Strife

The Academic Blog of the Department of War Studies, King's College London

You are here: Home / Archives for ICC

ICC

The child soldier brought to justice

by

Barlonyo, site of a massacre in Uganda in 2004. Photo Credit: Roberto Maldeno, licensed with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

WARNING: Some details in this article may cause upset.

On February 4th, 2021, former child soldier Dominic Ongwen of Uganda was convicted of 61 charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague. At the time the warrant for his arrest was issued in 2005 it was alleged he was the commander of the Sinia Brigade of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). This long and arduous case detailed some of the most heinous crimes imaginable.

However, Ongwen was only a child when he was the victim of a grave crime himself. Walking to school in 1987 or 1988, he was abducted by members of the LRA. It is believed he was in his very early teenage years, or possibly younger when this occurred. Shortly after his abduction, Ongwen and three other abductees tried to escape but were recaptured. As a warning to others and punishment for his waywardness, Ongwen was forced to skin alive one of the other escapees. This act of savagery initiated Ongwen into the LRA and was the introductory action that led to his spiral into one of the most ruthless individuals on earth, committing crimes that would include ordering the boys and men under his command to ‘kill, cook and eat’ civilians.

Ongwen, also known as ‘The White Ant’, rose rapidly through the ranks, becoming a brigade commander in his late 20s. He was considered skilled during his raids of the countryside, destroying villages and abducting more children ripe for indoctrination and arms training. He was considered adept in battle, commanding his troops in such a way that led to few casualties among his men when the battles concluded. Ongwen cemented his position high in the ranks of the LRA because of his innate abilities.

A reading of court records from the ICC details grotesque crimes including, amongst them, the forced marriage, rape, or both of girls and women, forced pregnancy, sexual enslavement and torture. For example, the testimony of witness P-226 at the trial describes a girl of seven years old being abducted by Ongwen’s unit. She was forced to perform domestic duties for Ongwen and at the age of ten she was raped by him for the first time. Some time later, she became one of his so-called ‘wives’ and was raped repeatedly until her eventual escape in 2003. Witness P-226 testified that shortly before her escape, Ongwen forced her to beat to death a Ugandan People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) soldier whom he had captured during a raid in Northern Uganda.

The true extent of Ongwen’s crimes will never be fully known. But it does lead one to wonder, was he no more than a victim himself, abducted as a child, forced to commit abominable crimes for fear that these same crimes would be committed against him? There is no doubt that reading Ongwen’s back story challenges the often oversimplified perceptions people have of a war criminal.

As a child when he was abducted, Ongwen witnessed a monstrous act, was forced to take part in others, and suffered terribly during his early years in the LRA, under constant threat of punishment. As with other members of the LRA he, still young, was subjected to indoctrination and training. This could be perceived at a fundamental level as his survival instinct came to the fore – kill or be killed.

Court records show that some of the psychiatric expert witnesses at his trial believed he was suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Dissociative Identity Disorder, and Multiple Personality Disorder amongst others. Ongwen himself claimed he was the victim of atrocities and pleaded innocent to all 70 charges laid before him at the ICC. Relatives and friends in his home in Uganda believed that, in fact, it was their President, Yoweri Museveni, who was to blame, given his responsibility for all citizens under his care, most notably children.

As Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda put it in her opening statement at Ongwen’s trial ‘The reality is that cruel men can do kind things and kind men can be cruel. A hundred percent consistency is a rare thing’. This is true for all of us, all the time. Just because someone had a hard or brutal upbringing does not and should not absolve someone of their crimes. Cases along these lines where the perpetrator was a victim themselves are seen in lower and higher courts nationally, as well as internationally. The victim who then victimised is not a new phenomenon and will appear again. However, it should never be used as justification for crimes, especially, as in this case, of the gravest nature.

Last February 4th, Dominic Ongwen was found guilty of 61 of 70 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, all committed within less than a 4-year timeframe. The verdict may be appealed by Ongwen’s defence team up to May 21st 2021. It remains to be seen whether Ongwen will mount a challenge. Whilst we wait, the verdict in the original case must give some level of comfort to the countless victims of Ongwen’s and the LRA’s crimes. At another level, it can be seen as cold comfort to the countless other victims of the LRA and Dominic Ongwen, as much more needs to be done within the communities of Northern Ugandan and its environs who suffered the most at their hands.

