That's Illegal

GJC's Elena Sarver and Merrite Johnson dive into the Trump administration’s new “Commission on Unalienable Rights.” The commission is stacked with socially conservative ideologues with a history of hostility to abortion rights and LGBTQ rights. Its goal? To remake human rights in the image of Trump and his regressive agenda.

Two years ago, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Rohingya were violently driven from their homes in Burma in a military campaign that the United Nations has characterized as genocide. To this day, the military dictatorship who carried out these crimes has evaded any meaningful accountability. Simon Adams, an expert on mass atrocity crimes and director of the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect, joins That's Illegal to discuss worldwide efforts to get justice for the Rohingya. Akila Radhakrishnan, director of the Global Justice Center, also joins the program.

In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké Okome, Professor of Political Science, African & Women’s Studies at Brooklyn College, CUNY and one of the founders of the Bring Back Our Girls NYC campaign, to discuss the fifth anniversary of Boko Haram’s kidnapping of the 276 Chibok girls and gender-based violence in Nigeria.

In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Claire Pierson, a lecturer in Gender and Comparative Politics at the University of Liverpool, to discuss Ireland’s groundbreaking eighth amendment referendum to legalize abortion and lessons for the international community.

Are the indefinite detention of refugees and the separation of families at the border legal under international standards? GJC's legal experts Akila Radhakrishnan and Kristin Smith discuss the United States' policy of refugee detention at the border, Trump's executive order on family separation, and how it all fits in the context of international law.

In this episode of That's Illegal, we sat down with our partners Naw Hser Hser and Mu Gloria from the Women's League of Burma to talk about their work on the ground and their recent experience attending the UN's Commission on the Status of Women in New York.

In this episode of That's Illegal, GJC's Executive Assistant Merrite Johnson explains the process of requesting information from the US Government via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

This week we sat down with Former US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues Stephen Rapp. We discussed his firsthand experience prosecuting the Rwandan Genocide in 1994, and possible avenues for prosecuting the ongoing genocide against the Yazidi people in Iraq and Syria.

What are the challenges to prosecuting the genocide of the Yazidi people? Special guest Sareta Ashraph joins GJC in this two part episode to discuss the crimes of genocide and the avenues for justice and accountability.

Why are the Yazidis being targeted for genocide by ISIS and how is this genocide being carried out? Special guest Sareta Ashraph joins GJC in this two part episode to discuss the crimes of genocide and the avenues for justice and accountability.

Last week, the Trump administration expanded the Global Gag Rule to affect $8.8 billion in US global health assistance funds and government programs. This week, we will be discussing the expanded Global Gag and the abortion restrictions that the US has been applying to its foreign aid for decades.

What is CEDAW and why is the US one of only seven countries in the world that hasn't ratified it? In this episode, we unpack the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and discuss how it can be used to advance and protect women's rights in the United States.

Within the span of a week, the US dropped 59 tomahawk missiles on airfields in Syria and the “Mother of All Bombs” in Afghanistan. This week we are going to look at the laws that govern conducting wars vs. the laws that govern getting into wars.