This month:

• Case law database
• Cultural heritage
• Digital evidence database
• Nuremberg trials
• Syria: arbitrary imprisonment and detention
• Syria: ten years of IHL scholarship on the Syrian conflict

Case Law Database

On 9 March, the ICC launched its “ICC Case Law Database”. The database provides free and easy access to the court’s jurisprudence on core international crimes and international criminal procedure, the rights of the accused and the rights of victims. Users can search for jurisprudence based on several criteria, including a full-text search and a keyword-based search. The database contains more than 6,000 legal findings extracted from the judgments, decisions and orders that have been issued by the court. A French version is under development. The database is part of the International Criminal Court’s Legal Tools Database.

Cultural heritage

On 23 March, the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC published the draft Policy on Cultural Heritage. The draft is now open for consultation and comments by States Parties to the Rome Statute, civil society, and the wider community of stakeholders. It builds on good law, practices, experiences and juresprudence. The development is in line with the ICC’s plan to pay particular attention to crimes against and affecting cultural heritage and the commitment to systematically investigate and prosecute such crimes.

“Cultural heritage is the  … human story, a celebration of identity, our commonality and the richness of our diversity.  We all have a duty to protect cultural heritage.”

Digital evidence database

The International Nuremberg Principles Academy has released its ‘Digital Evidence Database’, a unique online tool that provides a comprehensive collection of material on digital evidence. It addresses the challenges related to the use of digital evidence in international criminal proceedings. The database furthermore, aims to compile a broad collection of guidelines and handbooks and incorporates material relevant to the analysis, examination, verification and submission of digital evidence to judicial and quasi-judicial bodies. The database is designed to ensure its accessibility, user-friendliness and searchability. Investigators, first responders, practitioners, policymakers, researchers, students, activists and many others are the target audience of this database.

• The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic has released a report that summarizes the key trends in arbitrary imprisonment and detention in the Syrian Arab Republic from March 2011 to December 2020. The report furthermore includes enforced disappearances and incommunicado detention, torture, inhuman or degrading treatment, sexual violence and death in detention;
• To mark the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the Syrian conflict, the ICRC Library has published a special issue of the IHL bibliography covering 10 years of international humanitarian law scholarship on the conflict. Unsurprisingly, the issue of accountability for violations of IHL features heavily in these publications. The diversity of issues covered, from foreign fighters to chemical weapons and cultural heritage, gives us a somewhat clinical picture of the Syrian tragedy;
• For an overview of the effects of the conflict on the Syrian people, ICRC has released the report, A Decade of Loss: Syria’s Youth after 10 years of crisis, as well as an earlier report entitled “I saw my city die” : voices from the front lines of urban conflict in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.