Challenges to the Rule of Law in Times of Crisis Series: Prosecuting war crimes – Some thoughts for the new Prosecutor of the ICC

by

The Permanent Premises of the International Criminal Court. Photo Credit: United Nations, licensed under Creative Commons

This article is part of our series on Challenges to the Rule of Law in Times of Crisis. Read the series introduction at this link.

From 16 June this year, the International Criminal Court (ICC) will have a new Prosecutor, Karim Khan QC. The change provides a good opportunity to ask some questions about the ICC’s approach to prosecuting war crimes, as he takes over from Fatou Bensouda, at a time when two recent decisions of the ICC have been receiving much criticism. On 9 December 2020, the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) announced that it would not be conducting a formal investigation into war crimes committed by British forces during the Iraq conflict (2003-09). The Prosecutor said that, although she had established that there was a reasonable basis for concluding that war crimes had been committed, she had been unable to conclude that the UK had been unwilling genuinely to investigate and prosecute those crimes. In the second decision, the Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) approved the OTP’s request to open a formal investigation into war crimes committed in the Palestinian Occupied Territory controlled by Israel.

Much of the criticism in the international legal press has involved pouring over the 1998 Rome Statute, that established the ICC and governs its proceedings. I should like to take a step-back from that, although it is impossible to avoid it completely, and ask what we should expect of the ICC in its attempts to investigate and prosecute war crimes. I shall begin by explaining in broad terms how the ICC was set-up to prosecute war crimes, for those who are not familiar with it. I will then look at some of the main issues that are, or will be, significant for the decisions involving the UK and Israel.  First, what level of war crimes the ICC was established to investigate and prosecute and, second, how national and international responsibility for prosecuting war crimes was apportioned through the concept of ‘complementarity’.

The purpose of the ICC is set out in the Preamble to the Rome Statute as being to ensure ‘that the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole must not go unpunished [and]…to put an end to impunity for the perpetrators of those crimes’. As well as war crimes, these include genocide, crimes against humanity, and aggression. At the same time, the Preamble recognized that it was ‘the duty of every State to exercise its criminal jurisdiction over those responsible for international crimes’ and that ‘the International Criminal Court…shall be complementary to national criminal jurisdiction’. The Statute provided a compromise over the division between national and international responsibility through the concept of complementarity. It had been the result of protracted negotiation between those who thought that crimes should only be prosecuted with the consent of the State having jurisdiction over them and those who thought that the Prosecutor should have independent discretion to prosecute war crimes. The compromise left the Prosecutor having to defer to a State’s investigation and prosecution unless it was ‘unwilling or unable genuinely’ to prosecute crimes committed by their citizens or on their territory. However, it was the Prosecutor who would decide after her own inquiry – a decision which is, however, revisable by the Pre-Trial Chamber. The first stage of an OTP inquiry is known as a preliminary examination and it may be initiated by the Prosecutor, often after receiving information from NGOs and victim-support groups. In the Iraq/UK case, the OTP opened a preliminary examination in 2004 after receiving information of alleged war crimes but quickly terminated it after finding that there was no ‘reasonable basis’ for concluding that war crimes had been committed – having a ‘reasonable basis’ is the required standard for it to proceed. However, after receiving further information in 2014, the OPT reopened the inquiry but in 2020 concluded that, although there was a reasonable basis to conclude that certain war crimes had been committed and there had been few prosecutions and only one conviction, the UK was not unwilling genuinely to investigate and prosecute those responsible. If we put this case together with the opening of the Palestinian investigation, they raise a fundamental question over what we expect of the ICC in these cases, which it would be worth addressing before the Prosecutor spends years on assessing whether Israel is unwilling genuinely to prosecute war crimes in the Palestinian Occupied Territory.

