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Global Justice Center Blog
Russia, the Current Big Spoiler in Advancing Global Gender Rights
Excerpt of Pass Blue article that quotes GJC Legal Director Grant Shubin.
At issue is not only violence — rape and other forms of sexual assault — but also a revival of attempts by Russia, China and their allies to downgrade human rights, reproductive and otherwise, and to push those topics out of the Council’s purview into economic and social branches of the UN, where they can fall into an abyss.
Grant Shubin is a human-rights lawyer who is the legal director of the Global Justice Center, a civil society organization based in New York. He is dubious about American leadership in the long term.
“Throughout the Trump years,” he said in an interview with PassBlue, “it was proven that the international human rights movement and the international human rights system do not rely on the United States to keep functioning.”
In government terms, he added, “The US is just not a functioning model,” marked as it is by making the enjoyment of people’s human rights “conditioned on the whipsaw nature of American foreign policy and of American politics.”
President Biden Repeals ICC Sanctions
NEW YORK — The Biden administration today repealed sanctions against the International Criminal Court.
The sanctions, levied against Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and other court officials, were issued by President Trump last year following the court’s announcement of an investigation into potential war crimes committed by US military forces in Afghanistan.
Akila Radhakrishnan, president of the Global Justice Center, issued the following statement:
“The Biden administration did the right thing today by ending this reckless assault on a critical and independent judicial institution. Former President Trump’s sanctions were issued to help the US and its close allies evade accountability for their own human rights abuses, but their impact went much further by targeting court officials and their urgent work.
“Repeal is a start, but if the Biden administration wishes to be a true champion of human rights and the rule of law, it must fundamentally shift the US relationship with the court. This must include a genuine effort to ratify the court’s Rome Statute to demonstrate that the US commitment to justice is not merely rhetorical.
“For too long, the US approach to the court has been hypocritical, cementing a belief that it is beyond reproach and above the law. It’s time for the US to take its own human rights obligations seriously and submit itself to the international institutions they champion, thus beginning a robust, healthy engagement with this vital institution.”
Biden Plans to Repeal Trump-Era Sanctions on ICC
Excerpt of Foreign Policy article that quotes GJC President Akila Radhakrishnan.
After Trump, “they’ve done a reasonable job but they’ve also had a pretty low bar to clear,” said Akila Radhakrishnan, president of the Global Justice Center, a nonprofit advocacy group.
Radhakrishnan said even if Biden lifts the sanctions, the fact that the United States imposed sanctions in the first place could still cause lasting damage to Washington’s reputation on global human rights.
“What it shows is that the U.S. is willing to allow things like self-interest to get in the way of independent judicial institutions when it finds them inconvenient for its own policies,” she said. “That, considering the things we say we stand for and advocate for worldwide, is deeply problematic.”
Genocide & Human Rights Webinar Series - Gender and International Responses to Genocide
In the fifth and final session in the Winter 2021 Genocide and Human Rights Webinar Series from the Zoryan Institute, Grant Shubin of the Global Justice Cente looks at the role of gender in the commission and international responses to genocide. In particular, how perpetrators use and exploit gender norms to increase the destructive impact of their attacks and the international community's blind spots to gendered aspects of genocide prevention and prosecution, with the Rohingya genocide as a case study.
Grant Shubin is the Legal Director of the Global Justice Center where he leads GJC’s programs on achieving gender equality through the rule of law. His work focuses on bringing feminist legal interpretations to ensure justice for sexual and gender-based violence and access to sexual and reproductive health and rights.