Legal Basis for the Establishment of International Courts

The Nuremberg tribunal was the expression and the beginning of states' recognition of their duty to prosecute genocide and other gross human rights violations. It was a first step towards fulfillin...

The nature of the relationship between international humanitarian law and international human rights law remains a vexed one. In recent years, human rights lawyers and activists have sought to apply human rights norms to military conduct in international and internal conflicts, and during belligerent occupations. With varying degrees of success, complainants have brought their cases before international tribunals, and to national courts able to apply international human rights standards. This development has occurred largely because forums exist to hear human rights claims, whereas they do not for persons claiming individual redress for violations of international humanitarian law. However, human rights norms have also been seen as more restrictive: as placing greater constraints on States' freedom to conduct hostilities, preventively detain, and administer occupied territories. It is for this reason that some States have resisted attempts to extend the reach of international human rights law into areas traditionally seen as governed by international humanitarian law. This chapter argues that principles have now developed to govern the relationship between the two bodies of law. However, their application to different situations remains a work-in-progress and controversies remain. In particular, despite valient efforts, it remains unclear what what happens in situations where the two bodies of law cannot be read together? There are only few rules of norm-conflict resolution in international law, all of which have limited application in the context of the relationship between international humanitarian law and human rights law. Most inconsistencies between the rules of the two bodies of law are not true conflicts at all, as they do not require States to conduct themselves in different ways. It is simply that international humanitarian law is the more permissive system. In such situations, to argue that the two bodies of law are ‘complementary and mutually reinforcing’ is to do little more than issue a policy prescription. In reality, in such cases States have to make a choice as regards which rules they wish to comply (a choice which is likely to be a political one) and take the consequences. There are fundamental incompatibilities between international humanitarian law and human rights law, not only as regards discrete rules but in their theoretical bases. Attempts can be made to reconcile them, to avoid conflicts, but they can only be provisional and on a case-by-case basis. The legal tools available cannot always provide an answer. Absent legislation, conflicts will remain. And in a world of States with differing interests and values, the adoption of new rules governing armed conflict and belligerent occupation will be difficult, if not impossible. One difference between the two bodies of rules, in particular, remains fundamental. Despite developments over past decades which are said to indicate a ‘humanization of humanitarian law’, international humanitarian law, in contrast to human rights law, is not based on an individual rights paradigm. It is this difference, even excluding the differences in the substantive protections accorded individuals under the two bodies of law, which will ensure that individuals continue to bring complaints regarding their treatment in situations of armed conflict before human rights bodies. And even if human rights bodies take the view that States’ human rights obligations in situations of armed conflict are to be interpreted using the yardstick of international humanitarian law, their interpretations of humanitarian law are likely to differ from lawyers advising States’ defence ministries and armed forces, who are likely to continue to be unhappy with such trespasses into what they see as their chasse gardee.

INTRODUCTION. The practice of modern international criminal courts and tribunals raises serious questions about the proper enforcement of the rights of the accused. Among these rights, the accused's right to compensation is highlighted. Compensation is given to the accused (regardless of the verdict) for violation of his procedural rights and fundamental human rights and compensation to the acquitted person.MATERIALS AND METHODS. The analysis of ensuring the human right to compensation in the event of an unjust sentence is carried out on the basis of international human rights treaties, treaties on the creation of international courts, including appeal to the travaux preparatoires of the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the practice of international criminal courts and tribunals, especially the ICC, as well as the International Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. The study was conducted using general scientific methods of cognition (in particular, analysis and synthesis), as well as comparative legal, historical legal and formal dogmatic methods. To achieve the corresponding conclusions, various methods of interpretation of the rule of law are used, in particular, grammatical, systematic, teleological, harmonic, etc.RESEARCH RESULTS. In the activities of international criminal courts and tribunals, a violation of the accused’s right to a hearing within a reasonable time is systemic, including due to the absence of any procedural deadlines on the one hand, and the absence of any rules (or their non-application) to restore the rights of the accused and punishment of the party who committed the violation of these rights. This situation poses serious problems of ensuring the rights of specific accused (including justified), but also the development of modern international criminal procedural law and international human rights law.DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS. National legislation and international human rights instruments provide for the right of an acquitted person to compensation. In international criminal courts, this issue, however, is addressed in different ways. The statutes of international criminal courts ad hoc created by the UN Security Council do not mention the right to compensation for an accused or acquitted person. At the same time, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda recognized that the absence of a reference to law in the Statute of the Tribunal does not mean that the persons concerned do not have the corresponding right. At the same time, this recognition did not have practical consequences. The Statute of the International Criminal Court recognizes the right to compensation, however, does so to a limited extent. Thus, in international criminal courts and tribunals, the provision of the human right to compensation (primarily compensation to an acquitted person) is performed at a lower level than that established in international human rights treaties.