The first issue is what level of war crimes the ICC should prosecute. There is little history of the prosecution of war crimes but it is clear enough that there have been few domestic prosecutions within the UK and Western States generally and that the main forums for prosecution have been the international tribunals set up after the Second World War and then after the atrocities committed in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, which included very serious war crimes. There was a wide divergence of views among the delegates at the Rome conference as to whether the Prosecutor should have complete discretion to investigate all allegations of war crimes or only those that could be said to be particularly serious.  The debate resulted in the introductory words to Article 8 of the Rome Statute which lists the types of war crimes, the ‘chapeau’ as it is called, stating that ‘[t]he Court shall have jurisdiction in respect of war crimes in particular when committed as part of a plan or policy of a large scale commission of such crimes’. The wording ‘in particular’ was supposed to represent a compromise that, at least to some, meant that the Prosecutor’s discretion was limited to large scale situations but in practice the Prosecutor has virtually ignored the restriction. Instead, it is common to refer to ‘serious’ cases but serious is even more ambiguous as it may refer to the quantity or the quality of the crimes. This may then lead to an invidious process where crimes are ranked in terms of ‘seriousness’.

The second issue is how the principle of complementarity should work in practice. To some extent this problem is connected to the first as, if the bar is set high at large scale crimes, then those situations falling below that bar will be matters only for the States concerned. However, there is also a more general problem which results from the implementation of the principle in the Statute. The Prosecutor may begin a preliminary examination to establish whether there is reasonable basis to proceed with an investigation (Art. 15(3)). In the Iraq/UK inquiry the Prosecutor interpreted this as there being a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes had been committed. However, the test of that is considerably different from the test required to proceed with a prosecution which is usually stated as being that there is a reasonable or a realistic prospect of conviction. At trial, the test then becomes that the evidence to convict is true ‘beyond any reasonable doubt’. The Prosecutor decided that these differences required her to determine whether there were decisions not to prosecute in the cases she had identified that showed that the UK was unwilling genuinely to do so, and she concluded that they did not. The allegations which were at the heart of Iraq/UK issue were, therefore, being tested from two different standards, the evidence that a crime has been committed and the evidence that would be necessary to have a reasonable prospect of a particular conviction. The difference in standards is not only a practical matter of the use of limited court resources and funding but also one of the rights of the accused not to be detained for trial unless there is reasonable suspicion that he or she has committed an offence.

It seems, therefore, that the uncertain compromises made in the Rome Statute remain unresolved and problematic in practice.  The appointment of a new Prosecutor provides an opportunity to address these issues. He might begin by attempting to resolve the uncertainties through a policy statement that addresses the disparity in evidential standards required between preliminary examination and prosecution. This could, for example, be achieved through the exercise of Prosecutorial discretion to decline to pursue investigations that have no reasonable prospect of securing convictions as it is not in the interests of justice to do so. At a more technical level, he could require legal organizations submitting evidence to include a legal opinion that it meets the evidential standard of proof. He might also seek an interpretation from the Court of the chapeau to Article 8 and whether the words ‘in particular’ are words of limitation to large-scale cases.

Gambling with impunity: al-Bashir, South Africa & the ICC

by

By Beatrice Tesconi:

President Omar Hassan al-Bashir leaving plane in April, 2013. Photo: Abayomi Azikiwe (published under fair use policy for intellectual non-commercial purposes)
President Omar Hassan al-Bashir leaving plane in April, 2013, on a visit to South Sudan. Photo: Abayomi Azikiwe (published under fair use policy for intellectual non-commercial purposes)

News that Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s jet had taken off from a military base in Pretoria last Monday sparked two starkly different reactions. Upon his arrival in Khartoum, Bashir received a hero’s welcome from hundreds of supporters cheering his safe return home in defiance of a South African court order barring his departure. On the other hand, global civil society and human rights advocates were left in dismay at yet another missed opportunity to bring an alleged perpetrator of grave international crimes to justice. But both sides found themselves agreeing on one thing – the credibility of the International Criminal Court (ICC) had been dealt a decisive blow.

The decision to attend the African Union (AU) summit held in Johannesburg last Saturday was just Bashir’s latest provocation to the Hague-based court, which has been struggling to bring him to trial since 2009. Following a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) referral in 2005, the ICC opened a formal investigation over the conflict in Darfur, which culminated with the issuing of two arrest warrants in 2009 and 2010 for the 71 year-old dictator on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

As a signatory of the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the ICC and where the Court’s jurisdictional parameters are laid out, South Africa had an obligation to arrest him. Yet the South African government still promised Bashir and all other African leaders attending the summit full immunity on the basis of a general principle of international law, despite the fact that Article 27 of the Rome Statute waives such immunity ratione personae that is usually granted to heads-of-states in international law.

