20 Mar 2019 - NPWJ News Digest on International Criminal Justice

Articles

Crimes Against Humanity: Need for A Legal Framework for Mass Crimes in India
Live Law, 20 Mar 2019

In 1941, Winston Churchill in an uncertain response to Nazi atrocities called them "crimes without a name". Almost two years later Polish scholar Raphael Lemkin termed it for the first time as Genocide. In December 2018, the Delhi High Court in State Through CBI v. Sajjan Kumar and Ors. had its Churchill moment when adjudicating upon political riots against Sikhs (1984). 

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Revisiting the Mladić Trial Amidst Trump Admin’s Attacks on International Criminal Justice
Just Security, 19 Mar 2019

International criminal justice has hit a rough patch. The work of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is under regular attack from the Trump administration, which opposes the Court’s intention to open an investigation into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan. Just last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the United States would restrict visas for ICC officials involved in any such investigation, stating “The ICC is attacking America’s rule of law.”

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Global rule of law continues to decline, but resistance is gaining strength
Democracy Without Borders, 19 Mar 2019

Recently, the World Justice Project (WJP) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) released their annual reports that give snapshots of the current state of democracy across the globe. While both documents confirm the rise of authoritarianism in the previous year, HRW once again highlights that resistance against this trend is gaining strength.

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Rohingya Refugees Need Mental Health Treatment and Justice
Futurity, 19 Mar 2019

Since 2017, more than 740,000 refugees—more than half of them children—have fled violence in Myanmar and settled in overcrowded camps in Bangladesh. In one camp, a 12-year-old Rohingya boy flatly, stoically tells of how, within three hours one day in August 2017, the Myanmar military murdered 56 members of his family in their village in western Myanmar. Of his immediate family, his parents and three sisters were slain; only he and his brothers—ages 27, 25, and 10—survived.

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ACLU to U.N.: The U.S. commitment to human rights and rule of law is in serious doubt
The Washington Post, 18 Mar 2019

The American Civil Liberties Union has delivered a harsh rebuke of the Trump administration to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. The statement submitted by Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU’s human rights program, observed that the Trump administration has ignored repeated requests by the U.N. special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Felipe González Morales, to be allowed to go to the U.S.-Mexican border.

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