Over the past two years, the IBA’s War Crimes Committee has been actively involved in efforts to strengthen the drafts of two major multilateral conventions focused on atrocity crimes. The first is the International Law Commission’s articles on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity, which could form the basis for the world’s first multilateral convention on the crime. The second is a state-led effort to create a multilateral convention on mutual legal assistance and extradition
Released on Jun 21, 2018
Several key convictions of former heads of state for war crimes have made 2016 a ground-breaking year for the global fight to end impunity.
Separate cases at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and most recently at the Extraordinary African Chambers in Senegal have resulted in landmark convictions.
Released on Jul 14, 2016
Acts perpetrated during the course of warfare often lead to significant environmental destruction, particularly where the natural environment is intentionally targeted as a ‘victim’ or is somehow manipulated to serve as a ‘weapon’. Until recently, such acts were generally regarded as an unfortunate but unavoidable element of armed conflict. The existing international humanitarian law rules have done little to deter deliberate environmental destruction, particularly when measured against perceived military
In this article the authors discuss whether the KSC will follow the ICTY in interpreting article 16.1 of its statute to embrace the wide constructed liability of JCE III. They suggest there are good reasons why it should not: the terms of article 16.1 of the KSC Statute do not explicitly provide for JCE III. The ICTY Appeals Chamber read JCE III liability into article 7.1 of the ICTY Statute on the basis that it was ‘firmly established in customary international law’, yet JCE III has proved controversial a
The Covid-19 pandemic has heightened the risk of food insecurity and starvation, particularly in conflict-affected states. Governments and other organised groups should be held to account if they unduly restrict essential supplies from reaching populations in need.
With tensions over North Korea’s nuclear threat escalating, international law and diplomacy is now at a critical juncture, Michael Kirby, Vice Chair of the IBA Human Rights Institute Council, has warned.
Speaking exclusively to Global Insight, Kirby says the international community has a legal obligation to address ‘two apparently inconsistent necessities’: human rights violations and the development of nuclear weapons under the rule of North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong-un