Accountability
357 Articles
If US and UK Have Joined the Fighting in Yemen, What’s Their Duty to Investigate Alleged Saudi War Crimes?
Air strike in Sana’a, May 2015. Image by Ibrahem Qasim – Wikimedia If the United States and United Kingdom (have) become not just supporters of the Saudi-led coalition…
Full Text: Saudi-Led Coalition’s Statement of Explanation on Funeral Hall Bombing in Yemen
On Saturday, an investigation team with the Saudi-led coalition operations in Yemen released a statement explaining its findings of the reasons that led to the coalition’s…
International Justice Day Round-Up II: Bemba, the Crime of Aggression, and More Justice for Chile
This is Part II of an International Justice Day Top-10 Round Up. Part I—which discussed the recent judgment against Hissène Habré in the Extraordinary African Chambers, the…
A Return to Torture? Unlikely
One could be forgiven for thinking that all signs point towards torture making a comeback. Calls for the resumption of torture have been disturbingly prominent in this year’s…
Why Accountability for Iraq’s Militias Matters
Iraq is awash with daily atrocities, with the Islamic State (ISIL) reportedly burying people alive, drowning people in submerged cages, detonating explosives around victims’…
A Small, If Uncertain, Step Towards Accountability: De Sousa and the Abu Omar Abduction
Portuguese courts continue to clear the path for the extradition of former CIA agent Sabrina De Sousa to Italy. In 2009, Italy convicted De Sousa and 22 other US officials (all…
Iraq and Syria: Prospects for Accountability
On February 10, 2016, the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission convened a congressional briefing devoted to the topic of advancing accountability for the commission of international…
Amid Calls for UN Investigation Into Kunduz Strike, US Senator Suggests that the UN Does Not Investigate Taliban Abuses. He’s Wrong.
Today, following calls for an independent inquiry into the US airstrike on the MSF hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) – during a Senate Armed Services…
Precision Weapons, Mistakes, and the Need for Transparency
This post is the latest installment of our “Monday Reflections” feature, in which a different Just Security editor examines the big stories from the previous week or looks…
The Dark Side of Peace Enforcement: Sexual Exploitation in CAR
Media reports continue to trickle through detailing rape and indiscriminate killing by peacekeepers in the Central African Republic (CAR). Despite condemnation by UN Headquarters…
“New Torture Files”: Declassified Memos Detail Roles of Bush White House and DOJ Officials Who Conspired to Approve Torture
An alleged CIA prison near Kabul, Afghanistan. Image credit: Trevor Paglen via Wikimedia Commons. Last week, I wrote, both here and in the New York Times, that after reading all…
One Way Sri Lanka Can Shield its ex-Defense Secretary from a U.S. Criminal Prosecution
Last week, Sri Lanka’s Justice Deputy Minister responded to an Op-Ed that I published in the New York Times, in which I described reasons that the United States can and should…