Suchergebnisse

"This book explores, through the lens of the conflict in Syria, why international law and the United Nations have failed to halt conflict and massive human rights violations in many places around the world. The work presents a critical socio-legal analysis of the failures of international law and the United Nations to deal with mass atrocities and conflict. It argues that international law, in the way it is set up and the way it operates, falls short in dealing with these issues in many respects. The argument is that international law is state-centred rather than victim-friendly, is to some extent outdated, is vague and often difficult to understand, and therefore, at times, hard to apply. While various accountability processes have come to the fore recently, processes do not exist to assist individual victims while the conflict occurs, or the abuses are being perpetrated. The book focuses on the problems of international law and the UN, and, in the context of the many enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions in Syria, why nothing has been done to deal with a rogue state that has regularly violated international law. It examines why the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) has not been applied, and why it ought to be used, generally and in Syria. It uses the Syrian context to evaluate the weaknesses of the system and why reform is needed. It examines the UN institutional mechanisms, the role they play and why a civilian protection system is needed. It examines what mechanism ought to be set up to deal with the possible one million people that have been disappeared and detained in Syria"--

Abstract
The arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (icc) in March 2023 against Russian President Vladimir Putin for crimes committed in Ukraine is one of the most momentous cases taken up by the Court. As Putin is unlikely to be arrested in Russia, the only way that he may be arrested and surrendered to the Court is if he travels to another state, particularly one that is a member of the icc, which would then have obligations to arrest him. May thus, the case against Putin by the icc brings into focus, once again, the crucial need for cooperation with the Court by states around the world. This is because the icc needs states to arrest accused persons if it is to successfully prosecute perpetrators of human rights violations. This article employs the issues concerning the non-arrest of the then President of Sudan Omar Al-Bashir in multiple icc State parties as a lens through which to examine the issues of state cooperation. Thus, the cases of Al-Bashir and Putin have many parallels which are examined. Importantly, between 2009, when the first arrest warrant against him was issued, and 2016, Al-Bashir had already undertaken more than 75 trips to at least 22 states without being arrested. At least seven of those states had ratified the Rome Statute. This article, therefore, examines other cases that were brought by the icc against Malawi, Chad, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo (drc), South Africa, Djibouti, Uganda, and Jordan. The article examines what can be learnt overall for issues of state cooperation. The article also reviews a range of ways that the icc can go about fostering greater state cooperation, and what it can do to ensure greater compliance by states when they do not cooperate.

Abstract
This article introduces the Special Section dealing with conflict related missing persons in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. It examines the context to the conflicts in the region and brings to the fore the fact that the breakup of the Soviet Union has had a massive legacy in terms of the conflicts it spawned, over identity matters and various territorial claims, and how that vestige lingers today. The article examines why the three countries are useful to analyse comparatively, what we can learn from them and how these issues are also reflective of the democratic and human rights status in each. This article ends by discussing the general problems relating to missing persons in the three countries, and why the law and the processes to deal with missing persons in these and many other countries around the world need to be reformed. The focus of each of the three country articles is then more inward-looking. They explore the situation in each country concerning missing persons, the institutions that have been established to deal with those matters, the laws that deal with missing persons, and what is needed to make progress on all the issues relating to missing persons.

