Under President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s leadership, the Sri Lankan civil war reached a brutal conclusion on May 18, 2009, ending a 25-year-long conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a separatist rebel group. Rooted in longstanding grievances, including discriminatory policies against Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority, the conflict saw the [...]
Search Results for: 1999-08-11
Explainer: The Israel-Hamas War and the International Criminal Court
The current conflict engulfing Israel and Palestine raises significant issues of international law and policy. This is part one in an anticipated two-part series that will discuss some of the relevant legal questions before the International Criminal Court (ICC; Part I) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ; Part II). With both courts located in [...]
Court-Martialing Imran Khan Is in Violation of International Law
Following global practice — including that of the U.S. military justice system — the Pakistan Army Act builds on maintaining good order and discipline among service members, as no military can effectively function without strict discipline. The court-martial, that is, trial by military officers of breaches of service-connected discipline, including crimes, sits at the heart [...]
Pennsylvania dispatch: 'it ain't over till it's over', but in Pennsylvania, it's over
JURIST law student staffers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law are filing dispatches on various aspects of the November 2022 midterm elections in Pennsylvania. Here, Pitt Law 2L David DeNotaris reports on the race between Mehmet Oz and John Fetterman for one of the two Pennsylvania seats in the closely-divided US Senate. While overall [...]
Recently, Spain’s Parliament passed a new bill that seeks to make consent the determining factor in sexual assault cases, thus freeing victims from the burden of proving that they were intimidated, subjected to violence or that they physically resisted to show that they suffered a sexual assault. As per the Guarantee of Sexual Freedom law, [...]
Experts urge EU to sanction NSO Group over Pegasus human rights abuses
A group of 86 human rights organizations and independent experts Friday urged the European Union to impose “targeted sanctions” against the NSO Group, an Israeli company producing the Pegasus surveillance software linked with human rights abuses. The signatories cited investigations by the Front Line Defenders, Forbidden Stories and Citizen Lab that exposed how governments across [...]
Why the US Should Recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan’s Lawful Government
Even though the US State Department is issuing positive statements about the Taliban, it is hard for the US to recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan’s lawful government. The reasons are evident and understandable. First, the Taliban have defeated the US military in a protracted war stretching over twenty years (2001-2021). The hurt in the Pentagon, [...]
Here's the international legal news we covered this week: The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Friday in favor of the Yukon First Nations in their action to fight the Yukon government's proposed plan to allow further economic development...
Kosovo Supreme Court rejects appeal of politician's acquittal
The Supreme Court of Kosovo rejected an appeal on Thursday against the acquittal of 10 Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) members, including former commander and politician Fatmir Limaj, who were charged with war crimes in the so-called "Klecka case."...
EU appoints 19 international judges to special court in Kosovo
The European Union on Tuesday appointed 19 international judges for a special court in Kosovo that will prosecute war crimes committed between January 1, 1998, and December 31, 2000. Twelve of the judges come from countries within...