A new report by eyeWitness to Atrocities, Insecurity Insight, Media Initiative for Human Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, and Ukrainian Healthcare Center documents the scale of attacks on ...Ukraine's health-care centres and staff by Russian forces. According to Ukraine's Ministry of Health, 1035 medical facilities have been damaged over the past 11 months, and another 171 have been demolished beyond repair, with the eyeWitness report saying that US$15·1 billion is needed to scale up essential health services and restore health infrastructure. Russian civilian and military leadership, including Vladimir Putin, are being investigated for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine by the International Criminal Court, as well as a parallel special tribunal backed by the European parliament and the German and UK Governments.
International criminal trials expose a paradox with regard to the portrayal of the defendants. While criminal law is based on the idea that perpetrators are responsible agents - human members of a ...community who can be held accountable before the law - speaking about mass atrocity involves a dimension of inhuman evil that places the accused outside the realm of humanity. This article interrogates how, concretely, the dual attribution of a despicable human character as well as inhuman evilness to the defendants takes shape in international courtrooms. It analyses the depiction of the defendants in the opening statements of the prosecution and the subsequent responses of the defence teams in 17 cases at four international criminal courts and tribunals. Opening statements are unique media moments that engage with describing the personality of the defendant rather than merely focusing on his deeds. The empirical material reveals how, in these statements, trial participants conflate humanizing and dehumanizing language and create an 'ideal' stereotype of the inhuman human. The article theorizes the function of this stereotype and argues that it is mobilized in order to fit the defendant into a narrative that aims to legitimize international criminal trials and attempts to balance their multiple, contradictory goals., International criminal trials expose a paradox with regard to the portrayal of the defendants. While criminal law is based on the idea that perpetrators are responsible agents - human members of a community who can be held accountable before the law - speaking about mass atrocity involves a dimension of inhuman evil that places the accused outside the realm of humanity. This article interrogates how, concretely, the dual attribution of a despicable human character as well as inhuman evilness to the defendants takes shape in international courtrooms. It analyses the depiction of the defendants in the opening statements of the prosecution and the subsequent responses of the defence teams in 17 cases at four international criminal courts and tribunals. Opening statements are unique media moments that engage with describing the personality of the defendant rather than merely focusing on his deeds. The empirical material reveals how, in these statements, trial participants conflate humanizing and dehumanizing language and create an ‘ideal’ stereotype of the inhuman human. The article theorizes the function of this stereotype and argues that it is mobilized in order to fit the defendant into a narrative that aims to legitimize international criminal trials and attempts to balance their multiple, contradictory goals.
SLIPPERY SLOPES Radner, Ephraim
First things (New York, N.Y.),
01/2023
Journal Article
In 2016, laws permitting statesanctioned and doctor-assisted suicide were put in place in Canada for the terminally ill. MAID was put in place shortly after a 2015 Supreme Court ruling said that ...state prohibition of assisted suicide violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. For Christians to evaluate human life that way would be blasphemy of the deepest kind, crucifying the Lord anew (Heb. 6:6).
U Sarajevu se od 29.08. do 01.09.2018. održao 18. znanstveni skup Europskog udruženja za kriminologiju („18th Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology”) pod naslovom „Zločini protiv ...čovjeka i zločini protiv čovječanstva: Implikacije za modernu kriminologiju“. Naglasak ovogodišnje konferencije stavljen je na teme vezane uz terorizam i terorističke akte te masovne zločine poput genocida i etničkog čišćenja koji su još uvijek nedovoljno istraženi u kriminološkim istraživanjima.
Silence has often been studied in international law as a mechanism tied to passivity and oppression. In this study, I propose an exploration of other ontologies of silence by unravelling its ...possibilities as an active mechanism, namely: (i) a tool for resistance; and (ii) a linguistic device for managing disagreement. For this, I use as an exploratory ground the construction of a non-definition of gender for the crime of persecution in international criminal law (ICL). Analysing the Rome Statute negotiations, I examine how gender-conservative actors successfully opposed the proposal for a non-definition of gender, arguing that such a solution would harm the clarity required by the principle of legality in ICL. By establishing that legal rules must be clear, specific, and cohesive, I argue that the legality principle imposes a burden of speech upon non-state voices in ICL, one that encircles them within a subalternity scheme where speech is demanded but can only be performed or mediated by states. Exploring the negotiations of the Convention on Crimes Against Humanity draft, I examine how the non-definition of gender allowed feminist and queer activists to resist such a burden of speech for the conceptualization of gender. Simultaneously, silence also provided an opportunity for International Law Commission members to propose a draft that avoids cacophony around a contentious term. By reflecting on the active roles of silence, this study contributes to new modes of analysing resistance to dominant modes of legal discourse, as well as exploring dynamics of order(ing) in international law-making.
This article concerns the issue of causation under Article 28 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and the related foundational question of the legal character of command ...responsibility under that provision. It has two aims. First, it notes that across the proceedings in Bemba, judges were united in understanding command responsibility as a mode of liability. It then sets out four different positions on the question of causation in Bemba and argues that none is convincing - that none is able to escape the tensions that follow from that understanding of the legal character of command responsibility. Second, it suggests that the Court revisit that foundational understanding itself: it proposes that the Court interprets Article 28 as establishing a separate offence of omission and argues that such a reading of the Statute is plausible and attractive in principle and policy terms.
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