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In The Roles and Functions of Atrocity-Related United Nations Commissions of Inquiry in the International Legal Order, Catherine Harwood explores how United Nations inquiries navigate considerations of principle and pragmatism to discern their identity in the international legal order.

Without clarity if an outbreak is natural, accidental, or deliberate, infectious disease outbreaks of unknown or ambiguous origin can lead to speculation of a purposeful biological attack. Outbreaks in conflict settings are particularly prone to suspicions and allegations. In an increasingly confrontative global geopolitical landscape and with active information manipulation, outbreaks of ambiguous origin are likely to increase concerns of the deliberate use of biological agents. The United Nations General Assembly has agreed on and the United Nations Security Council has endorsed a mechanism to investigate allegations of deliberate use titled the United Nations Secretary-General's Mechanism for Investigation of Alleged Use of Chemical or Biological Weapons. A recent full-scale field exercise evaluated the deployment readiness of the mechanism and found it is well placed to investigate suspicious disease outbreaks, with room for continual improvement.

\"The specialised nature of contributions and depth of coverage of selected topics are qualities that make this book a compelling read for international and domestic practitioners, students and others involved in the field of international criminal investigations.\" --Hassan Bubacar Jallow, Chief Justice of The Gambia/Former Prosecutor of the ICTR.

At the time of its original publication in 1982, this volume sought to identify fundamental norms and standards which could help to guarantee the quality and integrity of fact-finding reports. A lot has happened in human rights fact-finding since then.

Digital evidence underpin the majority of crimes as their analysis is an integral part of almost every criminal investigation. Even if we temporarily disregard the numerous challenges in the collection and analysis of digital evidence, the exchange of the evidence among the different stakeholders has many thorny issues. Of specific interest are cross-border criminal investigations as the complexity is significantly high due to the heterogeneity of legal frameworks, which beyond time bottlenecks can also become prohibiting. The aim of this article is to analyse the current state of practice of cross-border investigations considering the efficacy of current collaboration protocols along with the challenges and drawbacks to be overcome. Further to performing a legally oriented research treatise, we recall all the challenges raised in the literature and discuss them from a more practical yet global perspective. Thus, this article paves the way to enabling practitioners and stakeholders to leverage horizontal strategies to fill in the identified gaps timely and accurately.

The present work will be devoted to the power to activate the investigations of the Prosecutor according to art. 13 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court (StICC). The StICC tries to offer some coordination tools, whose correct and careful use should in principle favor a harmonious and effective interaction between the two organs (International Criminal Court (ICC) and Security Council (SC)) and avoid the emergence of conflicts. As we will try to highlight, despite these intent of the statutory provisions, the margin of discretion inevitably granted to ICC and SC in interpreting the extension of the powers recognized to them, can lead to tensions and contrasts of not easy solution.

The paper aims to revisit the business resilience concept in the specific case of the COVID-19 pandemic. We examine firm resilience factors in ten European and Mediterranean countries. Through a cross-sectional study of a sample of 3,722 firms in all industries, we analyze how firms have survived the crisis. By constructing a multidimensional index identifying resilient companies, the paper contributes to the theoretical and empirical literature and defines a methodology that assesses a firm’s resilience to promote a business strategy that encourages the growth process and develops new aptitudes to cope with future crises.

Digital open-source evidence has become ubiquitous in the context of modern conflicts, leading to an evolution in investigative practices within the context of mass atrocity crimes and international criminal law. Despite its extensive promulgation, international criminal tribunals have had few opportunities to address the admissibility of user-generated open-source evidence. Through semi-structured interviews with experts and analyses of primary and secondary sources, this article examines the current standards and practices governing the use of user-generated open-source evidence. Current practices illuminate a number of gaps in the realm of digital open-source evidence in international criminal law. This article posits the establishment of a standing international, investigative mechanism as a solution to a need for increased standardization and co-ordination within the realm of user-generated open-source evidence. By standardizing the collection and use of such evidence, investigative bodies will be prepared to more effectively serve the international justice community.

Before the twenty-first century, there was little legal precedent for the prosecution of sexual violence as a war crime. Now, international tribunals have the potential to help make sense of political violence against both men and women; they have the power to uphold victims' claims and to convict the leaders and choreographers of systematic atrocity. However, by privileging certain accounts of violence over others, tribunals more often confirm outmoded gender norms, consigning women to permanent rape victim status.In Sex and International Tribunals, Chiseche Salome Mibenge identifies the cultural assumptions behind the legal profession's claims to impartiality and universality. Focusing on the postwar tribunals in Rwanda and Sierra Leone, Mibenge mines the transcripts of local and supranational criminal trials and truth and reconciliation commissions in order to identify and closely examine legal definitions of forced marriage, sexual enslavement, and the conscription of children that overlook the gendered experiences of armed conflict beyond the mass rape of women and girls. In many cases, a single rape conviction constitutes sufficient proof that gender-based violence has been mainstreamed into the prosecution of war crimes. Drawing on anthropological research in African conflicts, and feminist theory, Mibenge challenges legal narratives that reinscribe essentialized notions of gender in the conduct and resolution of violent conflict and uncovers the suppressed testimonies of men and women who are unwilling or unable to recite the legal scripts that would elevate them to the status of victimhood recognized by an international and humanitarian audience.At a moment when international intervention in conflicts is increasingly an option, Sex and International Tribunals points the way to a more nuanced and just response from courts.

This article introduces the idea of informal complementarity. Where the principle of complementarity allows the International Criminal Court (‘ICC’) to assess the admissibility of a particular case, informal complementarity is employed by states. It exists independently (or pre-emptively) of an International Criminal Court investigation. Appeals to informal complementarity speak fluidly of individual criminal proceedings and state-level investigations or inquiries. When a state appeals to informal complementarity, it is not immediately concerned with individual criminal liability or the admissibility of a particular case. Instead, informal complementarity serves to deny the state’s non-criminal responsibility. Appeals to informal complementarity constitute an emergent vocabulary. It increasingly features within the lexicon of states that engage in the use of force. It provides a novel means of asserting legitimacy. Within armed conflict, states are supplementing traditional appeals to international law and assertions of legal fidelity with claims of post-hoc legal accountability. Grounded within a study of Israel’s engagements with international law during and after the 2008–09 and 2014 Gaza wars, this article demonstrates that the post-war discourse has moved from exclusive assertions of legal compliance to include pronouncements of investigative willingness. Framed around the metaphor of the proleptic show trial, four phases of legal engagement are introduced that collectively constitute both an appeal to informal complementarity and an emergent means of asserting legitimacy.