If you agree that Israel must stop violating the human right to water and sanitation in the Occupied Territories, please consider signing this petition to the Knesset: "The human right to water and sanitation is protected under international law. Yet in the State of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, this right is being violated […]
Australia has had a change of government since Donna Mulhearn (39), Jim Dowling (52), Bryan Law (52) and Adele Goldie (31) were convicted under the never-before used 1952 Defence (Special Undertaking) Act for breaking into the US military facility on Australian soil called Pine Gap in December 2005. And it would appear the courts have […]
Three Bosnian Serbs were arrested last week accused of crimes against humanity committed in 1992. Veljko Basic, 82, Predrag Bastah, 55, and Goran Viskovic, 54, are being questioned by Bosnian authorities regarding crimes committed in Susica camp in the town of Vlasenica in northeastern Bosnia. Some 8,000 local civilians, mostly Muslims, were held in the […]
Peter McGregor, Australian pacifist and ‘education radical activist’ for over 40 years, died yesterday. An academic by trade, McGregor was also a convener of the Australian Anti-Apartheid Movement along with Meredith Burgmann. Last year he attempted to arrest senior members of the Australian government on suspicion of war crimes. According to Queensland anti-war activist Ciaron […]
Ordinary people are doing extraordinary things to oppose the war in Iraq; courageous, costly things. And more than just expressing opposition, some are acting to prevent war crimes being committed. This month, four ‘Christians Against All Terrorism’ were pursued through the courts by the Australian Government for breaking into the secret US military facility Pine […]
Recruiting child soldiers under the age of 18 is a crime under international law. Recruiting children under the age of 15 is a war crime. The International Criminal Court‘s first trial will be that of DRC warlord Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, charged with recruiting child soldiers as young as 10. The term ‘child soldier’ refers to […]
Advancing the global campaign against explosive remnants of war, Belgium has taken the unprecedented step of banning investment in companies that manufacture cluster bombs. Belgium banned the weapon itself a year ago. Cluster munitions spread ‘bomblets’ — hundreds or thousands at a time — over wide areas from 1 to 20 square kilometres. Unlike landmines, […]
When a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) was finally established in The Hague in 1998, its founding document contained four classes of major crimes that could be heard by the Court. Three of them are genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, each with legal precedent and a clear definition in the Rome Statute establishing […]
Charles Taylor, former President of Liberia wanted on 17 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, made headlines last year when he was finally arrested in Nigeria and handed over to be tried by the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone. Now the law has caught up with his son, Charles ‘Chuckie’ Taylor, a […]
Follow rightsbase on 