Things took an unexpected turn when, on Sunday, a South African human rights group managed to secure an interim order from South Africa’s High Court barring Bashir from leaving the country. The South African government argued against the order on the grounds that it had granted immunity to the delegates at the conference. The next day the government let Bashir board his flight home at a military airfield near Pretoria, just as the High Court was holding a hearing that would have ordered the Sudanese leader to be detained and turned over to the ICC. South Africa’s leading party, the African National Congress (ANC), did not hesitate to slam the ICC over its attempt to arrest Bashir, calling it “no longer useful for the purposes for which it was intended”. Yesterday the government denied that there had been a plot to let Bashir leave.

“Securitizing” the Court

Whether or not one agrees with the ANC’s statement that – the ICC “is no longer useful” – it is still reflective of what has become an increasingly hostile climate between the Court and its African member states. The AU has repeatedly accused the ICC of being a tool of Western imperialism and of unfairly targeting the African continent, since many perpetrators in the Middle East and the Western world are left untouched. With all nine of the official investigations that the Court is currently pursuing taking place in Africa, the AU criticism is not completely unwarranted. Yet the Court’s focus on Africa does not stem from any anti-African sentiment, but from the political realities and limitations of its jurisdiction.

The ICC Prosecutor can only open an investigation into situations that occur within the territory of one of its member states, by means of a state’s self-referral or of its proprio motu powers, or if the suspect is a national of a state party. However, an investigation can also be initiated within the boundaries of a non-member state if the situation is referred to the ICC by the UNSC, which is what happened in the case of Sudan.

Furthermore, on the basis of the principle of complementarity, the ICC should be seen as a court of last resort, meaning that it will only intervene if it finds a state to be “unable or unwilling” to investigate and/or prosecute. Therefore, the Court cannot automatically usurp jurisdiction from states, and states themselves can avoid the intervention of the ICC if they are able to conduct a genuine investigation and prosecution.

Given the incidence of conflict globally and the fact that the African continent holds the largest regional group of ICC-member states (34 out of the 123 state parties), the ICC focus on Africa should not come as much of a surprise. Many countries in the Middle East did not grant the ICC jurisdiction, and major powers such as the US have failed to ratify the Rome Statute. It is also worth noting that, Sudan being one of the few exceptions to this, the majority of the investigations that are currently taking place in the African continent have been at the behest of the states, which have requested the intervention of the Court through self-referrals.

But the fact that the investigation in Darfur was initiated after a UNSC referral has led some African leaders and commentators to argue that the Court is nothing more than a tool of great power neo-colonialism. Irrespective of whether the UNSC referral was driven by political rather than humanitarian considerations, the arrest warrants issued by the ICC judges were based on concrete evidence gathered during the official investigation. Objecting to Bashir’s arrest on the basis that other alleged perpetrators in the Western world are still at large (a common argument made by the Court’s critics with reference to Bush or Blair), or that other grave situations are not being investigated due to conflicting political interests (i.e. Syria), does not excuse the fact that the victims of Darfur are being denied their fundamental right to justice and human dignity.

While certain African leaders continue to portray the Court as a threat to the sovereignty of African states, Darfurians and the other victims of mass atrocities within the continent are essentially being reduced to ‘bare life’ as their right to justice is being gambled for political considerations of pan-Africanism.

A Victory in Disguise

By choosing African solidarity over its international legal obligations, the South African government has emerged as the only loser of last weekend’s events. Letting Bashir go in defiance of its own Court order has seriously compromised South Africa’s leadership position on the continent and left a major stain on its reputation as one of the Africa’s soundest democracies.

