Recently, a federal US court issued warrants for arrest of several Belarusian officials for “aircraft piracy.” These indictments come as the result of year-long investigations into alleged improprieties and deceit by the Belarus government in the interception and diversion of an international flight in its airspace in May last year. The resulting exposé has left many [...]
Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) is becoming a buzzword globally and within India, among debates centering around AI ethics and high-tech surveillance. FRT is a collective nomenclature for any system that conducts 1:1 verification functions, or 1:n monitoring and identification functions of individuals, using facial mapping and/or sensitive biometric data. While the technology conceptually can have [...]
We all recall the famous photo in 1938 of the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain stepping off his plane holding up an agreement with Adolf Hitler that averted a possible conflict with Germany. He gave away the Sudetenland and the political independence of Czechoslovakia to do so. Chamberlain proudly declared “peace in our time.” [...]
Credo quia absurdum. “I believe because it is absurd.” -Tertullian Macrocosm and Microcosm One thing is certain. If Donald J. Trump should decide to run again, various condemnations and justifications would instantly spring forth from absolutely every segment of the political spectrum. The deepest and truest explanations, however, would not be discoverable in day-to-day politics. [...]
Introduction “National Security lies not in protecting our borders but in reversing the substantial erosion of civil liberties.” – Theresa May The Indian Government, to deal with the 1958 Naga insurgency, enacted the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act of 1958. AFSPA aims to protect armed forces and carry out operations in conflict prone areas. The [...]
As we come closer to the opening of the Winter Olympiad in Beijing, China, a peoples in Western China is being destroyed “in whole or in part.” The world will assemble in the name of sport ignoring what is happening a few hundred miles away. It is a state-sponsored genocide by the very nation that [...]
“Whose house is of glass, must not throw stones at another.” – George Herbert Bangladesh has taken an increasingly regressive approach on human rights in the last few years. In December 2021, allegations surfaced online that the Inspector General of Bangladesh Police and Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) officers engaged in violations of international law, one being the [...]
“Where there is no Common Power, there is no Law….” Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter XIII The “State of Nature” as “State of War” From its modern beginnings in the seventeenth century – more precisely, since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 – international law has presumed firm distinctions between “national interest” and “world interest.” Rather [...]
The year 2022 began on a torrid note with the news that profiles of several Muslim women had been surreptitiously created on an app called Bulli Bai hosted on Git Hub for the purposes of putting the women up for ‘auction’. This was not the first instance when Muslim women were targeted through this online [...]
Twenty years ago this week, pursuant to a UN Security Council resolution, the United Nations (UN) entered into a bi-lateral treaty with the Republic of Sierra Leone, to create the world’s first hybrid international war crimes tribunal, the Special Court for Sierra Leone. A delegation travelled to the capital of Sierra Leone, Freetown, to hold [...]