Although being an organ of application of law and not a law-making organ, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yougoslavia has contributed by its first decision on jurisdictional matters to the confirmation and enhancement of role of international humanitarian law. At the same time it became the first international criminal tribunal after the Nuremberg Tribunal. The decision of the Appeals Chamber (of 2 October 1995) in Tadic case gave a clear and firm answer to the question of legality of the Tribunal and its competence, including primacy over national courts. The problem has been resolved under international law. From the point of view of the implementation of the Statute and decisions of the Tribunal in Czech law, however, many legal issues seem to be open. Since the Statute of the Tribunal, adopted by the UN Security Council, is not an international treaty, the clause in § 375 of the Czech Code of Penal Procedure, providing for the priority application of international treaties, could not serve as a guidance for Czech courts. As the International Tribunal may request any Member State to extradite any person suspected of serious violations of international humanitarian law, the Czech Constitutional Court could perhaps decide, according to Art. 87 (1)(i) of the Constitution, on measures necessary to implement decisions of an international court binding for the Czech Republic. However, one should not rely on the remedy by the Constitutional Court, which is considered as subsidiary to the legislative initiative to be taken by the Government. Moreover, the Tribunal may not be recognized as “international court” under Art. 87, because it is not “international organ authorized to decide complaints against violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms” on the basis of the ratified and promulgated international treaties on human rights binding the Czech Republic (Law on Constitutional Court, § 117). The present situation, when the Czech authorities may either comply with internal law and violate thus the international obligation of the Czech Republic, or act in accordance with international law but in violation of the rules of Czech law, is undesirable. The appropriate solution seems to be a legislative and/or constitutional amendment.

While Nuremberg constitutes a watershed in the evolution of international law with its establishment of the fundamental principle of individual criminal responsibility under international law it has not left much else by way of precedent for the subsequent international criminal tribunals. The adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 827 establishing the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and Resolution 955 (1994) establishing the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, set the groundwork for a new model of hybrid tribunals, with the establishment of the Special Court for Sierra Leone in 2002, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia in 2006, and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in 2007. Perhaps one of the greatest legacies of these ad hoc and hybrid courts and tribunals has been paving the way for the establishment of a permanent international criminal court. However, they have also brought about the development of international criminal law through judicial interpretation, elaborating, inter alia, the elements of the crime of genocide as detailed in the 1948 Genocide Convention, the judicial recognition of the concept of joint criminal enterprise and the principle that national arrangements for amnesties in respect of international crimes are no bar to prosecution for such crimes at an international tribunal. In view of the completion strategies of the ad hoc Tribunals, as well as of the SCSL, this article delves into some of their legacies and outlines some of the difficulties and challenges they have faced, while identifying areas of best practice in order for the newly‐operational International Criminal Court to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past or even reinventing new wheels.

International humanitarian law and international criminal law are distinct but related fields. The application of international humanitarian law to concrete facts by international tribunals and courts has contributed to the development and clarification of this body of law. However, using a law in the courtroom that was created instead, to be applied on the battlefield poses significant challenges. In the process of such use, the law may have been distorted to fit facts that it was not envisioned to cover. Its use is as a means to punish unwanted behaviour during armed conflicts and to combat impunity risks contorting the balance on which international humanitarian law is based: military necessity and humanity. This chapter highlights some findings by international criminal tribunals and courts that do not sit easily with international humanitarian law as applied by armed forces, and discusses the consequences that applying the laws of armed conflict during criminal trials may have for this branch of international law.

