Strategic Litigation Quarterly Newsletter: A look back at 2024

The Strategic Litigation Project (SLP) works at the intersection of law and policy to expand the reach of international justice mechanisms and make universal legal tools truly universal. In partnership with affected communities and regional experts, it takes on projects aiming to strengthen, enhance, and repurpose existing justice pathways for atrocity crimes and serious human rights violations.

This past year, the SLP team has been advancing efforts led by Afghan and Iranian jurists and women’s rights defenders to recognize and codify the crime of gender apartheid in a global treaty focusing on the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity. SLP experts have helped build a legal and political movement in support of codification, engaging with governments, UN experts, and other key stakeholders in advancing the relevant legal arguments and justifications. In an exciting development, on November 22, 2024, the United Nations Sixth Committee voted to move the treaty forward to formal negotiations.

This decision is a key step forward for the codification effort, as well as for victim and survivor communities around the world in search of justice and the nonrepetition of these crimes. The continued development of the treaty also presents an opportunity to further urge states to take a progressive, gender-competent approach to the formal negotiations. Looking forward, our team will continue to heavily advocate with states to ensure a strong final text that includes the codification of gender apartheid and other emergent gender crimes.

Below is more information about the SLP’s progress on the gender apartheid campaign and other projects throughout 2024. As we plan for even greater impact in 2025, we hope that you will consider including the SLP in your end-of-year giving. On behalf of the SLP team, I thank you for your continued support of our work and mission.

Kind regards,

Gender Apartheid

Leading up to the recent vote by the United Nations (UN) Sixth Committee, the SLP—in partnership with Afghan and Iranian civil society—ramped up its advocacy efforts around the draft crimes against humanity treaty in 2024. In addition to dozens of meetings held at states’ permanent missions to the UN, the team convened bilateral and multilateral briefings, traveled to country capitals, and launched a social media campaign to further advance the effort.

Discussions at Greentree

In April, the SLP team hosted a two-day diplomatic retreat at the Greentree Estate called “Centering humanity: Gender apartheid and the slave trade in the draft crimes against humanity convention.” The convening facilitated informal discussions between representatives of member states and experts on the urgent need to enumerate the crimes of gender apartheid and the slave trade in the proposed treaty. Taking place just ahead of the Sixth Committee’s second resumed session to debate the draft convention, the SLP emphasized the need to ensure a victim- and survivor-centered approach to the treaty’s development.

To date, a cross-regional group of eleven member states have voiced openness to exploring the codification of the crime of gender apartheid in the potential treaty.

Launching a social media campaign

In June, the SLP helped organize the launch of a social media campaign to increase the visibility of the effort to recognize and codify the crime of gender apartheid under international law. The social media campaign featured high-profile supporters, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, Afghan paralympian Zakia Khudadadi, Baroness Helena Kennedy, actors Golshifteh Farahani and Nazanin Boniadi, former President and Prime Minister of Mongolia Elbegdorj Tsakhia, Ambassador Melanne Verveer, and more. Each participant posted a customized graphic declaring their support for the effort and urging states to make gender apartheid a crime against humanity.

Following the initial posts by signatories to the joint letter and legal brief issued by the SLP and the Global Justice Center, the team produced a template and suggested caption for the campaign graphic. If you wish to join the campaign, add your photo to the template and be sure to tag @endgenderapartheid.today on Instagram and @EGACampaign on X (formerly known as Twitter) when you post.

Engagement in South Africa

In August, the SLP Gender and Policy Advisor Metra Metran, Strategic Legal Advisor for Gender Justice Akila Radhakrishnan, and Legal Advisor Azadah Raz Mohammad traveled to South Africa for a week to meet with jurists, experts, academics, anti-apartheid activists, and civil society leaders, as well as the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation. Meetings included a dinner (hosted by a sitting constitutional court judge) with fifteen lawyers, judges, and experts, and also gatherings with key South African civil society organizations and other prominent experts. These meetings made clear that there is a promising opportunity to continue developing solidarity and support between the people of South Africa and the women and girls of Afghanistan.

Seeing impact in Geneva

In June, the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, presented his report on “the phenomenon of an institutionalized system of discrimination, segregation, disrespect for human dignity and exclusion of women and girls,” at the UN Human Rights Council’s fifty-sixth session. Metran and Radhakrishnan traveled to Geneva to attend the report presentation and interactive dialogue.

The report concluded that “the Taliban’s discriminatory and misogynist policies and harsh enforcement methods” in Afghanistan constitute “an institutionalized framework of gender apartheid.” Notably, Bennett’s report further calls on member states to codify gender apartheid as a crime against humanity.

Read more about recent developments for the campaign to recognize and codify the crime of gender apartheid, written by our experts

Metra Mehran for the New York Times: “The Taliban Have Reached a New Low. How Can the World Respond?”

Gissou Nia and Azadah Raz Mohammad for Just Security: “UN Special Rapporteur Report on Afghanistan Adds to Momentum to Recognize Gender Apartheid as a Crime Against Humanity”

Syria Victims Fund

Consultations in Syrian civil society

The SLP team has been working with Syrian civil society to explore and advocate for the establishment of an intergovernmental Syria Victims Fund. The suggested framework for the fund would rely on significant monetary judgments that states are collecting linked to violations in Syria—including fines, penalties, and forfeitures for sanctions violations and international crimes committed in Syria.

