Publications

In this article I present the first two of a new series of open and high-quality international legal data sets: comprehensive, fully reproducible, human- and machine-readable open access collections covering one hundred years of case law of the primary judicial organs of the United Nations and the League of Nations: the Corpus of Decisions: International Court of Justice (CD-ICJ) and the Corpus of Decisions: Permanent Court of International Justice (CD-PCIJ).

Each corpus is designed to capture in its entirety the published case law of its eponymous Court, including majority opinions (judgments, advisory opinions and orders), but also the minority opinions annexed to each decision (declarations, separate opinions and dissenting opinions). The corpora are enriched with useful metadata to enhance text-as-data research and enable stand-alone metadata analyses. While each corpus can stand on its own, the twin corpora are designed to be perfectly interoperable for the purposes of analyses that wish to treat the ICJ and PCIJ as a continuous entity.

The most recent versions of the corpora will always be available open access at doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3826444 (CD-ICJ) and doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3840479 (CD-PCIJ).

On 2 August 2019, the eve of the 5th anniversary of the attacks on Sinjar by the Islamic State (IS), RASHID International, Yazda and the Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa Project (EAMENA) released the results of their investigation into cultural heritage destruction during the genocide against the Yazidis, in a report entitled ‘Destroying the Soul of the Yazidis: Cultural Heritage Destruction during the Islamic State’s Genocide against the Yazidis’.

Out of the total of 68 sites reported destroyed we consider 16 sites in the Bahzani/Bashiqa area and 8 in the Sinjar area to which access was possible and which could be documented.

Discussions of the genocide committed against the Yazidi people by IS from 2014 onwards have generally focused on murder, slavery and sexual exploitation. In this report we analyze the destruction of Yazidi tangible and intangible cultural heritage as a significant facet of the Islamic State’s policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Evidence of destruction is collected and presented in context with other criminal acts.

A revised and updated version of the report was published as a peer-reviewed paper in the Asian Yearbook of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (AYHL). The AYHL is edited by Professor Javaid Rehman, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Against the backdrop of the destruction of Iraqi heritage over the past quarter of a century, this article critically reviews key aspects of the current state of Iraq’s cultural heritage, including damage to heritage buildings caused by Daesh in Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul.

We bring together Iraqi and non-Iraqi expertise in heritage, archaeology, and human rights law to frame our approach, building on the movement to link cultural diversity, heritage, and cultural rights. We emphasise the need for planning to enhance protection of Iraq’s heritage, in particular through the preparation of inventories, the provision of resources for heritage education in schools and the development of Iraq’s museum sector. Iraq’s presence on the UNESCO World Heritage Lists needs to be enhanced, and the issues of illicit site looting and traffic in looted antiquities must be addressed within international contexts.

Iraq’s future accession as State Party to the 1999 Second Protocol to the 1954 Hague Convention is a priority in achieving these goals. The paper stresses the need for co-creation of heritage knowledge and a gender-sensitive human rights approach for the future of Iraq’s globally significant cultural heritage.

Cultural heritage around the world continues to be threatened by war. The 1954 Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (‘1954 Hague Convention’) automatically confers protected status on every cultural property “of great importance to the cultural heritage of every people.” This very universality, however, is also its greatest weakness: it does not provide visibility to individual cultural sites or help military planners and field commanders choose priorities.

In addition, the system of Special Protection under the 1954 Hague Convention is in a state of relative dormancy due to its requirement that sites be located an adequate distance from military objectives, and because of the politicization of the inscription process during the Angkor debacle of the 1970s. World Heritage status functions as a stop-gap measure for some sites, but is financially infeasible for most States and, in any case, provides no additional legal protection.

The system of Enhanced Protection under the 1999 Second Protocol to the 1954 Hague Convention addresses these shortcomings by uniting three important considerations: wider scope, ease of access, and strong legal protection. This article recommends that States ratify the 1999 Second Protocol, nominate relevant sites and objects for Enhanced Protection, and support the system of Enhanced Protection by providing and requesting financial and technical assistance from the Fund for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.