Case law of the International Court of Justice and international criminal tribunals reveals different judicial attitudes toward the relationship among State responsibility law, international humanitarian law (IHL) and the classification of armed conflicts. The legal precedents on this topic have been called 'the most cited example of the fragmentation of international law'. This contribution examines this conflict, or fragmentation, in order to shed light on the question whether IHL, or its interpretation and application, has had any influence on the general international law of State responsibility. With arguments specifically derived from the nature of international humanitarian law and from the structural design of State responsibility law, the article demonstrates that international armed conflicts involve two States that are responsible for the acts of their forces through which they act. Having in mind this symbiotic relationship between IHL and State responsibility for purposes of the classification of conflict, the case law on this matter, which is often cited as an example of fragmentation, can to some extent be reconciled, as long as one recognizes that attribution rules have a certain influence on the scope and application of primary rules of IHL. The article concludes that IHL (and the interpretation thereof by international tribunals with subject-matter expertise) has exercised no influence on attribution rules as found in the general international law of State responsibility, apart from the recognition that primary rules of international law (such as IHL) may contain secondary leges speciales rules dealing with the attribution of conduct in times of armed conflict.

Achieving Gender Parity on International Judicial and Monitoring Bodies: Analysis of International Human Rights Laws and Standards Relevant to the GQUAL Campaign

This chapter introduces the reader to the basic vocabulary of international law, including its essential purposes, primary sources, and lawmakers, along with its relationship with national legal systems. The three primary sources of international law are treaties, customary norms, and general principles of law, according to the United Nations's Statute of the International Court of Justice. The chapter also considers jus cogens and UN Security Council resolutions as binding international law, along with domestic law metaphors for international law. Finally, it provides an overview of the four specialized areas of international law that are most inherently responsive to the phenomenon of armed conflict: international humanitarian law, international human rights law, international criminal law, and international refugee law.

Individual Accountability for Crimes against Humanity: Reckoning with the Past, Thinking of the Future Andrea Bianchi (bio) The recent decisions of the House of Lords in the Pinochet case 1 revived interest in the issue of individual responsibility for crimes of international law. 2 The wide array of issues and highly sensitive political elements underlying the case prompted a variety of comments and reactions, in which the legal dimension has been either used instrumentally to foster conflicting political goals or confined to technical discussion within specialized legal circles. In fact, the extradition request by Spain to obtain the surrender of General Augusto Pinochet, head of state of Chile from 1973 to 1990, and the ensuing judicial proceedings in the United Kingdom should be a cause, not only for international lawyers but also for the public at large, to give appropriate consideration to the issue of whether individuals, including top political leaders, may be held accountable for crimes against humanity, and if so, under what circumstances. Although legal proceedings in the United Kingdom are still under way at the time of writing, the Pinochet case illustrates how to reckon with the past, while thinking of the future. The emergence of crimes against humanity as a distinct category of norms as well as the principle of individual responsibility have taken firm root in the international community, and their implementation is crucial for shaping any future international public order based on the rule of law and respect for fundamental human rights. The recent establishment of ad hoc international tribunals and the prospective International Criminal Court [End Page 97] (ICC) cannot by themselves ensure the effective prosecution of individual crimes of international law. The jurisdiction of these tribunals is limited to particular situations in specific countries (Yugoslavia and Rwanda), and the effectiveness of the latter will depend on how many states ratify its statute. This is why domestic courts should effectively complement, when the circumstances so warrant, the action of international tribunals in enforcing international criminal law. Yet many hurdles exist that need be overcome in order to allow domestic courts to enforce individual responsibility. Some relate to the way in which international law is incorporated into domestic law, some others originate from such doctrines as foreign sovereign immunity and act of state. The aim of this paper is to show that individuals may be held accountable for crimes against humanity before international and domestic courts and that many of the above-mentioned obstacles can be removed simply by interpreting correctly the normative standards of contemporary international law. After a cursory account of the legal proceedings against General Pinochet in the United Kingdom, section two will examine the emergence of the notion of individual accountability under international law in an historical perspective. The role of international and national tribunals in the prosecution of individual crimes of international law will be evaluated in sections three and four respectively. Section five is taken up with the analysis of the two legal doctrines which can considerably restrain the action of domestic courts in enforcing international criminal law: foreign sovereign immunity and act of state. Finally, in section six, with a view to setting the agenda for the future consolidation of international criminal law, some fundamental policy goals, which should guide the legal and political action of the international community in the years to come, will be highlighted. The Pinochet Case General Pinochet entered the United Kingdom in September 1997. Just before his return to Chile, after undergoing surgery in London, he was arrested on the basis of two provisional arrest warrants issued by UK magistrates, at the request of Spanish courts, 3 pursuant to the European Convention on Extradition. 4 General Pinochet’s counsels immediately moved to have the two arrest warrants quashed by the High Court. On October 28, the Divisional Court of the Queen’s Bench Division ruled 5 that the first arrest warrant was invalid and the crimes for which extradition had been requested by Spain were not extradition crimes under the UK Extradition Act. 6 With regard to the second arrest [End Page 98] warrant, the Lord Chief Justice held, interpreting the relevant provisions of the UK State Immunity Act, that General Pinochet...

