Rohingya to Myanmar Military Coup: International Efforts in Respond to Humanitarian Violations and Myanmar’s Democracy Deprivation

Myanmar is currently faced with conflicts mainly considered as crimes against humanity that require resolution sooner or later. The conflict in Myanmar is closely linked to ethnicity, creating a cycle of violence that continues to escalate without any possibility of diminishing. The inability of the state to address ethnic minority grievances or provide adequate security to communities has created a literal arms race among minority groups. More action needs to be taken to finally resolve the situation and crisis unfolding in Myanmar, and that is where countries in Southeast Asia play a very important role for conflict resolution. This research was carried out using qualitative method with descriptive analysis regarding to the situation that occurred in Myanmar, especially regarding the Rohingya crisis and the Myanmar Military Coup which was the focus of the research. The escalation of the humanitarian conflict and the deprivation of democracy by the Myanmar people, requires joint handling in order to avoid further expansion of the conflict. In this case, neighboring countries such as Indonesia have an important role as a driver of mediation in regional forums to resolve conflicts in Myanmar. ASEAN, as a diplomatic platform in the Southeast Asian region, must be put forward and reach a consensus for finally intervening in the Myanmar conflict, which is taking more and more lives. The United Nations with the principle of responsibility to protect can also play a role in overcoming the conflict, considering that the conflict has resulted in crimes against humanity that cannot be tolerated.

International Aspects of the Protection of Victims' Rights in the Conditions of Armed Conflict in Ukraine

Using a comparative methodology based on documentary, the objective of the research was to analyze the international aspects involved in the defense of the rights of the victims of the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine. The priority of using military force to resolve questionable issues, national contradictions of an ethical, religious, political, territorial, economic, etc. nature that are in dispute, remains one of the essential characteristics of today's realities. Everything allows us to conclude that in almost all regions where there are armed conflicts, laws are violated and prohibited means and methods of warfare are used, related to the violation of the principles of distinction, of proportionality admitted in the process of artillery rocket attacks and air attacks of rockets and bombs, recruitment, training, financing and/or use of mercenaries in military activities, destruction of human settlements, executions in the form of intentional killings for reasons of hatred or political, ideological, racial, national, religious enmity, torture, among other inhumane behaviors and appalling atrocities, which by their nature and degree of brutality cannot go unpunished and constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Przedterminowe zwolnienie z kary pozbawienia wolności skazanych za ludobójstwo, zbrodnie przeciwko ludzkości i wojenne na mocy orzeczeń międzynarodowych trybunałów karnych „ad hoc” oraz ich sukcesora w postaci Mechanizmu Rezydualnego ONZ

In the last decade of the 20th century, a war in the former Yugoslavia broke out, once again making Europe a witness to an armed conflict. Almost at the same time, another local ethnic bloodshed started, but this time in distant Africa — in Rwanda. Both these events included the most horrifying international crimes against humanity: genocide and war crimes. To prosecute the most important commanding figures involved in these conflicts and hold them criminally responsible, two ad hoc United Nations tribunals were created: International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in Hague and International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha. They finished their operation in 2017 and 2015, respectively. The tasks of conducting and completing all ongoing proceedings, including law enforcement, after the completion of their mandates have been entrusted to the UN International Residual Mechanism. One of the crucial assignments of the tribunals and later the Redisual Mechanism was to deal with the request on behalf of the convicted for granting them early release. Although none of the statutes of the aforementioned courts provided any ground for early release, soon it was accepted that both tribunals, as well as their successor, were entitled to proceed despite this issue. As soon as in 2001, the first convict was granted early release, but with no conditions. It is estimated that, to date, more than 2/3 of all convicted by the Tribunals have been released before the termination of their sentence. This should raise the question of how to rehabilitate that kind of offender, convicted of genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity, to ensure they do not pose a threat to society anymore. Especially since the offenders serve their punishment outside the country of their origin — meaning, different rules apply according to the domestic law regulation of the state that voluntarily agreed to enforce the sentence. This article analyzes the juridical approach of the tribunals and the Residual Mechanism on the issue of early release of the convicts involved in the armed conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

Man Made Famines: an International Crime. A Critique to the Current Gaps in the International Legal Framework

There is a gap in the current legal framework that might result in the infringement of the human right to food and it is given by the lack of criminalisation of intentionally caused famines. Man-made famines should be recognised as crimes against humanity because after analysing the APs and the Rome Statute, we observe that they only mention starvation episodes, and several other behaviours and situations that would end with a famine are not considered at all. We are referring here to cases when a state has the capacity to predict a famine-related disaster and the resources to minimize its impact but it fails to mitigate the effects and to mobilize a response.Compared with starvation, famines are events that have much more severe repercussions for larger areas, larger social groups or even whole countries. Furthermore, they usually cover a much longer period of time such as seasons or even years. Moreover, the perpetrators have to be major players such as governments, organisations or groups with sufficient economic or military power.Finally, famines may be achieved through military actions, policies and other political actions influencing and altering the normal social processes connected to the production of food.

Lessons in Atrocity Prevention: A Closer Look at Guinea

This article identifies the most significant atrocity risk factors and their indicators in accordance with the UN Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Crimes and provides a taxonomy of measures, taken by a variety of external and internal stakeholders, in different combinations, which reduced the risk of atrocity crimes reoccurring after the 2009 stadium massacre in Conakry, Guinea. On the 28th of September 2009, 157 protesters were killed, at least 1200 were injured, and over 100 women were raped by security forces in a stadium in Conakry. The UN’s Commission of Inquiry (coi) concluded that these crimes committed by the security forces amounted to crimes against humanity. The efforts to halt further violence and prevent the commission of crimes post-2009 stadium massacre were varied and encompassed regional and international preventive diplomacy. The coordination of a coherent political strategy among international, regional and sub-regional actors in the Guinean context contributed towards the perceived success in preventing further atrocities in Guinea, post-2009 massacre. Importantly, Guinea is not a typical example in terms of atrocity and conflict prevention, due to a unique regional and global dynamics that allowed for a rapid and rather coherent response to the September 2009 stadium massacre.

Book Review: Jelena Subotić, Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after Communism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019.

In 2010, Claus Leggewie, a German professor of Political Science, tried to define what he called “the seven circles of European memory”, common memories shared, in theory, by all Europeans: - European unification as a success story which, however, has had little impact on European self-confidence; - the notion of Europe as a continent of immigrants; - European colonialism and colonial massacres, such as the Herero massacre, as forerunners of the Holocaust; - War and wartime memories, specially about World Wars I and II; - Population transfers and ethnic cleansings as pan-European traumas (for example, the Armenian genocide or the Ukranian Holodomor); - Soviet communism; - The Shoah as Europe’s negative founding myth. At that time, he saw the possible problems caused by the imposition of the Holocaust as “the matrix for dealing with communist state crimes against humanity across the whole of Eastern Europe” (Leggewie 4), which might lead “these nations to exploit this consensus [Eastern European countries having been victims of the Soviet empire] in order to relativize or conceal their participation in the murder of the Jews” (Leggewie 5).