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	Lebanon: 5 years without justice for port explosion by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch   Lebanese authorities have yet to deliver truth and justice for the victims and their families five years after the devastating Beirut port explosion on 4 August 2020, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said today. It is imperative to conduct a comprehensive and unobstructed investigation that establishes the full chain of responsibility.   The blast, which killed at least 236 people, injured over 7,000, and devastated vast areas of the capital, was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history.   Despite repeated domestic and international calls for accountability over the past five years, Lebanese authorities have failed to complete an effective, independent, and impartial investigation into the explosion.   The resumption of the domestic investigation in 2025 after a two-year suspension has yet to yield conclusive results. The investigation has been marred by persistent obstruction and interference by political leaders and state officials determined to evade justice. For the victims’ families, this prolonged denial of accountability is an unbearable burden.   “Justice delayed is justice denied,” said Reina Wehbi, Amnesty International’s Lebanon Campaigner. “The families of those killed and injured in the Beirut explosion have waited an intolerable five years. They must not be forced to endure another year of impunity. The time for justice, accountability, and truth is now.”   Rather than facilitating the investigation, several politicians and senior officials summoned by lead investigative judge, Tarek Bitar, including generals, judges, members of parliament, and former ministers, have consistently sought to derail it. They have refused to attend questioning sessions, invoking various forms of immunity, and opened a barrage of legal challenges against Judge Bitar that have repeatedly suspended the inquiry.   In January 2023, when Judge Bitar attempted to revive the stalled investigation after a two-year suspension, Lebanon’s then–public prosecutor, Ghassan Oueidat—who had been charged by Bitar—responded by filing a lawsuit against him, effectively suspending the investigation once again. Oueidat also ordered the release of the suspects who had been held in pre-trial detention since the explosion and instructed security forces and the Public Prosecution Office to cease all cooperation with the judge.   In February 2025, following yet another two-year hiatus, Judge Bitar resumed the investigation by summoning additional employees and officials implicated in the explosion. The move came amid renewed political pledges by newly elected President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam to uphold the rule of law and ensure justice for the port explosion victims.   The move was enabled in March, when the interim top prosecutor, Jamal Hajjar, overturned the measures imposed by his predecessor that had effectively frozen the investigation. Some of those summoned, such as former Prime Minister Hassan Diab, Major General Abbas Ibrahim, and Major General Tony Saliba, complied and appeared for questioning for the first time in years.   However, other officials, including two members of parliament, Ali Hassan Khalil and Ghazi Zaiter, and Oueidat, the former prosecutor, have continued to obstruct the investigation by refusing to submit to questioning.   The Lebanese authorities should ensure a comprehensive and unobstructed investigation, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said. It is imperative for this inquiry to thoroughly establish the facts and circumstances surrounding the explosion, encompassing the full chain of responsibility—whether domestic or international—and determining whether any criminal acts or human rights violations occurred due to the state’s failure to protect lives.   The authorities also need to take all necessary measures to guarantee that the investigation can be completed without undue interference or obstruction from political leaders, state officials, or suspects in the case.   This includes guaranteeing the independence of the judiciary and adopting essential amendments to Lebanon’s civil and criminal procedures codes to address provisions that have been exploited to obstruct criminal and civil investigations.   Despite the resumption of the investigation, the road to justice remains littered with political and legal challenges, Amnesty International and Human Right Watch said. The Lebanese authorities should swiftly remove the barriers that have repeatedly blocked the investigation and ensure that it proceeds without political interference.   A 2021 investigation by Human Rights Watch concluded that the explosion was a direct result of the Lebanese authorities’ failure to uphold their human rights obligations, particularly the right to life, and pointed to the possible involvement of senior officials.   Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other rights groups have consistently documented a range of procedural and systemic flaws within the domestic investigation. These flaws include pervasive political interference, granting immunity to high-level politicians, and failure to respect due process and fair trial standards.   Other countries have also repeatedly condemned the authorities’ blatant political interference in the domestic investigation, notably in a joint statement at the United Nations Human Rights Council in March 2023.   “Justice for the Beirut port explosion is not only about accountability for a single event,” said Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon Researcher for Human Rights Watch. “It is a test of Lebanon’s promised commitment to the rule of law and human rights.”   http://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/08/lebanon-5-years-without-justice-for-port-explosion-victims-comprehensive-and-unobstructed-investigation-needed/   Sep. 2025   Sri Lanka is on the Front Line of the Battle for Accountability   For many people around the world, the memory of atrocities that shocked us is often overwritten a few years later by new horrors. But for survivors and the families of victims, the suffering never ends. Worse still, military and political leaders elsewhere — who might be considering atrocities of their own — are paying close attention. Unaddressed war crimes provide a dismal model for future atrocities.   Sri Lanka’s total defeat of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009, which cost tens of thousands of civilian lives, in what the United Nations found may constitute crimes against humanity, demonstrated utter disregard for the laws of war by both sides. Yet it is held up today by some Israeli military strategists as a campaign to be emulated. That is only possible because there were no consequences for the atrocities committed.   Successive Sri Lankan governments have shown that by pledging to uphold international law and then reneging on that promise, you can get away with anything. That’s why the U.N. Human Rights Council needs to keep demanding accountability and renew the mandate to collect evidence of international crimes committed in Sri Lanka at its current session this month in Geneva.   Sri Lanka’s civil war lasted 26 years, with both sides committing widespread violations, including attacks on civilians, extra-judicial killings, and enforced disappearances. In the final months of the war, the remnants of the LTTE and hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians were corralled by the Sri Lankan army in an ever-shrinking space.   While the LTTE used the civilians as human shields, the Sri Lankan army blocked humanitarian supplies and unilaterally declared one “safe zone” after another, before bombarding those same areas with airpower and artillery. Health facilities were repeatedly targeted. What happened in Sri Lanka 16 years ago, and went unpunished, were precursors to some of the tactics and abuses being used in Gaza today.   By 2009, Sri Lanka already had a long history of atrocities going unpunished. In the 1980s, a leftist uprising by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (People’s Liberation Front, or JVP) led to the enforced disappearance and killing by the army of thousands of young people suspected of links to the insurgents.   Some of the army officers involved in that campaign, such as Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who went on to become defense secretary and later president, would be implicated in later atrocities.   About 20 mass graves have been discovered so far around Sri Lanka, relating to both the JVP uprising and the civil war with the LTTE.   Typically, they are uncovered by accident by construction workers, digging a foundation or laying a water pipe. The most recent mass grave to be reopened is at Chemmani, near Jaffna, in northern Sri Lanka, where the remains of over 200 people who are believed to have been killed in army custody in the 1990s were discovered this year, including a child with a school bag.   Victims’ families and human rights defenders at Chemmani, and throughout Sri Lanka, hope that the remains will be identified, the truth will be revealed, and those responsible held to account. But bitter experience gives them few grounds to be hopeful. Due to a lack of technical capacity or political will, no mass grave in Sri Lanka has yet been successfully investigated.   The families of the “disappeared” have been waiting for decades to learn what happened to their loved ones, much less see justice done. Those who campaign for answers face surveillance and intimidation from the security forces. A woman whose son was taken away by the army in 2008 and never came home told Human Rights Watch this summer that she had recently been questioned for three hours by counterterrorism police. “Sometimes they approach our children to get information about us. That is a type of threat,” she said.   The blanket impunity for international crimes, and flagrant harassment of people who demand justice, have led victims to lose faith in domestic mechanisms. U.N. action to uphold international law in Sri Lanka is essential. Since 2015, the U.N. Human Rights Council has passed a series of resolutions to support accountability. At first, Sri Lanka supported those resolutions, though the government did not fulfill its commitments. But in 2020, Sri Lanka withdrew from the process, preferring to uphold “war heroes” rather than hold alleged criminals accountable.   The Human Rights Council responded by creating the Sri Lanka Accountability Project, to collect evidence of international crimes committed in Sri Lanka that could be used to prosecute alleged perpetrators abroad or, if conditions improve in Sri Lanka, to support future prosecutions in Sri Lankan courts. The council also mandated the U.N. to monitor ongoing abuses.   That work remains vital – not just to protect human rights in Sri Lanka, but to challenge impunity everywhere. Without accountability, brutal military and political leaders across the world will conclude that to achieve their ends, mass slaughter “works.”   