Introduction: International Law as Law of the EU, Enzo Cannizzaro, Paolo Palchetti, Ramses A. Wessel I. General Issues: Monism, Dualism and the European Legal Order Reconsidering the Relationship between International and EU Law: Towards a Content-Based Approach? Ramses A. Wessel The Neo-Monism of the European Legal Order, Enzo Cannizzaro The EU at Crossroads: A Constitutional Inquiry into the way International Law is received within the EU Legal Order, Jan Willem van Rossem II. International Law within the EU Customary International Law in the European Union, Alessandra Gianelli The Validity of EU Norms Conflicting with International Obligations, Jan Klabbers Using International Law for the European Union's Domestic Affairs, Bruno de Witte International Agreements in the Area of the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy, Panos Koutrakos The Application of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law in CSDP Operations, Frederik Naert III. International Decisions in EU Law Effects of Decisions of the UN Security Council in the EU Legal Order, Andrea Gattini Direct Effect of International Agreements in the EU Legal Order: Does it Depend on the Existence of an International Dispute Settlement Mechanism? Beatrice Bonafe On the Absence of Direct Effect of the WTO Dispute Settlement Body's Decisions in the EU Legal Order, Antonello Tancredi Consistent Interpretation of WTO Rulings in the EU Legal Order? Giacomo Gattinara IV. Member States' International Law and EU Law Member States Agreements as Union Law, Marise Cremona Mixed Agreements as a Source of European Union Law, Eleftheria Neframi V. International Law and EU Law: The Role of Judges International Law as Law of the EU: the Role of the ECJ, Christina Eckes Judicial Review of the International Validity of UN Security Council Resolutions by the European Court of Justice, Paolo Palchetti Giving Indirect Effect to International Law within the EU Legal Order: The Doctrine of Consistent Interpretation, Frederico Casolari

INTRODUCTION. While abroad over the past decades both comprehensive research and publications touching on individual aspects of amicus curiae in international law have been edited, it garnered only very little scholarly attention in Russian scientific literature. The frequency of its use and the nature of its impact on international judicial and quasi-judicial proceedings vary among branches of international law. This article considers one of the functions that an amicus curiae may perform in international criminal proceedings – the function of expertise.MATERIALS AND METHODS. The article is based on the existing volume of scientific knowledge in different branches of international law, such as law of international treaties, international criminal law, law of international organizations, human rights law, international economic law, history of international law and others. The research is based on the conclusions and inferences achieved mainly in the foreign doctrine of international law including publications of this year, due to the low degree of development of the topic in Russian literature. The empirical basis of the research is formed by international legal acts, internal acts of international criminal tribunals, materials of proceedings relating to interstate disputes, international advisory proceedings, practice of international criminal courts. The methodology used is a combination of general scientific methods of cognition (methods of analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, critical and dialectical) and private scientific methods typical for legal sciences (historical, comparative).RESEARCH RESULTS. International criminal courts actively rely on the amicus curiae mechanism to obtain information, both legal and factual, on issues under consideration in criminal proceedings. The admission of amicus curiae to international criminal proceedings is entirely at the discretion of the judiciary. In practice, amicus curiae applications are submitted by subjects of international law, international non-governmental organizations, natural and legal persons and professional associations.DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS. Too frequent use of amicus curiae mechanism seems to be difficult to reconcile with the iura novit curia maxima. Its current practice provides fertile ground for all kinds of abuse and needs to be reviewed. In particular, the experience of the UN International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and the UN Commission on International Trade Law could be instructive in this regard.