The ANC’s discrediting of the Court should therefore be seen more as a desperate attempt to scrape legitimacy out of an essentially pyrrhic victory rather than being reflective of any truth. Calling the Court ‘obsolete’ ignores the fact that the arrest of perpetrators of grave international crimes has never been one of the purposes of the ICC, but a job delegated to states under the doctrine of universal jurisdiction. Adopting Antonio Cassese’ famous image in reference to the ad hoc tribunal in the former Yugoslavia, the ICC is nothing more than “a giant without arms and legs”, fully dependent on states as its artificial limbs. If anything, this week’s drama served to underline the need to recalibrate our expectation against the realities and limitations of the Court.

Contrary to the opinion of many of the Court’s critics, the latest development in the Bashir-ICC saga marked a significant moment in the fight against impunity, one of the official purposes of the Court. The Pretoria’s court order was in fact the first time any court has legally barred a head of state from leaving a country following a request by the ICC. This, together with the tireless efforts of South African civil society, is evidence of a slow internalization of a norm against impunity in what Kathryn Sikkink sees as an ongoing ‘justice cascade’.

Furthermore, the fact that Bashir had to sneak out of the country like a fugitive, and that the South African authorities had to come up with a range of fanciful machinations and cover stories to let him leave the country, suggests that it’s the end of business-as-usual for the Sudanese leader. The world around him is increasingly shrinking, and so is his time left as a free man.

There is no doubt that Bashir’s arrest would have marked a definitive victory for the ICC and the international criminal law project as a whole. However, framing Bashir’s escape in terms of a decisive blow to the ICC risks reinforcing the same delegitimizing rhetoric that is currently hampering the Court’s universal aspirations. Whilst the ICC might be far from perfect, it has still managed to instill a nascent culture of international accountability where impunity once prevailed, despite being such a young institution.

The future of the fight against impunity will heavily rely on its member states. Only by upholding their international legal obligations can states ensure that a norm of accountability crystallizes in international law, and that even those seemingly invincible leaders of today can become the fugitives of tomorrow. In abdicating its responsibility to Bashir’s victims in Darfur, South Africa flouted its domestic and international legal obligations, but it did not write the epitaph for the International Criminal Court. On the contrary, South African civil society and an independent judiciary have shown us that the ICC is far from dead and that a global effort to fight impunity is well underway.

Beatrice Tesconi is currently undertaking an MA in International Peace and Security at King’s College, London, after graduating from the University of York with a BA in Politics and International Relations. Her research interests are in the field of International Criminal Law, Transitional Justice and the Middle East and North African Region. Twitter: @BeaTesconi

Interview – Iain Morley QC on prosecuting war crimes

by

By Dora Robinson:

Iain Morley QC speaking to the War Studies Society at King's College London in early December.
Iain Morley QC speaking to the War Studies Society at King’s College London in early December.

On 5 December the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) withdrew the charges against Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta, who had been charged with crimes against humanity in the wake of the disputed 2007 Kenyan elections, when over 1000 people were killed. This has renewed scrutiny into the challenges of prosecuting international crimes. Iain Morley QC, an international criminal law expert, is well positioned to discuss some of these challenges. He has both defended and prosecuted on the international circuit, working at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) and the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). He is also the current chair of the Foreign Office pro bono panel.

***

Why did you decide to start practising and then continue practising international criminal law?

I had long been interested in international criminal law. I first researched war crimes while a Pegasus Scholar to the Bar of New Zealand in 1993. I was present for the opening of the first trial at the ICTY of Duško Tadić in 1996 [a former local leader of the Serb Democratic Party who was convicted of persecutions, inhuman acts and cruel treatment] and through regular attendance at conferences and in The Hague developed many contacts. I was asked to help Steven Kay QC in October 2004, who was then defending in the Milošević trial. Once inside international criminal law, I found other opportunities, which led to my prosecuting four genocide trials at the ICTR, and to writing the Hariri indictment at the STL. I returned to domestic practice in January 2013.

What are the main differences between how you approach defence and prosecution in international criminal law?

There should be no differences in the approach between domestic and international trials – the prosecutor should be an ‘impartial minister of justice’ and the defence should always apply their instructions, and test the evidence fearlessly. However, in international criminal law there are lawyers from many different jurisdictions, and sometimes the prosecutor wants to win too much, and so a case can become ‘personal’, or the defence will fight too hard, arguing over everything, including matters on which they have no instructions, taking every point, just to mess up the prosecution case. The big difference therefore is that it can be tricky to get though a case swiftly, and to keep things professionally friendly between the parties.

