Recent publications by CAHR

Together with Natasa Mavronicola (University of Birmingham), CAHR lecturer Mattia Pinto has shared his discomfort with the push to (international) criminal accountability for atrocities in Israel and Palestine in a blog post on EJIL:Talk. The authors focus on the idea of ‘never again’: a vow to prevent atrocities that emerged from the horrors of World War II, and a conviction that criminal sanctions are essential for its fulfilment. The authors refer to the association of accountability with criminal punishment as the ‘penal accountability paradigm’. The authors assert that this paradigm harms the ‘never again’ promise: (1) it gives states the (undue) benefit of the doubt; (2) it decontextualises, individualises, and exceptionalises atrocities; (3) it marginalises or delegitimises alternative forms of accountability and condemnation; and (4) it ultimately undermines prevention.

Samantha Holmes, the Coordinator of the Generating Respect Hub at CAHR and Ezequiel Heffes, the Director of Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict, co-authored a blog post on avenues to increase compliance with human rights and humanitarian norms in armed conflicts. In the alarming context of children's increasing insecurity worldwide – and against the backdrop of the escalating conflict in Gaza where children are the overrepresented victims – the contribution consolidates promising compliance-generating mechanisms that could be better leveraged by various humanitarian and human rights actors to safeguard children in Israel, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and beyond.