http://www.hrw.org/news/2025/09/16/sri-lanka-is-on-the-front-line-of-the-battle-for-accountability   Aug. 2025   Peru’s amnesty law breaches international human rights obligations, UN experts warn. (OHCHR)   UN human rights experts are appalled by the promulgation of an amnesty law for security forces for crimes committed in 1980-2000 on 13 August 2025 in Peru.   “This legislation breaches international standards by granting amnesty to members of the Armed Forces, the Peruvian National Police and Self-Defense Committees that are denounced, under investigation or prosecution for crimes committed between 1980 and 2000 and whose conviction verdicts are not final, as well as to individuals over 70 years of age who have already been convicted of such crimes.”   “International standards bar the application of amnesties or pardons to crimes against humanity and other gross human rights violations, including enforced disappearances. Such measures indeed create an unacceptable form of impunity and undermine decades of progress toward justice, truth, and reparations for victims,” the experts warned.   Law N° 32419 entered into force on 14 August 2025, violating international law, including the Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, which the country ratified on 26 September 2012, the Updated Set of principles for the protection and promotion of human rights through action to combat impunity, and Peru’s obligations under the American Convention on Human Rights, ratified on 27 July 1977.   This came a year after the approval of Law No. 32107 of 9 August 2024, which introduced a statute of limitations for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed prior to 1 July 2002.   The experts reiterated that the non-applicability of statutory limitations to crimes against humanity is a peremptory norm of international law from which no derogation is permitted.   “The State must urgently reverse these setbacks in Peru’s pursuit of justice and reconciliation, and fully comply with its international obligation to investigate, prosecute and punish gross human rights violations and crimes under international law committed during the internal armed conflict, including enforced disappearances,” the experts said.   Amnesties, statutes of limitations and analogous legal concepts shall not restrict the right of access to justice of the victims of these crimes.   The experts also called on Peru to ensure that the widespread or systematic practice of enforced disappearance is fully recognised — in law and in practice — as a crime against humanity under international law. “Peru must guarantee that its legislation and policies reflect the continuing nature of enforced disappearances, and that the search for victims and investigations continue until the truth about their fate and whereabouts is fully established,” they added.   http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/08/perus-amnesty-law-breaches-international-human-rights-obligations-un-experts
	Climate Change is an Existential Threat to Humanity by International Court of Justice, agencies   The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Netherlands, issued its advisory opinion on the obligations of States in respect of climate change, read out by the President of the Court, Judge Iwasawa Yuji, on Wednesday.   The UN’s principal judicial body ruled that States have an obligation to protect the environment from greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and act with due diligence and cooperation to fulfill this obligation.   This includes the obligation under the Paris Agreement on climate change to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.   The Court further ruled that if States breach these obligations, they incur legal responsibility and may be required to cease the wrongful conduct, offer guarantees of non-repetition and make full reparation depending on the circumstances.   UN Secretary-General António Guterres welcomed the historic decision. "This is a victory for our planet, for climate justice and for the power of young people to make a difference," he said. “The world must respond.”   The case was “unlike any that have previously come before the court,” President of the International Court of Justice Judge Yuji Iwasawa said while reading the court’s unanimous advisory opinion outlining the legal obligations of United Nations member states with regard to climate change.   This case was not simply a “legal problem” but “concerned an existential problem of planetary proportions that imperils all forms of life and the very health of our planet,” Iwasawa said.   “A complete solution to this daunting and self-inflicted problem requires the contribution of all fields of human knowledge, whether law, science, economics or any other; above all, a lasting and satisfactory solution requires human will and wisdom at the individual social and political levels to change our habits and current way of life to secure a future for ourselves and those who are yet to come”.   "Failure of a state to take appropriate action to protect the climate system … may constitute an internationally wrongful act," court president Yuji Iwasawa said. "The legal consequences resulting from the commission of an internationally wrongful act may include … full reparations to injured states in the form of restitution, compensation and satisfaction."   The court added that a "sufficient direct and certain causal nexus" had to be shown "between the wrongful act and the injury".   