Human Rights Law Commons^™

Justice Delayed, Justice Denied? The Search For Accountability For Alleged Wartime Atrocities Committed In Sri Lanka, Aloka Wanigasuriya

Pace International Law Review

During the final stages of its nearly three-decades-long civil war in 2009, Sri Lanka attracted considerable international attention due to the allegations of international crimes that were said to have been committed both by the Sri Lankan government Armed Forces, the Guerilla Force, and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). According to United Nations (UN) experts, an estimated 40,000 civilians were killed during the final offensive, which lasted from January to May 2009. However, the Sri Lankan government has set this figure at 9,000 with no civilian casualties. Several UN bodies found credible allegations that international crimes were committed …

Justice Or Peace? A Proposal For Resolving The Dilemma, Kenneth Williams

Pace International Law Review

This article will address the question of how the international community should respond when the pursuit of justice and the attainment of peace are incompatible. It begins with an overview of the international human rights movement prior to World War II, a period when there was almost no effort to hold human rights violators accountable. The article then discusses how Nuremberg transformed international human rights law and created the framework for holding individuals accountable for committing egregious human rights violations. In the next section there is a discussion of how, despite Nuremberg, there was an era of impunity as a …

Beyond War: Bin Laden, Escobar, And The Justification Of Targeted Killing, Luis E. Chiesa, Alexander K.A. Greenawalt

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Using the May 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden as a case study, this Article contributes to the debate on targeted killing in two distinct ways, each of which has the result of downplaying the centrality of international humanitarian law (IHL) as the decisive source of justification for targeted killings.

First, we argue that the IHL rules governing the killing of combatants in wartime should be understood to apply more strictly in cases involving the targeting of single individuals, particularly when the targeting occurs against nonparadigmatic combatants outside the traditional battlefield. As applied to the bin Laden killing, we argue …

Human Rights And Non-State Actors, Thomas Michael Mcdonnell

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.