Regional human rights courts like the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), and the African Court of Human and People's Rights (ACtHPR) have become popular sites of mobilization for victims and activists who seek justice when justice fails at home. Besides being platforms for individual remedy, human rights courts increasingly shape social norms and state policy within countries, making them attractive avenues for rights advocates to develop new norms or to push domestic authorities to reform legislation. The judges of these courts can decide, for example, whether same-sex couples have a right to be married, if prisoners have the right to vote or receive HIV/AIDS treatment, or when a state can deport illegal immigrants to a country where they will likely be tortured. As these courts pass their judgments, they often find themselves in conflict with states that are violating human rights of marginalized groups on a large scale and are unwilling to implement international rulings. Although international human rights courts have become increasingly popular venues among victims and activists who seek justice when justice fails at home, we are only beginning to understand how activists play roles in shaping the development of regional human rights courts' case law—the body of judgments that shapes how judges will make their decisions in the future. We now have plenty of international relations and international legal research on the interactions between states and international courts: how judges in these courts wrestle between deferring to the interests of member state governments whose actions are on trial and sticking closely to the conventions' fundamental yet evolving principles (Alter et al., 2019; Helfer & Voeten, 2014). As some states begin to resist international courts' authority, scholars have begun to examine the dynamics of this backlash (Hillebrecht, 2022; Madsen et al., 2018; Sandholtz et al., 2018). Recent studies have also demonstrated that human rights advocates—whether NGOs or individual lawyers—have a significant impact on shaping the jurisprudence of international courts and the impact judgments have in concrete locations (Kahraman, 2018; Sundstrom, 2014; van der Vet, 2012; Kurban, 2020; Conant, 2018; Harms, 2021; Cichowski, 2016; Hodson, 2011; Haddad, 2018). Meanwhile, these advocates themselves have been subject to repression and stigmatization by governments as part of the backlash phenomenon. Without an adequate understanding of the factors shaping activists' engagement with international courts, we risk undervaluing their strategic impact on the expansion of case law, the human rights protection of marginalized groups who cannot find remedies at home, and the domestic implementation of these judgments in an age of state backlash. In this section, we summarize the three papers contained in this symposium and their original contributions to these themes. Over the last decade, dozens of countries have erected legal barriers or started vilifying campaigns to stymie the work of NGOs (Buyse, 2018; Chaudhry, 2022). One tactic in this toolkit is the enactment of burdensome regulation on NGOs that receive funds from foreign donors as they allegedly promote foreign agendas (Christensen & Weinstein, 2013; Dupuy et al., 2021). States that frequently abuse human rights are especially prone to target NGOs that engage in strategic litigation (Hillebrecht, 2019). Most NGOs depend on foreign funding, and NGOs that litigate international cases fall disproportionately in this category, but do funders affect the selection of cases? In “Foreign Agents or Agents of Justice? Private Foundations, NGO Backlash, and International Human Rights Litigation,” Heidi Haddad and Lisa Sundstrom examine the extent to which Western donors, particularly private foundations, have encouraged NGOs in Europe to litigate at the ECtHR as a human rights advocacy strategy. They examine overall patterns of donor funding and NGO litigation records, and look in more detail at the case of Russian NGOs' foreign funding and litigation records. The analysis is extremely timely, as the Russian government's criminalization of independent civil society actors, especially in the human rights field, and their accusation that foreign funding turns NGOs into “foreign agents” have been crucial elements of the Russian regime's autocratization. This claim has also provided fuel for Russia's disenchantment with the ECtHR in recent years, contributing to the assessment of many observers that Russia's full-scale attack on Ukraine was the last straw in an inevitable collision course leading to its exit from the Council of Europe. Haddad and Sundstrom debunk the idea that foreign donors are pushing NGOs toward strategies of human rights litigation. Instead, they argue, there is more evidence that NGOs themselves promoted the mechanism of international litigation as a strategy that donors later adopted. This article is a poignant reminder of the advocacy tools that Russian human rights activists and citizens have lost as a result of their government's departure from the Council of Europe, including ECtHR jurisdiction. Yet it also provides insight into the likely roles of foreign donors in other country cases where NGOs are using international court litigation as a human rights advocacy strategy, which is often a target of the ire of national governments, as explored in the next article in the symposium. When states attack human rights NGOs within their borders and/or international human rights courts themselves, how does this affect the willingness of those NGOs to take cases to international courts, and the ways in which they do so? De Silva and Plagis ask this question in their article about state backlash against NGOs in the case of Tanzania and the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights. A fascinating empirical question they pose is: does state backlash against NGOs increase NGO litigation at international courts (to contest state repression at those courts and use international mechanisms when domestic ones are not available), roughly in line with Keck and Sikkink's famous “boomerang pattern” (Keck & Sikkink, 1998), or decrease it due to heightened fear and restricted NGO capabilities that state repression creates? Employing a process-tracing analysis of NGOs' involvement in three cases before the African Court at different stages of the Tanzanian government's backlash against the Court, De Silva and Plagis find that “two-level backlash” by states can result in both phenomena, either promoting or deterring NGO legal mobilization at international human rights courts, depending on certain conditions. The three selected cases concerning the death penalty, the rights of persons with albinism, and the rights of pregnant schoolgirls and mothers, which took place at different time periods, demonstrate a number of patterns of state backlash interacting with NGO strategies. The authors find that domestic-level state backlash deterred domestic NGOs from partnering with international NGOs