RAINING ON THE PARADE

Is international law doing what it is supposed to do?

Hellooooooo there

An enormous amount of the work we do involves producing manuals, reports and analysis aimed at making policies and laws work in the real world. It is one thing to promulgate an ambitious law – but it is quite another thing to interpret it in ways that benefit the lives of ordinary people.

One project we have been working on recently is a series of country guides on how to

implement the African Union Transitional Justice Policy (AUTJP). These guides call for

broad stakeholder involvement, effective implementation of the TJ policy, and

ongoing support from international partners to ensure legitimacy and success in

achieving reconciliation and accountability. See the South Sudan guide here, the

Ethiopia guide here, the Lesotho guide here. Similar guides for The Gambia,

Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic are to follow.

This interesting article from The Guardian highlights the issues surrounding international law. As a former Dean of the Law Faculty at Stellenbosch University told me, ‘International law lends itself to being driven by politics: vague terminology, aspirational words, outdated structures’. Let’s hope it can evolve to help humankind deal with the new international order.

For the lexophiles

Words that might be appropriate for what the world is going through:

As Jules Verne famously said,

‘Human beings can always be relied upon to exert, with vigour, their God-given right

to be stupid.’

COMPRESS.dsl annual hibernation

As shown in our calendars, we shall be closing for the week of 7–13 July. We shall be

back at our desks on 14 July, reinvigorated and ready to take on the world (again).

How can we help you?

Please do contact us for assistance with translation, copy-editing, graphic design,

layout or proofreading. We can work with any realistic budget and timeline, so please

do get in touch for a quotation.

We would love to hear how you’re doing.

Please drop us a message.

felicity@compressdsl.com

082 787 5555

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