The Court used Member States’ commitments to both environmental and human rights treaties to justify this decision. UN Member States are parties to a variety of environmental treaties, including ozone layer treaties, the Biodiversity Convention, the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement and many more, which oblige them to protect the environment for people worldwide and for future generations.   The right to “a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is a precondition for the enjoyment of many human rights,” since Member States are parties to numerous human rights treaties, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, they are required to guarantee the enjoyment of such rights by addressing climate change.   In September 2021, the Pacific Island State of Vanuatu announced that it would seek an advisory opinion from the Court on climate change. This initiative was inspired by the youth group Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change, which underscored the need to act to address climate change, particularly in small island States.   After the country gaind the support of other UN Member States, the UN General Assembly, on 29 March 2023, adopted a resolution requesting an advisory opinion from the ICJ on two questions: (1) What are the obligations of States under international law to ensure the protection of the environment? and (2) What are the legal consequences for States under these obligations when they cause harm to the environment?   The ICJ ruling was welcomed by Ralph Regenvanu, Minister of Climate Change Adaptation, Meteorology & Geo-Hazards, Energy, Environment and Disaster Management for the Republic of Vanuatu.   “Today’s ruling is a landmark opinion that confirms what we, vulnerable nations have been saying, and we’ve known for so long, that states do have legal obligations to act on climate change, and these obligations are guaranteed by international law. They’re guaranteed by human rights law, and they’re grounded in the duty to protect our environment, which we heard the court referred to so much,” Regenvanu said.   Mr Regenvanu hailed the court's decision as a "landmark milestone". "It's a very important course correction in this critically important time," he said. "Even as fossil fuel expansion continues under the US's influence, along with the loss of climate finance and technology transfer, and the lack of climate ambition following the US's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, major polluters, past and present, cannot continue to act with impunity and treat developing countries as sacrifice zones to further feed corporate greed."   Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh, legal counsel for Vanuatu’s ICJ case, said the opinion meant that the “era where fossil fuel producers can freely produce and can argue that their climate policies are a matter of discretion—they’re free to decide on the climate policies—that era is over. We have entered an era of accountability, in which states can be held to account for their current emissions if they’re excessive but also for what they have failed to do in the past.”   Vishal Prasad, the director of Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change and one of the students who initiated the case, said the advisory opinion would play a major role in holding polluters accountable.   "The ICJ's decision brings us closer to a world where governments can no longer turn a blind eye to their legal responsibilities," he said. "It affirms a simple truth of climate justice: those who did the least to fuel this crisis deserve protection, reparations, and a future."   ICJ president Yuji Iwasawa said the climate "must be protected for present and future generations" and the adverse effect of a warming planet "may significantly impair the enjoyment of certain human rights, including the right to life".   The detailed ICJ advisory opinion dealt with obligations of states under various climate conventions and treaties and humanitarian law. The court concluded that in terms of the climate agreements, state parties:   To the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have an obligation to adopt measures with a view to contributing to the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to climate change.   Have additional obligations to take the lead in combating climate change by limiting their greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing their greenhouse gas sinks and reservoirs.   To the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, have a duty to cooperate with each other in order to achieve the underlying objective of the convention. To the Kyoto Protocol must comply with applicable provisions of the protocol.   To the Paris Agreement have an obligation to act with due diligence in taking measures in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities capable of making an adequate contribution to achieving the temperature goal set out in the agreement.   To the Paris Agreement have an obligation to prepare, communicate and maintain successive and progressive, nationally determined contributions, which, when taken together, are capable of achieving the temperature goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.   State parties to the Paris agreement have an obligation to pursue measures which are capable of achieving the objectives set out in their successive nationally determined contributions.   State parties to the Paris agreement have obligations of adaptation and cooperation, including through technology and financial transfers, which must be performed in good faith.   