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The heirs of a Palestinian landowner and the council of a Palestinian town sue two Canadian companies in Québec, claiming that by carrying out Israeli construction orders, they are assisting Israel in war crimes. The Superior Court of Québec dismissed the claim, stating that the Israeli High Court of Justice would be a more suitable place to argue this case. The Court of Appeal confirmed this, most importantly stating that this case essentially revolved around citizens from the West Bank and corporations carrying out work in the West Bank. Therefore, the Court held, it would require ‘a great deal of imagination to claim that the action has a serious connection with Quebec’. 

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) was founded in 1976 in response to the growing feeling amongst the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka during the 1960s and 1970s that they were discriminated against by the Singhalese majority. Ultimately, a comflict ensued that developed into a guerilla war opposing the LTTE to the Singhalese with the objective of attaining independence for the Tamil minority.

The present case concerns one of five ethnic Tamils, all naturalised Dutch citizens, charged by the Public Prosecutor of membership in the LTTE and having funded its activities from The Netherlands. In the course of the trial before the District Court of The Hague, the court found that the defendant was a leader of the Tamil Coordinating Committee in The Netherlands, and therefore a member of the LTTE itself. The defendant had undertaken various fundraising activities through the sale of lottery tickets, collecting donations at meetings and extorting money from Tamils living in The Netherlands. Having identified the LTTE as a criminal organisation, in line with US, Indian, EU and Canadian policy, the Court convicted the defendant of membership in and participating in the LTTE and sentenced him to 5 years’ imprisonment. 

Following the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the success of the Rwandan Patriotic Front in gaining control of the country, members of the former Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) and the Interahamwe militia who were widely considered to be responsible for the genocide, fled to the Kivu provinces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These exiled forces organised themselves into political and military groups designed to oppose the new Rwandan government.

One of these groups was the Forces Démocratiques pour la Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR) led by Ignace Murwanashyaka. The FDLR, composed of a military and a political wing, was coordinated by its Steering Committee of which the Suspect, Callixte Mbarushimana, was a member. The Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) alleges that Mbarushimana was responsible for the FDLR’s perpetration of attacks against the civilian populations in the Kivu provinces throughout 2009. The objective of these attacks, which included murder, rape, torture, mutilation and pillage, was to create a humanitarian catastrophe that would place pressure on the international community and draw attention to the FDLR’s political demands.

Pre-Trial Chamber I of the ICC declined to confirm the charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity against Mbarushimana thereby refusing to allow the case to continue to trial on the grounds that the Prosecution had not proved a number of key elements including the existence of a policy to attack the civilian population, and the existence of a group of persons acting with the common purpose of perpetrating crimes. Mbarushimana was subsequently released from the custody of the ICC and returned to France where he had been living since fleeing Rwanda. 

A Canadian human rights organization filed a complaint against a Canadian mining company which operated in the Democratic Republic Congo (DRC), on behalf of several Congolese victims (and relatives of victims) of violence committed by the army of the DRC in October 2004. Allegedly, Anvil Mining Ltd. provided the army with, for example, jeeps and cars to reach Kilwa, were the human rights violations were committed.

Anvil protested against the complaint filed, arguing that the Court in Québec did not have jurisdiction. The Superior Court disagreed and stated that Anvil’s activities in Québec and the mining activities in the DRC were sufficiently linked for the Court to have jurisdiction. Moreover, the Court stated that it did not consider courts in either the DRC or Australia, were the main office was located, more suitable to deal with this case. The Court of Appeal overturned this judgment, stating that the Quebec office of Anvil primarily focussed on investors and stakeholders. Therefore, the link with events in the DRC could not be established. Furthermore, it held that the complaint could also be heard in another country, most specifically Australia. Therefore, the Court found that authorities in Quebec did not have jurisdiction. 

The armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo opposed numerous tribes of different ethnicities in their struggle to gain power and territory, particularly over the Ituri provence in the north-eastern part of the DRC, an area rich in natural resources such as gold and diamonds. One such group, the Union Patriotique des Congolais, was established in 2000 and appointed as its chairman, the Accused, Thomas Lubanga Dyilo. He was also the commander in chief of the armed wing of the UPC, the Front Patriotique pour la Libération du Congo. This armed group was well-known for its use of young children to participate in the hostilities, from fighting, to cooking, cleaning, spying, and being used as sexual slaves.

Trial Chamber I, in the International Criminal Court’s first verdict, convicted Thomas Lubanga of the offense of conscripting, enlisting or using children to actively participate in hostilities. In defining active participation, the Chamber adopted a broad definition so as to include children involved even indirectly, so long as their contribution placed them in real danger as a potential target. Unfortunately, the Chamber did not discuss whether sexual violence against these children also fell within the scope of the offense.