Category Archives: Courts

Legal Adviser Jonathan O’Donohue sets out Amnesty International’s call for the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) to appeal Pre-Trial Chamber II’s rejection of its request to open an investigation in the Afghanistan situation emphasising that the legitimacy of the ICC is at stake.

The International Criminal Court’s decision not to authorize an investigation into crimes committed in Afghanistan under international law marks a shocking abandonment of victims and will further weaken the court’s credibility, Amnesty International said today.

Legal Adviser Jonathan O’Donohue highlights the urgent need for Pre-Trial Chamber II to determine whether to authorize an investigation.

Amnesty International’s International Justice Team’s statement at the conclusion of the seventeenth Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute.

Responding to the International Criminal Court’s Preliminary Examination Report released on 5 December 2018, Amnesty International calls on the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) to launch an investigation into crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Nigeria during the conflict with Boko Haram.

Amnesty International’s Campaigner for Central Africa Tity Agbahey reflects on the importance of the Special Criminal Court in Central African Republic for victims. This opinion piece was originally posted on Medium.

Amnesty International’s key recommendations for the seventeenth session of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute (‘ASP’). The ASP will take place in The Hague from 5 to 12 December 2018.

Legal Adviser Jonathan O’Donohue, with the important contributions of International Criminal Justice Clinic students Andy Kuoch and Stuart Dixon, examines the majority of the Pre-Trial Chamber’s ruling on jurisdiction, considers the Prosecutor’s decision to proceed with the preliminary examination and emphasises the need for further international justice efforts to address impunity in Myanmar.

In this final piece in our series commenting on the Bemba Appeals Judgment. Amnesty’s International Justice Team reflects on victims’ experience of this and other cases and argues that the focus must change from defining justice for victims solely as outcomes of cases towards improving their experience of the justice process as a whole.

In this fifth opinion piece reviewing the Bemba Appeal Judgment, Amnesty’s International Justice Team consider concerns that, following the decision, “remote commanders” may be able to evade criminal responsibility at the ICC in future cases. It argues that, although remoteness can be a relevant factor in applying the elements of Article 28, any conclusion that remote commanders should be held to a different standard is unsupported by the Statute.