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There is no systemic change without legal change. The law governs our social relations and without changes in legal frameworks, the rights we fight for as activists are not translated into sustainable polities. Considering ongoing transnational challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the global pushback against human rights, and the climate emergency, the world critically needs a responsive international legal system. This event aims at understanding what international law could and should look like in the future from a feminist perspective.

CFFP and the Global Justice Center discussed these issues with Akila Radhakrishnan, the President of the Global Justice Center, Christine Chinkin, international law professor and Founding Director of the Centre of Women Peace & Security at the London School of Economics, and Beth Van Schaack, formerly Deputy to the Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, Office of Global Criminal Justice, U.S. Department of State; international criminal lawyer and professor at Stanford Law School. The discussion was moderated by Kristina Lunz, Executive Director of the Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy.

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Excerpt of Just Security op-ed authored by GJC President Akila Radhakrishnan and GJC Legal Director Grant Shubin.

In his first speech since illegally attempting a coup d’etat, Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing told the people of Myanmar that, “no one is above the law.” He went on, “no one or no organization is above the national interest in state-building and nation-building.” But in reality, Min Aung Hlaing and indeed all of the military (Tatmadaw) are very much above the law in Myanmar.

Of the coup’s many potential causes, perhaps the most overt is that military leadership thought they could get away with it. The military’s constitutional insulation from civilian oversight and control, the failure thus far to hold them accountable for human rights abuses and international crimes, and even periodic cheerleading from the international community for a “democratic transition” emboldened the military into thinking that subverting the will of the people could be done without major consequence. To quote the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, “This crisis was born of impunity.”

After all, the military has been getting away with genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, so why not a coup?

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Excerpt of The Diplomat op-ed authored by GJC President Akila Radhakrishnan and GJC Special Counsel Michelle Onello.

Almost as soon as news spread of the Myanmar military’s brazen coup on February 1, we began hearing calls for a “reversal” of the coup. Now, the international community’s efforts have focused on restoring the pre-coup status quo, as evidenced by the recent (and failed) ASEAN emergency summit.

These proposals and initiatives ignore the persistent demands from protestors and ethnic groups for a radical and fundamental shift in Myanmar. Perhaps most importantly, they fail to acknowledge that the rapidly deteriorating situation in Myanmar cannot be resolved with a return to the precarious pre-coup balance of power because it’s precisely this unsustainable framework that led to the coup in the first place.

Without a recognition of the need for a complete restructuring of the underlying political and legal system so that it grants ethnic groups a meaningful role and assures justice for the military’s past and present crimes, history will keep repeating itself and the people of Myanmar will continue to suffer.

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