The former President of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milošević, was charged in 1999 by the ICTY on 66 counts relating to the wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo in the 1990s. These included ‘complicity in genocide’ relating to the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia, where over 8000 Muslim men and boys were executed. You were the assistant to Stephen Kay QC, the court-appointed defence counsel for Slobodan Milošević, what are the biggest challenges when defending somebody who has committed war crimes, like Milošević?

Well, Milošević was not convicted, as he died, so we need to be careful about concluding he did commit such offences. I also think he had quite a good defence to the Kosovo allegations, which was the area I was working on in 2004. The biggest challenge is that too many people in international criminal law cases assume the defendant is guilty, so it can be difficult to feel he is getting a fair trial.

How important do you think it is to have a broad understanding of conflict when working as an international criminal lawyer?

It is not important to have a broad understanding of conflict when working in international criminal law. Instead, you need to be a good lawyer; able to sift large quantities of information for what is probative, and to be able to comprehend what evidence is needed to prove offences. However, in-depth knowledge of the specific conflict in the case is important, so you need to be able to read up efficiently, if you are to get onto the case, as you will not be able to create a rapport with co-workers if you know too little.

In 2010 the International Criminal Court (ICC) charged the current President of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, with crimes against humanity relating to the violence that erupted following the 2007 Presidential elections. After the incumbent President Kibaki declared himself the winner, over 1000 people were killed and 350,000 people were displaced. Whilst Minister for Local Government in Kibaki’s cabinet, Kenyatta allegedly commissioned the Mungiki criminal organisation to carry out widespread attacks against the non-Kikuyu populations in Nakuru and Naivasha. The ICC Prosecutor recently dropped these charges due to a lack of evidence. What do you think this says about the future of international criminal law?

Dropping the case against Kenyatta is a great success for international criminal law, as it shows the Prosecutor to be acting properly like a minister for justice. This means that when the case is weak, there will be no grandstanding by the prosecution, no politics played out in maintaining proceedings for fear of loss of face if not, causing vast expense by requiring a trial and the judges to acquit, rather than making the right decision on the evidence not to trouble the court.

What changes do you think international courts and tribunals should make to move forward in the twenty-first century?

Cases should be shorter, with time limits. Inexperienced lawyers should go. There should be less money paid (which is partly what makes the cases longer). There should be no trials in absentia. Judges should not be academics, but practising domestic trial judges, and ought to be more scrutinized before appointment. Trials should be as local as possible. After a major civil conflict, with 100,000 dead, it is arguable that 10,000 people convicted at a cost of $1000 per trial in a system with a 100 flaws is probably better than 100 convicted at a cost of $10m per trial in a system with only 10 flaws – now there’s something to discuss in class…

Do you think that international criminal law’s focus on ‘individuals who bear the greatest responsibility’ is the best approach to take when the distinction between high and low-level perpetrators is often blurred?

There is no other way – where there are war crimes, there are usually thousands of perpetrators, and international criminal law cannot currently cope with pursuing so many. In choosing who to pursue, we aim for the biggest fish, particularly so that there is not a sense of grievance created by easily convicting those lower in the chain (like the shooters at Srebrenica), and letting off the overall commanders, like Ratko Mladić. [The former Commander of the Bosnian Serb Army was indicted by the ICTY for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in 1995 and is currently on trial after being arrested in 2011.] International criminal law seeks to remove impunity, and this means that if you can’t get everyone, then you go after those at the top.

How compelling do you find the claims that the ICC is a continuation of Western colonialism and that it applies selective justice?

Allegations of colonialism and selective justice are nonsense. Selective justice is the fault of the United Nations Security Council, not the ICC. It is easier to pursue crimes in Africa because there are no geopolitical games at play there. And Africans want their bad leaders held accountable: this is not colonialism.

Dora Robinson is a third year BA War Studies student at King’s College London.  Her main interests include international law, international organisations and their roles in contemporary conflict.​  She is Academic Secretary of the War Studies Society.  Like them on Facebook here and follow them on Twitter here @WarStudiesSoc.