Recently, Kai Ambos alerted readers of two attempts to weaken Colombia’s transitional justice system (see here and here). A third development fortifies suspicions that the country’s newly elected government intends to derail it. This time, a legislative proposal threatens Colombia’s land restitution process. Changes in the treatment of secondary occupants of reclaimed land could especially frustrate this integral part of the elaborate reparation efforts. Land Restitution in Colombia The struggle over land has long been at the core of the Colombian conflict. With 7.7 million people, Colombia hosts the world’s largest population of internally displaced persons. IDPs constitute the vast majority of the 8.7 million registered survivors of the armed conflict. Studies estimate that displacement has affected 11.4 million hectares of land. Accordingly, former President Santos included land restitution as a central element in the 2011 Law on Victims and Land Restitution – the largest reparation program in the world. To manage the massive caseload, a newly created entity, the Land Restitution Unit (Unidad de…
Government
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The Settlement Agreement between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
On 12 June, Athens and Skopje announced that they have reached an agreement to resolve a dispute over the former Yugoslav Republic’s name that has troubled relations between the two states for decades. The agreement was signed at Prespes Lake, a lake at the border of Albania, Greece, and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, on…
Resignation of Mugabe: A Military Coup or a Legitimate Expression of the People’s Will?
On 15 November 2017, following a rule of 37 years since the independence of Zimbabwe, President Mugabe was placed under house arrest by the army. A military spokesman appeared on state television to declare that the president was safe and that they were only “targeting criminals around him who are committing crimes that are causing social and…
Post-Election Crisis in The Gambia, the Security Council and the Threat of the Use of Force
The Gambian post-election crisis is a gem amongst cases relevant to the law on ius ad bellum – not only because it is a crisis that has been resolved with almost no bloodshed, but also because it offers valuable insights into the interaction between Security Council authorization, the doctrine of intervention by invitation, and the prohibition on the…
The Use of Force to (Re-)Establish Democracies: Lessons from The Gambia
It has been almost a month since predominantly Senegalese troops entered The Gambia as part of an ECOWAS intervention after long-term president Yahya Jammeh had refused to accept the results of the December 2016 elections. ECOWAS troops remain in the country until this day in order to support newly-elected president, Adama Barrow, in establishing and maintaining public order.