Deepfakes: A Crisis of Human Rights Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been at the forefront of development in numerous industries recently, including the legal spectrum. Its impacts have been both positive and negative.. Among these, the proliferation of deepfakes stands out as a critical issue due to its potential to undermine human rights. The term ‘deep fake’ has been defined under Article 3(44)(b)(l) of the European Union Artificial Intelligence Act (EU AI Act) as ‘AI-generated or manipulated image, audio or video content that resembles existing persons, objects, places or other entities ..read more

Training Dad’s Army – citizen soldiers and the return of Great Power Politics in Europe and the Wider World This blog analyses recent developments in the Atlantic security environment, in particular the issue of increasing combat mass of conventional forces by the development of militia forces. This is a subject that has been in the forefront of the news recently. The principal trigger has been the Russian Special Military Operation in Ukraine. Inter-state warfare is a now a reality in Europe for the first time in decades. Russia has a large conscript military and has been able to call up si ..read more

Rewriting Criminal Law in India The Government of India Act, 1833 (often known as the Charter Act, 1833) authorised the East India Company to enact laws for British India and to govern it as a government. A Law Commission was established that was headed by Lord Macaulay in 1833. It was tasked with the codification of laws for British India, which it completed by 1837.  The codification exercise was primarily influenced by the works of Jeremy Bentham who insisted on the necessity of codification for the sake of clarity and uniformity in the law and its application. Accordingly, the India ..read more

CLC Statement in Support of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese Last week, the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, released her fourth report on the situation in the occupied territories since taking the position in 2022. In this report, she says, firmly and factually, that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel has committed genocide has been met. This was on the basis of three genocidal acts; by killing Palestinians, by causing them serious bodily or mental harm, and by d ..read more

AI’s impact on South Asian elections: Technological Innovation, Voter Rights and Regulatory Frameworks South Asia is currently undergoing an important year, with Bangladesh and Pakistan having completed their elections, while Sri Lanka, Maldives, and India are preparing for theirs. Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionising political processes in a number of ways, such as increasing transparency, facilitating decision-making, and detecting bias. At the same time, AI also presents risks such as manipulation through deepfakes and the spread of misinformation. The use of AI in the election ..read more

Reading the Political: What Justice Pal’s Dissent at Tokyo Tells Us About the Present Moment The courtroom is traditionally envisaged as a place liberated from politics and the contamination that politics threatens. In this post, I want to challenge this orthodoxy by evaluating the position of Justice Radhabinod Pal (1886–1967) at the Tokyo Trials and situate it within the present domestic moment. To clarify, when I talk about the relationship between law and politics, I do not mean to only talk about trials of the political, but also the trial as a place of competing ideologies. Further, g ..read more

Policing Gender Based Violence: Rapes and Child Marriages Gender based violence (GBV) has many forms. One of its most prevalent forms in South Asia is child marriage. In most of these cases, underage girls are married to men much above their age, and this act is justified on religious and social grounds. The underage marriage of girls is also a device for forced conversions from other religions. As the matter is justiciable and involves the enforcement of fundamental rights under the Constitution of Pakistan, it inundates the courts in different proceedings. Often, these judicial pronounceme ..read more

The overlapping of duties in complex scenarios: Attacks against cultural property and the natural environment in the Gaza Strip Israel’s ongoing armed conflict with Hamas in the Gaza Strip has recently involved the destruction of some cultural and environmental sites close to its coast. A report by Forensic Architecture has shown that attacks by Israeli forces have damaged historical places of cultural importance to the Palestinians and hurt places of natural importance along the coast of Gaza. This damage was sustained during the course of hostilities being conducted in the area of Gaza’s ..read more

Digitalisation of the Criminal Justice Processes by Amending Police Rules Information Technology (IT) is shaping every aspect of life. In Pakistan, digital identities as a form of data-related intervention dates back to the establishment of the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) was established in 2000 under the NADRA Ordinance 2000. Since then, IT has been an essential part of the law. In the field of IT-led policing, the Punjab Police was the first police organisation to digitalise many of its internal processes and to initiate external processes that provided solutions r ..read more

Is the ICJ’s standard of proof for genocide unattainable? Since 1993, the International Court of Justice [‘ICJ’] has accepted jurisdiction to hear a few cases alleging genocide, under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 1951 [“Geneva Convention”]. Very recently, South Africa instituted proceedings against Israel on 29 December 2023, alleging that:  ‘acts and omissions by Israel . . . are genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent . . . to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national ..read more