War Crime?: A Reply

March 27, 2017

  This post is written as a reply to the interesting contribution made by Elvina Pothelet on the topic of forced displacement in Syria. In her article, Elvina examined the legal foundation for the claim that the evacuation of Eastern Aleppo amounts to the war crime of forced displacement. I would like to build on this work, but…

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Post-Truth and International Criminal Tribunals

February 20, 2017

With all the daily going-ons of our new era of resurgent populist nationalism, it's no wonder that concepts such as 'post-truth' and 'alternative facts' are so very much en vogue, or that Orwell's 1984 and other dystopian classics are once more hitting the best-seller lists. But the sad truth is that there's nothing really new about 'post-truth', except…

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New EJIL:Live! Interview with Philippe Sands on his New Book, East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity

January 23, 2017

In this episode of EJIL:Live! Professor Philippe Sands, whose article on “Reflections on International Judicialization” appears in EJIL vol. 27, no. 4, speaks with the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal, Professor Joseph Weiler. Unlike other editions of EJIL: Live!, this episode offers a fascinating and moving discussion of Sands’ remarkable new book, East…

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The Airstrike Killing Members of the Syrian Armed Forces was not an International Crime

October 19, 2016

The US coalition formed to combat the Islamic State was recently involved in a drone strike in Syria which mistakenly killed at least 62 Syrian government troops. The air strike involved US, British, Danish and Australian forces. An investigation into how the incident occurred is currently underway. The attack was described by Syria’s president Bashar…

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