Search Results for: Rwanda genocide

A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. —US President Donald Trump via social media Modern international justice is the product of lessons learned from civilizational destruction. And the language of civilizational destruction has a particular resonance in international law. It [...]

The 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70) opened at the United Nations headquarters in New York in March 9, bringing together global leaders, diplomats, judges, advocates, and civil society organizations under the theme “Rights. Justice. Action. For All Women and Girls.” The day’s proceedings made clear that while progress on [...]

The Grand Chamber judgment delivered unanimously by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) July 9 in Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia represents a transformative moment in international human rights law. The ruling does far more than document Russia’s systematic violations from 11 May 2014 to 16 September 2022. It fundamentally recalibrates the ECHR’s [...]

JURIST’s Sarisha Harikrishna interviews Professor Dr. John D. Ciorciari, Dean of the Hamilton Lugar School at Indiana University Bloomington on the practical challenges of prosecuting genocide and war crimes in Asia. While international courts have established legal frameworks for addressing mass atrocities, their application in Asia faces distinct obstacles shaped by regional politics and diplomatic [...]

A coalition of Rwanda-allied armed groups has committed a range of atrocities against civilians that violate international humanitarian law in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), including gang rapes and summary executions, according to Amnesty International. In a Wednesday briefing entitled “DRC: ‘They said we would die’: M23 and Wazalendo abuses in eastern Congo,” [...]

Two of Israel’s best-known human rights organizations charged on Monday that government practices and policies in the Gaza Strip amount to an ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people. B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI) each published a report and jointly announced their findings. It marks the first time that an Israel-based rights group has [...]

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) must take immediate action to combat human trafficking amid ongoing conflict in the country’s eastern regions, a high-ranking UN official urged Friday. Siobhán Mullally, the Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, said in a statement:  Conflict-related trafficking of children by armed groups persists with impunity, and is at [...]

UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Olivier De Schutter said on Friday that Rwanda needs to better distribute its wealth to protect populations that are still living below the poverty line, especially vulnerable rural populations. Although De Schutter praised Rwanda for its marked progress in reducing poverty, he warned that much could [...]

UN Special Envoy Huang Xia called for greater coordination of efforts to resolve the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Wednesday, amid escalating violence by the M23 rebel group and a deepening humanitarian crisis. Huang Xia, special envoy for the Great Lakes Region, stressed the urgent need to resolve the root causes [...]

Judi Rever is a Montreal-based journalist and author of In Praise of Blood, which investigates mass violence under Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s regime, using survivor testimonies, former soldiers, and leaked UN documents. A Ryerson journalism graduate, Rever covered the Congo-Rwanda crisis for Radio France-Internationale in 1997 and later reported for Agence France-Presse. Her work has [...]