Following a series of individual consultations held between March and July 2023, the SLP team, in 2024, convened a series of virtual working group sessions with its Syrian partners to continue discussing key questions around the establishment of the proposed fund. In October, the team hosted eighteen partners for an in-person workshop in Warsaw, Poland, to develop firm recommendations for the fund’s design and operation. Using these recommendations, the SLP is now working to develop a policy paper, which will be the basis for future advocacy.

Advocacy around the Lafarge forfeiture

In May, the SLP supported a coalition of fifty-three organizations and individuals—representing Syrian, Yezidi, US, and international civil society—in issuing an open letter, accompanied by a press release, urging US Attorney General Merrick Garland to earmark funds the Department of Justice (DOJ) received in its case against Lafarge to benefit victims and survivors of underlying atrocity crimes linked to Syria.

Lafarge forfeited $687 million—the largest identified monetary judgment linked to violations in Syria—to the US government after admitting to making payments to ISIS and al-Nusra Front to continue operating a cement plant in northern Syria. The letter expresses grave concern that the forfeiture will be retained for general US government use rather than to enable the recovery of affected communities in Syria that lack access to remedy and support.

Two years after the forfeiture, the DOJ has still not indicated how it intends to use the Lafarge funds. The SLP team has continued to urge the DOJ to repurpose the Lafarge forfeiture to benefit victims, following the precedent it set with Ukraine. With all eyes on Syria once more, the United States must direct the Lafarge funds to Syrian victims—and it must act now.

Read more about the United States’ options for repurposing the Lafarge funds

New Atlanticist

Dec 2, 2024

In its final days, the Biden administration should take this step to support Syrian victims

By Mohamad Katoub, Alana Mitias

The outgoing administration could direct up to $600 million in forfeited funds to support victims in Syria—but time is running out.

Conflict Human Rights

Iran Digital Archive Coalition

In March 2024, the SLP and Mnemonic led a coalition of international organizations to launch the Iranian Archive, an archive that has preserved more than two million pieces of digital evidence documenting human rights abuses committed during the Islamic Republic of Iran’s crackdown on the Woman, Life, Freedom movement.

At a meeting of the Eurojust Genocide Network in April, SLP Deputy Director Nushin Sarkarati, alongside coalition partners at Mnemonic, gave a presentation on the archive and its potential utility for pursuing accountability against perpetrators of international crimes in Iran. Specifically, Sarkarati emphasized the need for third states to open structural investigations—investigations for serious violations of international law that aren’t linked to any one individual perpetrator or event—using evidence collected by the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran (FFMI).

On September 17, the Investigations Lab at UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center, another coalition partner, published its report on the blinding of protestors and bystanders in Iran. The report is the first to be largely based on open-source information that has been preserved as part of the archive.

On September 20, the SLP and the Iran Digital Archive Coalition hosted an event at The Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA to launch the work of the coalition and commemorate the two-year anniversary of the killing of Mahsa Jina Amini and emergence of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. The event featured Afsoon Najafi, sister of Hadis Najafi (an Iranian activist who was shot and killed by Iranian security forces); Elahe Tavakolian, an Iranian protestor blinded by Islamic Republic security forces; and representatives of the Iran Digital Archive Coalition who presented on the findings of the coalition’s open source investigations.

The event concluded with a conversation with Sara Hossain, chair of the FFMI, and actor and activist Nazanin Boniadi. Speaking on pathways towards international accountability for the crimes committed during the 2022 protests, Hossain concluded that “what we need is justice and accountability for these violations, reparations for the victims, and, most importantly, telling the truth about what’s happened, in terms of the violations and international crimes that have occurred.”

Read more from the Iran Digital Archive Coalition

IranSource

Apr 12, 2024

Iranians sacrificed their lives to share videos of regime violence. Now there’s an online archive for the world to see. 

By Cameran Ashraf

The Iranian Archive holds more than one million videos to ensure that the Women, Life, Freedom uprising led by women would not be erased.

Digital Policy Human Rights

Advocating for the Uyghur Community

The SLP expanded its advocacy work regarding human rights abuses against the Uyghur population in China and welcomed Rayhan Asat, Uyghur human rights lawyer and SLP nonresident senior fellow, as the SLP’s new senior legal and policy advisor and China lead.

On September 30, the SLP co-hosted an event on the sidelines of the fifty-seventh session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, entitled “Xinjiang: Supporting victims and advancing the implementation of UN recommendations.” Asat was joined by Priya Gopalan, vice-chair on follow-up at the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, and John Fisher, deputy director for global advocacy at Human Rights Watch. The panel was moderated by Raphaël Viana David, program manager for China & Latin America at the International Service for Human Rights.

At the panel, Asat spoke on China’s continued policy of repression towards the country’s Uyghur population: “We’re going to face the rise of authoritarian international law, where China is expanding its counterterrorism framework by including the legitimate cultural and religious practice and the right to self-determination as a form of terrorism.”

In August, Asat published a report in the Yale MacMillan Center’s genocide studies program. The report, entitled “Uyghur race as the enemy: China’s legalized authoritarian oppression & mass imprisonment,” unveils the extent of China’s systematic, large-scale imprisonment of the Uyghur community, and includes recommendations for international bodies to pursue accountability mechanisms.

Stay Updated

Subscribe to our newsletter for quarterly updates on the SLP’s work on prevention and accountability efforts for atrocity crimes, human rights violations, and terrorism and corruption offenses around the world.

Image: A statue of Justitia, the internationally-recognized symbol of justice. (REUTERS)