in litigation, but that such backlash, when it repressed domestic political and legal mobilization opportunities, actually encouraged both Tanzanian and international NGOs to turn to the African Court more frequently to seek remedies. International-level backlash in turn only deterred NGOs from international litigation when such backlash consisted of state efforts to restrict NGOs' ability to engage in litigation, and not when the international backlash was in the form of routine noncompliance with African Court rulings. Importantly, the authors find that NGO responses to state backlash were significantly shaped by their degree of legal consciousness and expertise with the rules, proceedings, and workings of the African Court. Those NGOs with less knowledge and experience were more likely to back away from engaging with the Court under the pressure of state backlash. De Silva and Plagis conclude that “NGOs' persistent human rights advocacy in the face of state backlash is a double-edged sword,” in the sense that they may not be deterred by state backlash initially, but there is a danger that their continued determination to engage in international litigation could prompt governments to engage in even more severe forms of backlash, with critical impacts on international courts and already vulnerable human rights defenders. Rights advocates have a growing menu of institutions and courts available to them. How do activists choose at which institution to lodge their cases in a world where legal remedies have diversified, or as some have argued, fragmented (Koskenniemi & Leino, 2002)? In “What Makes an International Institution Work for Labor Activists? Shaping International Law through Strategic Litigation,” Filiz Kahraman goes beyond the tendency of legal mobilization studies to only examine how activists interact with a single court or institution. Instead, Kahraman opens up how rights advocates imagine which institution is most receptive to their claims. Drawing on a comparative interview study of British and Turkish trade union activists and their legal mobilization campaigns at international courts and quasi-judicial institutions like the International Labor Organization (ILO), Kahraman examines how activists first probe and then strategically identify which court or international institution is most susceptible to their primary goals of influencing structural reforms and setting new norms. Through this probing process—or dynamic signaling game between courts and litigants—activists push a court's jurisprudence and case law into new issue areas. For instance, at the ECtHR, Turkish trade unionists challenged domestic courts' ruling that public sector workers did not have the right to establish unions, even though the ECtHR had no established case law on labor rights in 1990s. They won the case, with the ECtHR finding that Turkey violated the right of public sector workers to unionize. These cases not only had an impact within Turkey, but over the next decades, similar cases brought by British unionists would spin off the early precedent set by the Turkish legal mobilization efforts. Kahraman argues that they ultimately pushed the ECtHR to recognize the basic trade union rights as fundamental human rights. Kahraman sheds light on the often hidden strategies behind international litigation. Activists litigate not just for the immediate impact on the current case they work on, but how they envision that all the cases they work on may shape norms and domestic structural reforms further in the future. Whether an institution is perceptive of claims lies in the eye of the beholder. Kahraman finds that besides targeting institutions with high compliance rates, they also take cases to institutions with low rates of compliance, especially “if these institutions have extensive judicial authority to create new international norms.” So, it is not the de jure protection set by an international courts, but rather how activists perceive the juridical responsiveness and judicial authority of courts—or, how judges adopt either an activist approach or restraint in response to incoming cases and how willing states are to implement cases of a court, respectively—that determines why activists select certain courts or quasi-judicial institutions (like the ILO). Kahraman gives us new tools to interpret how activists perceive authority and receptiveness and respond to opportunities. Rather than static external legal remedies, courts and quasi-judicial institutions are opportunity structures that are malleable to the strategic vision of the activist or litigant. The articles in this symposium together reveal a number of key overlapping insights. At the broadest level, they demonstrate that activists' behaviors and strategies influence international courts' jurisprudence, politics within states, and the human rights outcomes of everyday citizens—and these influences have often been hidden in our existing canon of research on international courts. In addition, all of these articles show that, while activists may face challenges in their efforts, often including significant backlash from their home state governments, they also continue to retain significant agency through their creative efforts to develop legal strategies and circumvent state repression. Activists perennially innovate: sparking the ideas that inspire donors who fund them; calculating how to continue their litigation work when government actors threaten them; and taking risks in litigation to push courts to expand how they define human rights. However, along with these uplifting conclusions, there are worrying patterns that demand future research. States are increasingly pushing back against the powers of international courts to bind them to costly measures, and as this symposium has shown, national governments often point to activists as contributors to this “problem” of invasive international human rights standards. A growing body of research has tracked how human rights defenders of all kinds globally are under threat from actors like governments and corporations who disagree with their contentious actions. We need more studies that gather comprehensive data and systematically track these threats, specifically with regard to activists who engage in international human rights litigation. We suspect that such activists are likely disproportionately targeted due to the international visibility of their complaints. We also desperately need research into possible innovative responses to these threats to activists—responses from activists, funders, governments of countries that support human rights, and international courts themselves. Freek van der Vet is a University Researcher at the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Helsinki and the principal investigator of the Toxic Crimes Project. Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom is Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia. She is the director of the ActinCourts network at UBC and conducts research on legal mobilization by Russian activists.