Abstract
Too little is provided, not only in international law, but also by the United Nations, for victims around the world. This article therefore argues that a new paradigm is needed. It uses the conflict in Syria since 2011, specifically focusing on how enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions have been used, to examine these questions. It has been reported that at least 150,000 people have been affected by these practices, but the number may be as high as a million. Because the state has used these practices methodically, they amount to a widespread and systemic attack on the civilian population and, therefore, to crimes against humanity. While the Syrian regime is primarily responsible, non-state actors have also been committing these types of crimes. The article discusses the general processes that have been set up to deal with the conflict in international law and by the United Nations in places like Syria. It finds that very little has been done to end the conflict in Syria, other than mediation. The article then reviews the international processes dealing with disappearances and detentions in Syria that families can report to, and the role these institutions have played so far. It again finds that very little has been achieved. The article also examines other countries where processes have been set up to deal with missing and disappeared persons, such as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cyprus, and Georgia, to learn the lessons from these past processes for the Syrian situation. It is argued that, generally when mass atrocities occur, the UN on rare occasions will create an accountability process, but never creates a process that focuses on the needs of victims: finding their loved ones, getting them released from custody if they are alive, or finding the truth about what happened to them and where their remains are. The article therefore argues that a new mechanism is needed for Syria (but also for other places) to get people released, and to find information on others whose whereabouts are unknown due to the conflict and/or the mass human rights abuses. It contends that the mechanism could be set up by the UN, and if not, by a regional actor such as the European Union, or by several states. It is reasoned that the mechanism ought to have a Board made up of a representative each from the International Committee of the Red Cross (icrc), the International Commission on Missing Persons (icmp), the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (wgeid), the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions (wgad) and a Syrian organisation, elected each year.

This article explores how conditional amnesties can assist post-conflict societies to recover truth. It examines how such amnesties can be used optimally to achieve the best results as part of transitional justice mechanisms. Thus, a central question is to see how amnesties can be used for truth recovery purposes. For that reason, the status and role of amnesties, and whether such amnesties can be used to learn more about the past and assist in truth recovery is explored. The article explores what amnesties are, how prevalent they are and how amnesties can be used optimally to achieve the best results. An issue that is also explored is whether amnesties are needed for perpetrators to participate in transitional justice mechanisms. The argument that is made, in this regard, is that amnesty is absolutely necessary to persuade perpetrators to testify. If they do not have such legal protection, perpetrators fear the legal consequences that may result if they admit to crimes for which they have not been charged. Another question that is examined concerns whether amnesties, and specifically conditional amnesties, pass international law muster. This article therefore investigates the continual and extensive use of amnesty to determine whether a conditional amnesty violates international law. The article suggests how a conditional amnesty process could be structured and what difficulties such a process should avoid if perpetrators are to enter such a process.

ABSTRACT: Drawing on fieldwork in Greece, Uganda, and Israel, this empirical study is an enquiry into the forms of agency adopted by refugee and asylum-seeking women who are survivors of, or in situations of risk of, sexual and gender-based violence. The article identifies the main agentic behaviors reported by participants to prevent and address multiple and intersecting discriminations leading to sexual and gender-based violence. It ascertains various types of agency, including passive versus active agency; silence as agency versus silence as oppression; and individual versus collective agency. The study then also asks what functions these forms of agency fulfill. It finds that they are responses to the state's failure to prevent and address sexual and gender-based violence in four ways: (1) to acknowledge asylum-seekers sufficiently; (2) to protect asylum-seekers from sexual and gender-based violence; (3) to guarantee access to justice to sexual and gender-based violence survivors; and finally (4) to prevent further discrimination of the hosted community. Thus, this article argues that refugees and asylum-seekers adopt different types of agency to react against the state's inability to provide protection from sexual and gender-based violence.

Abstract
The world has experienced numerous armed conflicts and violations of human rights arising from conflicts. However, many millions of human rights abuses have occurred outside of conflict. These have been on the rise over the last fifteen years. This article enquires why the International Court of Justice (icj) has not played the role it could have over the last seventy-five years. This is done with reference to the use of force by the Russian Federation (Russia) in Ukraine in 2022. It is argued that when it comes to dealing with wars, conflict, and human rights violations, the Court has played a limited role and has been less than robust than it could have been. The article investigates the problems that undermine the Court, including the appointment process for judges, the use of ad hoc judges, jurisdictional limitations, and issues concerning compliance and enforcement of its judgments. The argument made is that politics and political considerations are deeply imbedded in these processes and that an independent structure is needed. It is also argued that while some of the problems of the Court are structural, others are of the Court's own making.