EJIL Talk!, the Blog of the European Journal of International Law, last week had a symposium (see: https://www.ejiltalk.org/), which has addressed a number of legal issues arising from HRW’s report released in late April 2021 “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution.” This report has received significant media attention.
See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/01/18/israel-and-apartheid-israeli-human-rights-group-stirs-debate/ and https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/05/10/israeli-government-sponsored-app-goes-after-hrw-for-apartheid-categorisation/
On 9 july 2021 Clive Baldwin, Senior Legal Adviser of HRW, uses the opportunity to contribute to a substantive discussion focusing primarily on the implications of the report for the broader international legal discourse.
After detailed discussion of the international LEGAL aspects, he concludes:
The discussion demonstrates the importance of considering the term “apartheid” under international criminal law as a specific crime against humanity, together with the closely related crime against humanity of persecution. This requires a legal understanding of its definition and constitutive elements, as well as of ways to apply it. To even begin the process of criminal justice, prosecutors – and in particular those at the ICC – will first need to understand and investigate these crimes. Legal discussions like this symposium can, we hope, help advance this objective. These are crimes against humanity that have been neglected for too long.
This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.