State-Enabled Crimes

International crimes are committed by individuals, but many – from genocide in Rwanda to torture at Abu Ghraib – would not have occurred without the integral role played by the State. This dual contribution, of individual and State, is intrinsic to the commission of what I term “State-Enabled Crimes.” Viewing international adjudication through the rubric of State-Enabled Crimes highlights a feature of the international judicial architecture that is typically taken for granted: its bifurcated structure. Notwithstanding the deep interrelationship between individual and State in the commission of State-Enabled Crimes, the international legal system adjudicates the responsibility of each under two entirely separate structures. One side of the system deals with State responsibility, the other deals with individual criminal responsibility, and the latter is overwhelmingly dominant. The result is that a handful of individuals are punished as the State policies and practices that enabled them are left untouched, virtually assuring the perpetuation of such crimes by other individuals in the future. This Article calls for a move from a bifurcated to an integrated response, in which the existing (but under-utilized) law of State responsibility would be incorporated into criminal proceedings against individuals accused of State-Enabled Crimes. An integrated response is normatively desirable. It will more accurately reflect the way these crimes are committed, generating a fairer allocation of responsibility between individual and State. It will also better satisfy standard justifications for the adjudication of inter-national crimes than assessing individual and State responsibility in isolation. Finally, it is feasible in practice, and I offer one mechanism through which it could be implemented

Future-Proofing U.S. Laws for War Crimes Investigations in the Digital Era

Advances in information technology have irrevocably changed the nature of war crimes investigations. The pursuit of accountability for the most serious crimes of concern to the international community now invariably requires access to digital evidence. The global reach of platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter means that much of that digital evidence is held by U.S. social media companies, and access to it is subject to the U.S. Stored Communications Act. This is the first Article to look at the legal landscape facing international investigators seeking access to digital evidence regarding genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggression. It analyzes Republic of Gambia v. Facebook (Meta), the first case to seek digital evidence from a U.S. social media company for an international proceeding on genocide. And it draws on material gleaned from background interviews with international investigators seeking digital evidence held by U.S. social media companies in relation to atrocities in Myanmar and Ukraine. This reveals two key problems facing international investigators. First, and in contrast to their counterparts in domestic criminal investigations, the Stored Communications Act provides no pathway through which international investigators can overcome the prohibition on disclosure of private digital evidence. Second, the ability of international investigators to access quasi-public digital evidence, and/or digital evidence that was public but has been removed by a social media company, is at the discretion of the social media company. A significant risk emerging from this arrangement is that evidence disclosure decisions are not made in a consistent and principled manner, but are instead driven by the self-interest of a few U.S. corporations, creating disparate outcomes across victim groups. The Article recommends two, non-exclusive, reforms that could be undertaken in the short term to advance principled disclosure decisions for accountability, while ensuring privacy protections and data security. It also urges U.S. social media companies to develop and publish their own interim guidelines on how they make evidence disclosure decisions, with a presumption in favor of disclosing removed public and quasipublic evidence needed for the pursuit of accountability for the international crimes of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggression. The Article concludes by pointing to the need for a long-term incremental process of research, reform, and review to future-proof U.S. law for war crimes accountability in the digital era

The ICC\u27s Exit Problem

The International Criminal Court (ICC) was never meant to supplant the domestic prosecution of international crimes. And yet the Court is now entering its second decade of operations in four African nations, with no plan for exit in sight. This Article identifies the looming need for the ICC to consider when and how to exit situations in which it is currently active. In addition to the normative concern that a failure to start planning for exit undercuts the Court’s placement within a system of complementarity, the need to consider exit is also driven by a financial imperative. The Court’s caseload is expanding at a radically faster rate than its budget, and there has already been a detrimental impact on the quality of the Court’s work. However consideration of exit reveals an immediate problem: While the Court’s constitutive document, the Rome Statute, provides much guidance on when the Court may enter a new situation, it offers no explicit guidance on exit whatsoever. This Article fills that lacuna, proposing a novel framework to guide exit decision-making that draws on both statutory and policy prescriptions, as well as insights from analogous international institutions. This Article’s focus on exit represents a new direction within the literature on the ICC which, for the first decade of the Court’s existence has focused almost exclusively on issues related to the entry of the Court into new situations. Yet two of the dimensions involved in exit decision-making, prosecutorial discretion and complementarity, are issues that the ICC has been grappling with since its inception. Consideration of exit provides a new opportunity to assess and extend our understanding of issues

An Evaluation of Potential Management Options for the Indo-Pacific Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops aduncus) Population in Kizimkazi, Zanzibar

A short-term study was conducted between November 3rd and November 30th of 2013 in which dolphin area usage was assessed and interviews conducted in order to evaluate which actions should be considered in order to improve dolphin management in Kizimkazi, Zanzibar. GPS coordinates during dolphin sightings were recorded while on tourist and volunteer boat trips to assess dolphin movement and distribution. While on the tourist boats, observations were also made regarding boat operator, tour guide, and tourist knowledge and behavior in relation to tourism interaction guidelines. Interviews were conducted with locals involved in the dolphin tourism sector, tour company representatives, government employees, and experts to determine any changes in dolphin sightings, the issues in the industry, the roles of government departments and NGOs, and potential solutions to improve dolphin tourism in the area, with the goal of creating recommendations for future action. It was discovered that dolphin sightings in the study occurred in different areas than the most recent previous study and that there may also be a shift in group sizes and behavior, all as a result of pressures from fishing and tourist boats. From both observations and interview responses, it was noticed that the guidelines for interaction (Appendix 1) are almost always violated. This is due to the fact that, despite many seminars having been held in the area, all boat captains still lack complete knowledge of these guidelines. To date, government departments have had no direct involvement in managing dolphin populations in the area. It is recommended that there be a compromise reached with fishermen to lower dolphin bycatch, that the government set a standard payment to boat captains per boat trip, and that the current guidelines be altered to make them simpler and enforcement be carried out by the Department of Fisheries using funding from the Menai Bay Conservation Area. Throughout this process, there will need to be continued communication and cooperation with locals to ensure long-term success of this conservation plan

