Rosa Aloisi

The Impact of Human Rights Organizations on Naming and Shaming Campaigns

Given the myriad of human rights abuses that occur globally and daily, why are some nations on the receiving end of a substantial amount of international opprobrium, while others receive far less attention and condemnation? The authors contend that the increasing presence of human rights organizations in such states is the critical link between the local and the international. Increases in the number of such groups contributes significantly to the generation of Amnesty International urgent actions, one of the most-often-utilized tools in naming and shaming campaigns against human rights abusing regimes. The authors find strong support for nearly all their hypotheses.

A Tale of Two Institutions: The United Nations Security Council and the International Criminal Court

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is a judicial body that has been created as a politically independent judicial institution to prosecute the most serious international crimes. However, the political independence of the Court has been questioned considerably in the past decade because of the relationship between the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), which has the power to refer or defer situations to the Court, and the ICC. In this work, I argue that in analyzing the relationship between the UNSC and ICC it is evident that clashing political and judicial interests have done a disservice to the implementation of international justice. I will focus on the two instances of referrals so far approved by the UNSC and highlight some of the political aspects that seem to be hindering and delaying, in spite of international pressures for UNSC attention, a referral of the situation in Syria.