The prosecutor at the Hague-based Specialist Chambers visited Kosovo for the first time, but Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj said there is a sense of skepticism about the new court that will try suspects for wartime crimes, even though the court is operating under Kosovo law. Senior former Kosovo Liberation Army figures are expected to be indicted by the new court for alleged crimes—including killings, abductions, illegal detentions and sexual violence—committed during and after the war with Serbian forces, but local jurisprudence may be an obstacle to successful prosecution.

South Korea’s top court stirred decades-old resentments that threaten to inflame relations with Japan, ordering a leading Japanese steel maker to compensate four South Korean men forced to work as slave laborers during World War II. The ruling, which the Japanese government quickly denounced, laid bare the lasting bitterness over Imperial Japan’s occupation of Asian neighbors 73 years after the surrender to allied powers.

A UN rights expert said that Sierra Leone’s decision to de facto remove all three members of its Human Rights Commission was an attack on the rule of law and must be reversed. In April 2017, three human rights commissioners were appointed to the commission for a five-year term. However, in June 2018, the President of Sierra Leone ordered the commission’s dissolution, without citing a reason. “The Government’s decision to de facto dissolve the Commission’s current membership undermines the rule of law in Sierra Leone and distracts from efforts to promote and protect human rights.

The Nepali Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs is holding consultations with the political leadership before finalizing a controversial bill to amend the Transitional Justice Act. The government in June made public the zero draft of the bill, which was widely criticized for proposing reduced penalties for convicted perpetrators of crimes during the civil war.

During a policy forum discussing the Kosovo Specialist Chambers held in Prishtina, politicians and academics condemned the lengthy indictment process that the Kosovo public and political figures have sat through since the court began investigations.

The government of South Sudan is under pressure to allow the formation of a hybrid court and to release political detainees as a sign of goodwill in the implementation of the September 12 peace agreement between rebels and the government. The two issues are emerging as the most crucial in the implementation process of the agreement, with South Sudanese President Salva Kiir coming under pressure from the US, UK, and Norway to act on them.

In a tense and packed courtroom, Guatemalan High Risk Court “B” delivered its verdict in the retrial of former Guatemalan Director of Military Intelligence José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez. The court unanimously found that the State of Guatemala, and more specifically the Guatemalan army, committed genocide and crimes against humanity against the Maya Ixil population during the de facto government of Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-1983).

The cause to establish a war crimes court in Liberia received another boost from the international community when the United States House of Representatives’ committee on Foreign Affairs passed a resolution to support the establishment of a war crimes court in the West African state. US Representative Daniel Donovon, main sponsor of the resolution, remarked on Twitter that “stopping war crimes before they happen is just as important as ensuring that justice prevails afterwards.

Peru's former authoritarian president Alberto Fujimori was transported by ambulance to a local clinic after a judge annulled a pardon granted to him last year and ordered his immediate return to prison. The ruling by Supreme Court Judge Hugo Nunez on Wednesday marked the latest reversal in fortunes for Fujimori, an agricultural engineer who rose to the presidency on a populist platform in 1990 and a decade later resigned by fax from his parents' homeland of Japan.

The prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, has opened a preliminary probe into Myanmar’s military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims that led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people and to some 700,000 more to flee into neighboring Bangladesh. Almost three weeks ago, judges at the ICC ruled that the body had jurisdiction over the crimes against the Rohingya despite Myanmar not having signed the Rome Statue because Bangladesh, where most of the refugees are, has.