In addition, the court was of the opinion that customary international law sets forth obligations for states to ensure the protection of the climate system and other parts of the environment from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.   These obligations include the following:   States have a duty to prevent significant harm to the environment by acting with due diligence and to use all means at their disposal to prevent activities carried out within their jurisdiction or control from causing significant harm to the climate system and other parts of the environment in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.   States have a duty to cooperate with each other in good faith to prevent significant harm to the climate system and other parts of the environment, which requires sustained and continuous forms of cooperation by states when taking measures to prevent such harm.   State parties to the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the ozone layer and to the protocol and to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete ozone layer and its Kigali amendment, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in those countries experiencing serious drought and/or desertification, particularly in Africa, have obligations under these treaties to ensure the protection of the climate system and other parts of the environment from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.   State parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea have an obligation to adopt measures to protect and preserve the marine environment, including from the adverse effects of climate change, and to cooperate in good faith.   However, the court did not end there; it was of the opinion that states have obligations under international human rights law and are required to take “measures to protect the climate system and other parts of the environment.”   The court said a clean, healthy and sustainable environment was a precondition for exercising many human rights, such as the right to life, the right to health, the right to an adequate standard of living, including access to water, food and housing.   * ICJ Summary: Obligation of States in respect of climate change (7pp): http://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/187/187-20250723-pre-01-00-en.pdf   * ICJ complete advisory: Obligation of States in respect of climate change (140pp): http://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/187/187-20250723-adv-01-00-en.pdf   http://news.un.org/en/story/2025/07/1165475 http://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1t/k1tey5ro2w http://www.icj-cij.org/case/187/press-releases http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/07/turk-hails-landmark-icj-ruling-affirming-states-human-rights-obligations http://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/institute-responds-to-international-court-of-justice-advisory-opinion/ http://www.ciel.org/news/icj-climate-opinion-ends-fossil-fuel-impunity/ http://wwf.panda.org/wwf_news/press_releases/?14459466/ICJ-advisory-opinion-climate-change http://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/07/global-international-court-of-justices-landmark-opinion-bolsters-fight-for-climate-justice-and-accountability/ http://blog.ucs.org/delta-merner/five-reasons-why-the-icj-climate-advisory-opinion-matters/ http://www.clientearth.org/latest/press-office/press-releases/world-s-highest-court-confirms-countries-must-act-to-avert-climate-catastrophe-in-a-once-in-a-generation-legal-decision/   http://earth.org/landmark-moment-for-climate-justice-reactions-pour-in-after-icj-delivers-historic-opinion-on-states-climate-change-obligations/ http://www.dw.com/en/worlds-top-court-says-healthy-environment-is-a-human-right/a-73373617 http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jul/23/healthy-environment-is-a-human-right-top-un-court-rules http://www.ipsnews.net/2025/07/climate-change-existential-threat-to-humanity-says-icj/ http://www.ciel.org/project-update/advancing-climate-justice-at-the-icj/   http://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/luciano-lliuya-v-rwe-a-major-step-forward-for-climate-justice/ http://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/publication/global-trends-in-climate-change-litigation-2025-snapshot/   http://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/general-comments-and-recommendations/ec12gc27-general-comment-no-27-2025-economic-social http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/06/de-fossilising-economies-key-course-correction-climate-change-and-human http://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g25/070/22/pdf/g2507022.pdf http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/07/un-experts-hail-landmark-inter-american-court-opinion-states-extensive http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/climatechange/2025/07/15/the-right-to-a-healthy-environment-as-a-catalyst-for-urgent-and-ambitious-climate-action-at-the-iacthr/ http://climate.law.columbia.edu/ http://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/pace-of-warming-has-doubled-since-1980s http://www.savethechildren.net/news/climate-change-icj-ruling-landmark-win-children http://www.rightsoffuturegenerations.org/the-principles http://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session57/advance-versions/A-HRC-57-30-AEV.pdf http://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/general-comments-and-recommendations/crccgc26-general-comment-no-26-2023-childrens-rights Visit the related web page
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