Ukraine\u27s Push to Prosecute Aggression: Implications for Immunity Ratione Personae and the Crime of Aggression

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine dates back to its 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s southern peninsula, Crimea. It was Russia’s brazen full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, however, that captured global attention and put the crime of aggression – the resort to war in violation of the UN Charter3 – in the spotlight

Relational Aggression and the Impact it has on Female Adolescents

Recent research has been dedicated to understanding relational aggression and how it impacts females. In this paper the researcher created a survey. The survey focused on the aggressor, the victim, the impact of relational aggression toward friendships, school attendance and the most commonly used relational aggressive behaviors. The survey was administered to forty female students in a suburban High School. Overall, the results of this study suggested that relational aggression had no impact on the selected students friendships or school attendance. However, the students did report that they did not think their school had done everything they can to handle issues related to relational aggression. Results pointed to the need of school staff to address relational aggressive behaviors when students are in their freshman and sophomore year of high school. The students surveyed provided feedback for their teachers, school counselors and administrators on how they would like them to address relational aggression behaviors in their school. Training for the entire staff on relational aggression was also recommended

Forest, fire and monsoon: A palaeo-environmental assessment of the ecological threshold dynamics of South-east Asia’s dry forests

Projections that the frequency and intensity of extremes in the Asian monsoon will rise are being made with increasing confidence. There is concern that these events may drive south-east Asian dry tropical forest (SASDTF) - an extensive ecoregion affected by this climate system - across critical thresholds. This could have implications both in terms of biodiversity loss from an area of global ecological significance, and for the flow of services that it provides to a populous part of the world. Little work has been done on the threshold dynamics of SASDTF, however, research from dry tropical forests elsewhere indicates that associated ecosystems may be susceptible to abrupt reorganisation to savanna under reduced precipitation regimes, increased rainfall seasonality, or if burnt. This project uses a high-resolution, multi-proxy analysis of two sediment cores extracted from Cambodian crater lakes - situated at the heart of SASDTF - to assess long-term ecological response to these identified drivers. Reconstruction of past climate using geochemical proxies of lake water levels indicates a stepwise weakening of the summer monsoon from 4700 to 450 cal. yrs BP. This trend is punctuated by a notable dry period from 1900 to 1500 cal. yrs BP. Charcoal records demonstrate that fire has been a persistent feature of SASDTF over the past 4700 years. A reconstruction of the ecological history of SASDTF indicates resilience to climatic forcing and periods of high fire activity. As vegetation appears to shift from closed to open forest formations during a weaker summer monsoon or in response to fire activity, the mosaics of open- and closed- units that characterise the ecoregion have been identified as important for future forest persistence. Broadly, this research emphasises the limitations of generalist biome-scale resilience modelling, stressing the importance of long-term, intra-biome level research for predicting ecological response to climatic and anthropogenic forcing

Future-Proofing U.S. Laws for War Crimes Investigations in the Digital Era

Advances in information technology have irrevocably changed the nature of war crimes investigations. The pursuit of accountability for the most serious crimes of concern to the international community now invariably requires access to digital evidence. The global reach of platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter means that much of that digital evidence is held by U.S. social media companies, and access to it is subject to the U.S. Stored Communications Act. This is the first Article to look at the legal landscape facing international investigators seeking access to digital evidence regarding genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggression. It analyzes Republic of Gambia v. Facebook(Meta), the first case to seek digital evidence from a U.S. social media company for an international proceeding on genocide. And it draws on material gleaned from background interviews with international investigators seeking digital evidence held by U.S. social media companies in relation to atrocities in Myanmar and Ukraine. This reveals two key problems facing international investigators. First, and in contrast to their counterparts in domestic criminal investigations, the Stored Communications Act provides no pathway through which international investigators can overcome the prohibition on disclosure of private digital evidence. Second, the ability of international investigators to access quasi-public digital evidence, and/or digital evidence that was public but has been removed by a social media company, is at the discretion of the social media company. A significant risk emerging from this arrangement is that evidence disclosure decisions are not made in a consistent and principled manner, but are instead driven by the self-interest of a few U.S. corporations, creating disparate outcomes across victim groups. The Article recommends two, non-exclusive, reforms that could be undertaken in the short term to advance principled disclosure decisions for accountability, while ensuring privacy protections and data security. It also urges U.S. social media companies to develop and publish their own interim guidelines on how they make evidence disclosure decisions, with a presumption in favor of disclosing removed public and quasi-public evidence needed for the pursuit of accountability for the international crimes of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggression. The Article concludes by pointing to the need for a long-term incremental process of research, reform, and review to future-proof U.S. law for war crimes accountability in the digital era

State-Enabled Crimes

They call it basat al-reeh (flying carpet). It is a custom-built wooden cross with a hinge in the middle. As Syrian survivors describe it, those torturing the survivors would tie them down on the cross, then force the two halves of the cross together, crushing the detainee inside. Basat al-reeh has been used systematically across state-run detention sites throughout Syria, with instructions on its use disseminated through the state apparatus and information on the implementation of those instructions sent back through a multi-nodal chain of command