New assets

Peter ten Hove
05 juni 2020

This month:

  1. New books
  2. Corporate responsibility
  3. Archives disclosed
  4. Podcast series on Branch 251
  5. Screening social media and smartphones in asylum cases
  6. Report on unlawful attacks and mass displacement in Syria

New books

This month some new highly interesting books have been published:

  • Legacies of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. A multidisciplinary approach. Edited by Carsten Stahn, Carmel Agius, Serge Brammertz, and Colleen Rohan. This publication provides an in-deth and first-hand account of the legacies of the ICTY, one of the pioneering experiments in international criminal justice;
  • Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Article by Article Commentary. Fourth Edition;
  • Perpetrating Genocide. A Criminological Account. Written by Kjell Anderson;
  • Business, Human Rights and Transitional Justice. Written by Irene Pietropaoli

Corporate Responsibility

The European Coalition for Corporate Justice (ECCJ) has updated both its map and its comparative legal analysis of the different mandatory Human Rights Due Diligence (mHRDD) laws and proposals in Europe. The map provides an overview of the different mHRDD processes in Europe, classified in the categories:

  1. policy statements;
  2. government commitment;
  3. legislative process;
  4. adopted law.

The comparative table provides an overview of the specific provisions in the laws adopted or being discussed at the national level, as well as in the concrete legislative proposals put forward in different European countries. The table analyses

  1. the status, nature and scope of each law and legislative proposal;
  2. the standards they aim to protect;
  3. the due diligence and transparency obligations they aim to impose;
  4. and the civil liability and public enforcement mechanisms foreseen, if any.
  • The ECCJ also published an updated version of its paper on Evidence for MHRDD legislation, which collects a list of key policy and legislative developments in the field of mHRDD that show the emergent trend towards binding legislation.
  • The book Business, Human Rights and Transitional Justice addresses how corporates may become involved in human rights violations and crimes under international law ‒ either as the main perpetrators or as accomplices by aiding and abetting government actors. It describes how innovative transitional justice mechanisms have now started to address corporate accountability for human rights abuses and crimes under international law and have attempted to provide redress for victims.

Archives disclosed

The Transitional Justice Center has updated its website. It now provides access to its agencies’ archive with reports on ICTY’s War Crime Trials and Reviews on the International Court of Justice hearings involving states of the former Yugoslavia (1998-2019).

Podcast series Branch 251

Branch 251 is a podcast about the world’s first criminal trial dealing with atrocity crimes committed by Syrian officials. Prosecutors in the German city of Koblenz accuse two alleged henchmen of the Syrian government of crimes against humanity committed at ‘Branch 251’ detention center near Damascus.

Branch 251 gives you a weekly update on the trial. With portraits of the main protagonists. Comments, analysis, and voices of the actors playing their part in the courtroom. Especially victims and their families who are looking for justice. But will a German court in a city nobody has ever heard of be able to deliver justice? Or are the obstacles too many that loom on the horizon? Website: branch-251.captivate.fm.

Screening social media and smartphones in asylum procedures

The Center for International Criminal Justice (CICJ) has published a report on the increasing use of social media and mobile devices by asylum seekers, which offers new vetting opportunities for immigration authorities, to verify the identity or to assess national-security or 1F-exclusion aspects. In the Journal of Refugee Studies, Maarten Bolhuis and Joris van Wijk describe and analyse the growing reliance on social media and smartphone screening by immigration authorities in five European countries.

In March 2019 the European Asylum Support Office’s Exclusion Network organised a meeting addressing the same phenomena. This network aims to detect, investigate and address immigrants alledgedly responsible for core international crimes.

Nowhere is safe for us

Amnesty International has published “Nowehere is Safe for Us. Unlawfull Attacks and Mass Displacement in North-West Syria”.

It documents a total of 18 attacks on medical facilities and schools that happened between 5 May 2019 and 25 February 2020 in Idlib, north-western Hama and western Aleppo governorates. Syrian government forces carried out three ground attacks and two barrel bomb attacks. The remaining 13 attacks were air strike attacks: two by Syrian government forces, seven by Russian government forces, and four by Syrian or Russian government forces.

Evidence shows that the attacks led to serious violations of international humanitarian law, such as:

  • the attacks were not directed at a specific military object;
  • they violated the immunity from direct attack of civilians and civilian objects;
  • they violated the special protection afforded to specific persons and objects, particularly medical facilities, medical personnel and children;
  • a well-established pattern of Syrian government forces targeting civilian infrastructure and civilians in areas under the control of armed opposition groups as part of a widespread and systematic attack on the civilian population, therefore constituting crimes against humanity.

The onslaught pushed close to 1 million people out of their homes and in the direction of the Turkish border. The vast majority of them were women and children.