EU needs Special Representative on International Justice, say Euro-MPs

EU needs Special Representative on International Justice, say Euro-MPs
Stéphanie Maupas, correspondent in The Hague
09.07.18
Stéphanie Maupas, correspondent in The Hague

A group of European Parliament members have asked top EU diplomat Federica Mogherini to appoint as a matter of urgency a special representative on international humanitarian law and international justice. In a letter sent on June 29 to Federica Mogherini, the European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, 34 members...

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Gaza truce mostly holds after heavy Israel strikes, Hamas rocket fire
 AFP 15.07 - A ceasefire announced by Hamas largely held Sunday after the most severe exchange...
Gaza truce mostly holds after heavy Israel strikes, Hamas rocket fire
 AFP 15.07 - A ceasefire announced by Hamas largely held Sunday after the most severe exchange...
Gaza truce mostly holds after heavy Israel strikes, Hamas rocket fire
 AFP 15.07 - A ceasefire announced by Hamas largely held Sunday after the most severe exchange...
Gaza ceasefire holds after heavy Israel strikes, Hamas rocket fire
 AFP 15.07 - A ceasefire announced by Hamas held Sunday after the most severe exchange of fire...
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Opinion
Lebanon Edges Closer Toward Truth for Families of the Missing and Disappeared
Lebanon Edges Closer Toward Truth for Families of the Missing and Disappeared
07.06.18
Nour El Bejjani Noureddine, ICTJ

Life continues to stand still for the many families of the missing and disappeared in Lebanon who have been desperately trying to uncover the fate of their loved ones and who are holding out hope of seeing them someday. The Lebanese War ended 28 years ago, but for these families the war rages on. During Lebanon’s 15-year civil war, thousands of people went missing or were disappeared without a trace or explanation. Their families have never stopped waiting for answers, answers they fear will never come. The Lebanese government has failed to adequately address the issue of the missing...

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Analysis
Feasible Justice: Has Colombia Over-Promised and Under-Delivered Reparations for its 8.6 Million Victims?
Feasible Justice: Has Colombia Over-Promised and Under-Delivered Reparations for its 8.6 Million Victims?
12.06.18
Julia Zulver, University of Oxford

 Colombia’s unprecedented reparations programme guarantees financial, land restitution, and holistic benefits for millions of victims. With only 7% payment to date, however, the government faces the challenge of making good on promises to its citizenry, undermining the potential for building lasting peace. In 2016, after four years of official negotiations, the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP, Spanish acronym) were finally able to negotiate a definitive peace, and the country is now in a full-scale transition away from its violent past. The...

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Resources
War-ravaged South Sudan at a glance
20.06.18
AFP

South Sudan, the world's newest country, has been mired in a devastating civil war for more than four years, with tens of thousands of people killed, nearly four million displaced and its economy in ruins. War broke out when President Salva Kiir accused his former deputy Riek Machar of plotting a coup just two years after the country gained independence from Sudan in 2011. With the two men to meet on Wednesday in the latest international effort to stop the fighting, here is some background. - World's youngest state - Before independence, the south of Sudan was ravaged by two civil wars (1956-1972 and 1983-2005) that pitted mainly Christian and animist insurgents in the south...

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Archives
France upholds life sentences for Rwanda genocide mayors
France upholds life sentences for Rwanda genocide mayors
06.07.18
AFP

A French court on Friday upheld life sentences for two former Rwandan mayors for taking part in the massacre of hundreds of ethnic Tutsis during the country's 1994 genocide. Octavien Ngenzi, 60, and Tito Barahira, 67, had launched an appeal after they were found guilty in 2016 of crimes against humanity, genocide and summary executions in their village of Kabarondo. Relatives of the pair sobbed quietly as the ruling was read out in court, while Ngenzi and Barahira listened in silence. They will have five days to decide whether they will appeal the ruling again to a higher...

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By Region

Africa
R Congo universities urge Kabila to step aside
R Congo universities urge Kabila to step aside
14.07.18
afp

    Several universities in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Saturday signed a petition against President Joseph Kabila running for a third term in office later this year.   University professors and staff signed the document calling Kabila's candidacy in the December polls "an unacceptable offence of high treason against the nation and the state" following months of heavily repressed protests calling for the long-time leader to stand aside.   "It's about trying to stop the constitution being tampered with in our country," said Georges Kapiamba, president of the Congolese Association for Access to Justice and one of the petition's organisers.   Kabila, who took over from his assassinated father in 2001, presides over a country...

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Americas
'We apologize': former Colombia FARC rebels seek forgiveness at tribunal
'We apologize': former Colombia FARC rebels seek forgiveness at tribunal
14.07.18
afp

    Former rebel FARC commanders in Colombia have appeared at a historic tribunal where for the first time they were made to answer for kidnappings and forced disappearances under the terms of a peace deal.  "We apologize to all of them, we will do the impossible so they can know the truth of what happened, we will assume our responsibilities," said Rodrigo "Timochenko" Londono, the leader of what was until recently the most powerful guerrilla group in South America. He was speaking at a tribunal that opened on Friday under a truth and reconciliation system agreed with the government to recognize the hundreds of thousands of victims of more than a half century of confrontation. At the end of his appearance, the former guerrilla...

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Asia
Opinion : transitional justice amendment in Nepal not "acceptable" , according to victims
Opinion : transitional justice amendment in Nepal not "acceptable" , according to victims
22.06.18
Ram Kumar Bhandari

The government of Nepal is preparing to register a new bill of controversial and highly contested transitional justice act in the parliament after 3 and half years of two transitional bodies formed in February 2015. In a historic verdicts of Supreme Court (26 February 2015) on behalf of conflict victims legal petitions against flaws in the previous Act (the Enforced Disappearances Enquiry, Truth and Reconciliation Commission Act, 2014), government established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the Disappeared Commission to investigate war era (1996-2006) crimes without listening to the victims’ demands and Supreme Court directives against the contested provisions of amnesty and forced...

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Europe
Remembering ETA in Basque Country, a divisive challenge
Remembering ETA in Basque Country, a divisive challenge
15.07.18
afp

    As the director of a peace museum in Spain's Guernica, the Basque town infamously destroyed during the civil war, Iratxe Momoitio has often heard young visitors ask a surprising question. "What is ETA?" A disturbing lack of knowledge in a region torn apart by decades of killings and now facing the daunting task of moving on after the separatist group dissolved in May. But moving on doesn't mean forgetting.  "The fact that ETA is over, that there is no longer any violence doesn't mean there isn't a lot of educational, healing work to do, to release all we kept inside and that we didn't talk about for many years," she says. For years, the museum had an exhibition on the strife as it sought to address what was going on at a...

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