Toward Cybersecurity Standards for Digital Evidence at the ICC

James Robert Quick

I. International Criminal Justice Has Entered the Digital Evidence Era Without Digital Forensics Standards

The International Criminal Court has modernized the collection of evidence faster than it has modernized the authentication of evidence. That gap, between enthusiastic embrace of digital submission infrastructure and an underdeveloped framework for forensic-grade verification, has become one of the most consequential unresolved problems in contemporary international criminal procedure. Wars are now documented through smartphones, satellite imagery, Telegram channels, and open-source investigations of a sophistication unimaginable a decade ago; the Office of the Prosecutor receives hundreds of thousands of digital submissions annually through platforms built for the task. And, working with Eurojust, the Office of the Prosecutor has issued guidance to civil society organizations for documenting those crimes. The evidentiary framework governing those submissions, however, remains substantially anchored in assumptions developed for an analog world.

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From Power Transition to Humanitarian Catastrophe: The SAF–RSF Conflict and Its Human Rights Implications

Hussin Alameedi

Introduction

In April 2023, Sudan’s Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) engaged in a war.[1] The war has devasted communities, displaced millions, and exacerbated an already dire humanitarian crisis.[2] Coupled with severe droughts and deadly floods, the effects of conflict and environmental instability are pushing communities to the brink.[3] In some parts of the country famine has already been declared, putting millions of lives at immediate risk.[4] This post explores the root of the armed conflict, the relationship between the ongoing armed conflict in Sudan and human rights violations, and the international community’s response.

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Propriety of Intervention of the International Criminal Court in the Boko Haram Situation in Nigeria

Izuchukwu Temilade Nwagbara Esq

The concept of international criminal law, which became prominent after the second world war with the Nuremberg trials, purports to prosecute crimes against humanity of a large and systematic scale/nature in a furious attempt to end impunity in human relations.[1] As such, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC)[2]—the primary treaty in international criminal law—provides that the ICC shall have jurisdiction with respect to the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crimes of aggression.[3] In relation to the Boko Haram[4] situation in Nigeria, crimes against humanity and war crimes are the most relevant as regards the jurisdiction of the ICC.[5] Therefore, this post examines the possibility and the propriety of a prosecution of Boko Haram members in the ICC for their actions which come under the jurisdiction of the court.

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Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Civilians And The Rome Statute

Written by Garima Tiwari

 

More than 2,000 Palestinians were killed in the 50-day conflict in July and August, about 70 percent of them civilians, according to the U.N. Seventy-one Israeli soldiers and civilians were killed in combat and in rocket and mortar strikes. [i]The chief Palestinian Authority negotiator, Saeb Erekat, claimed that 96 percent of Gazans killed in the summer’s Israel-Hamas conflict were civilians, reiterated PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s charge of Israeli “genocide,” and accused Israel of seeking to impose apartheid on the Palestinians.[ii] Continue reading

Prosecuting Gender-Based Crimes: An Interview with Dr. Hilmi M. Zawati

A conversation with: Regina Paulose

In a virtual interview, accompanying the release of Dr. Zawati’s new book, Fair Labelling and the Dilemma of Prosecuting Gender-Based Crimes at the International Criminal Tribunals by Oxford University Press (2014), we discuss the prosecution of gender based crimes in the international legal system. Dr. Zawati explains below that the lack of accurate description of gender-based crimes in the statutory laws of the international criminal tribunals and courts infringes the principle of “fair labelling,” lead to inconsistent verdicts and punishments, and constitutes a barrier to justice. As a result, sexual violence in wartime settings should be prosecuted separately as crimes in themselves, not as a subsection of war crimes or crimes against humanity. Continue reading