International Human Rights Law

[Melanie O’Brien is Associate Professor of International Law at the University of Western Australia and President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. Javaid Rehman is Professor of Law at Brunel University of London and former Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran (2018–2024). He is currently Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University Law School...

[Lisa Reinsberg is the founding executive director of the International Justice Resource Center, a PhD candidate with the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies at Leiden University, and a Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law] Human rights oversight bodies have rejected an unknown number of complaints because individual complainants used language that was insulting or offensive to...

[Yifan Jia is a PhD candidate and visiting lecturer at the Dickson Poon School of Law at King's College London, and a research associate at the Global Governance Centre at Geneva Graduate Institute. John Binns is a partner at BCL Solicitors LLP. He is a specialist in proceeds of crime laws, sanctions, tax investigations, and the regulation of cannabis.] Historically, mechanisms for...

[Grażyna Baranowska is a Professor of Migration Law and Human Rights at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg and the Vice-Chair of the UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances. Dr Nasia Hadjigeorgiou is an Associate Professor in Transitional Justice and Human Rights at UCLan Cyprus.] People have always gone missing and their loved ones have always sought to establish their fate. In this endeavour,...

[Gustavo Prieto works for the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) and is Senior Fellow and Lecturer at the Law Faculty of Ghent University, Belgium] Blockchain technology, with its decentralized and global reach, is transforming how rules, authority, and accountability are understood. Far from being confined to cryptocurrency payments, blockchain is rapidly shaping key arenas such as digital identities, supply chains, and the...

[Valeria Ruiz-Perez is a Research Associate at the Centre for Applied Human Rights (University of York) and a Visiting Fellow at LSE Law School. She is a main researcher of the Rethinking accountability from the bottom: Setting a research agenda on traditional grassroots justice mechanisms (TGJMs) project.  Piergiuseppe Parisi is a lecturer in international human rights law at the Centre for...

[Jorge Peniche is an international lawyer specializing in transitional justice and accountability, with a focus on emerging settings. He is the Associate in Mexico at G37 Centre and an Associate Professor at Universidad Iberoamericana (Mexico), where he teaches on transitional justice, organized crime and security. He holds a Master of Laws from New York University.] Preludium: “I Want Consequences…” “I want consequences,”...

[Ben Grama is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University. He is part of the inter-institutional multidisciplinary iBOF project “Future-proofing human rights: Developing thicker forms of accountability”, a collaboration between the Universities of Ghent, Antwerp, Brussels, and Hasselt. His work focuses on devising a thick conception of accountability drawing on the overall research findings of...

[Tadesse Kebebew is a Researcher and Project Manager at the Geneva Water Hub, a Centre of Competence on Water for Peace and holds a PhD in International Law from the Geneva Graduate Institute] Introduction  Water has increasingly become both a target and a weapon in armed conflicts across regions, causing severe humanitarian suffering and environmental degradation. When warring parties damage water systems...

[Image by Freepik.] Introduction It is widely acknowledged that, without regulation, Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) can contribute to violations of international law and benefit from impunity. Both corporate actors and States increasingly rely on PMSCs to secure their operations in high-risk areas—whether through direct contracts, in-house security arrangements, or outsourcing military and law enforcement functions. Numerous UN reports have documented...

As I write these lines, the United States is fighting for the very soul of its democracy. Under dispute is whether their government can forcibly transfer a lawful resident – in this case a Latino with a tattoo – to a forced labour camp in El Salvador without any due process. For now, the US Supreme Court’s answer seems to be “no”, provided the...

[Ben Saul is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism] The Israeli human rights NGOs Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and Hamoked recently reported that around 6,800 Palestinians are detained by Israel outside the regular criminal justice process. Approximately 3,436 are held as “unlawful combatants” captured in Gaza – although...