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In war-torn Yemen, COVID-19 presents an imminent danger to the country’s 30 million people, 80 percent of whom rely on humanitarian aid to survive. For more than five years, brutal conflict has devastated the country and its economy, infrastructure, and public services including the health care system. By most accounts, the likelihood is high that the disease will spread through Yemen as the number of cases in neighboring countries continues to grow.

This paper discusses the significance of the trials of Saddam Hussein and his close associates held by the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal. It examines the challenges faced by the Tribunal - including concerns that the process was dominated by the U.S. government (hence undermining the results), and the deteriorating security environment due to ethnic and religious tensions.

This report examines community expectations and experiences of Timor-Leste’s unique transition from occupation to independence. It documents the results of focus group discussions on an array topcis including violence and conflict, truth recovery, justice, accountability, reconciliation, and forgiveness. These issues lie at the heart of the Timorese peoples’ expectations and experiences, and at the center of Timor’s transitional justice concerns.

The crime of forced displacement has been a widespread practice in Colombia’s internal armed conflict for several decades. However, forced displacement cannot be reduced to an inherent or unintended effect of the conflict. The armed actors in the Colombian armed conflict—the army and its paramilitary groups, on one hand, and the guerrilla groups, on the other—have used the practice of forced displacement of civilian populations as part of their military strategies to take control of or maintain a presence in certain territories.

This paper is concerned with the relationship between criminal justice and displacement that has taken place as a result of serious violations of international humanitarian law, and considers these issues within the context of justice efforts in the former Yugoslavia. It argues that in some transitional contexts, forced displacement can be so integral to the abuses committed in a conflict that the issue should be included in efforts to criminally prosecute perpetrators.

This paper examines the crime of forced displacement from the perspective of both international and national legal frameworks. The crime of forced displacement is a notion that comes from international law. Indeed, an international legal framework has developed with the instruments and jurisprudence to criminally prosecute forced displacement as a war crime or a crime against humanity, whether the displacement in question is internal or across international borders. When it constitutes a serious crime under international law, forced displacement should be prosecuted for the same reasons as other serious crimes.

On August 24, 2009, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that he was appointing Assistant U.S. Attorney John Durham to conduct a preliminary review into the possibility that federal laws were violated in the interrogation of specific detainees outside of the United States. The review should serve to gather facts and determine whether a full investigation is warranted.

The report documents that practices that included slamming detainees into walls, extended sleep deprivation, suspending them by the arms, forced nudity, threats, prolonged shackling in uncomfortable positions and disrespect of the Qur'an, were the result of officially sanctioned policies and, as such, should be regarded as "system crimes."

Many in Colombia are also interested in learning from international experiences where criminal accountability measures were applied to pursue justice after massive human rights violations, like in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Sierra Leone and East Timor. With the aim of promoting an exchange of ideas on what lessons could be useful for Colombia, the ICTJ will be holding a conference in Bogotá on November 24th.