Explaining and Evaluating the UNMIK Court System

This study offers a comprehensive analysis of the intricate legal obligations resulting from Yemen’s protracted conflict. The research examines the history of the Yemeni conflict, identifying the main players and their violations of human rights law and international humanitarian law (IHL and HRL, respectively). Using a combination of legal analysis, case studies, and a review of official reports from international bodies, the study methodically investigates specific violations, such as attacks on civilians, the use of prohibited weapons, and the obstruction of humanitarian aid. The study’s significance lies in its all-encompassing methodology in evaluating the legal obligations of state and non-state entities engaged in the war. It highlights the responsibilities these parties have under international law, particularly with regard to upholding IHL, safeguarding civilians, and ensuring war crimes are held accountable. The research draws upon primary data from victim and witness interviews, as well as original sources such as UN Security Council resolutions, Geneva Conventions, and legal precedents. The findings demonstrate that major actors, including the Saudi-led coalition, the Houthi movement, the Yemeni government, and other extremist groups, have routinely and widely violated IHL and HRL, resulting in significant civilian suffering and a humanitarian crisis. The study underscores the need for enhanced international efforts to hold violators accountable, including the use of international and national courts, and emphasizes the critical role of the UN Security Council in safeguarding civilians and promoting justice. The research contributes to the broader discourse on international legal responsibility in armed conflicts, offering critical insights and recommendations for legal and humanitarian interventions in Yemen and similar contexts.