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Interviewing Vice President Riek Machar while covering the South Sudan referendum for The Washington Post
Articles
The ‘Year of Climate’ in International Courts
A backgrounder on how climate cases came before four international courts, with a summary of issues each court has been asked to address, offers a one-stop resource to refer to as opinions are issued in the weeks and months ahead. Read … Read more >>
Where is the ICC Prosecutor?
The silence emanating from the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, is growing louder by the hour. Three full days after Hamas perpetrated atrocities inside Israel and took civilian hostages into Gaza, Khan has … Read more >>
Facebook Beware
In its public-facing quarterly financial reports, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, labels all countries in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East as the “Rest of World.” Although one-third of Facebook’s … Read more >>
Scholarship
Platform-Enabled Crimes
B.C. L. Rev (2022). Online intermediaries are omnipresent. Each day, across the globe, the corporations that run these platforms execute policies and practices that serve their profit model, typically by sustaining user engagement. … Read more >>
Governing the Global Public Square
Harv. Int'l L. J. (2021). Social media platforms are the public square of our era – a reality that has been entrenched by the widespread closure of physical public spaces in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. And this online space is global … Read more >>
User-Generated Evidence
Rebecca Hamilton, User-Generated Evidence, Col. J. Transnat'l L. (2018) Around the world, people are using their smartphones to document atrocities. Smartphone apps designed to allow Users to record material that will meet evidentiary … Read more >>
Voices from Fighting for Darfur
Getting Congress focused on sexual violence against Darfuris
A great effort underway by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) today in D.C. They are giving a lunchtime briefing to Members of Congress on sexual violence against Darfuri women and girls. In the (unlikely) event that any members of Congress or their staffers are reading this, I urge you to attend.This issue is not covered well in the media (while “the act” of rape itself gets more media play these days, the actual issues that matter to those who live through it – like the medical, psychological and legal services they need afterwards – and the interlinkages between reporting, treatment and prevention, are generally overlooked).
From PHR:
“An immediate goal for US policy which is not explicitly addressed in the new comprehensive approach is an end to the gender-based violence occurring inside and outside camps in Chad and Darfur and an end to impunity for the crime of rape.
In line with US Strategic Objective #1, “A definitive end to conflict, gross human rights abuses, and genocide in Darfur,” UNAMID and all UN agencies must be tasked with specific reporting on the problem of gender-based violence and must be free to report without obstruction by local authorities. The current system, which discourages women from reporting rape and seeking justice, must be reformed and existing rape laws must be strengthened.
The US and UN must also immediately demand a commitment from the Government of Sudan to cease impeding support programs for victims of gender-based violence and remove any obstacles to gender-based violence programming in technical agreements between the government and humanitarian NGOs.”