Iran's parliament, known as the Malijis of Iran or Islamic Consultative Assembly, impeached Interior Minister Ali Kordan under Article 89 of the Iranian Constitution for forging an honorary doctorate degree in law from Oxford University. The forged Ph.D. diploma, complete with spelling and grammatical errors, was purportedly granted for his "education materials and his research" in comparative law. Oxford University confirmed that no honorary degree was awarded and that the diploma is not authentic. Mr. Kordan became the 10th Minister to be replaced. The Iranian Constitution requires the President to resubmit all cabinet members in the Council of Ministers to the Assembly for approval if more than half of the 21 cabinet ministers are replaced. Thus, the next replacement, either voluntarily by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or through parliamentary action, will trigger this constitutional requirement under Article 136 to require "a fresh vote of confidence from the Assembly" for the entire cabinet. More

Last week, Laurent Nkunda's armed militias in war-torn eastern Congo raided, seized, and deliberately destroyed and burned refugee camps located north of Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu. His strategic political goal was to spark a crisis and to bring about the conditions to demand direct negotiations with the Congolese government. Two days ago, a UN aid convoy, protected by UN peacekeepers, reached the camps and confirmed that several camps were completely destroyed and their 50,000 occupants missing. With UN officials warning that the eastern Congo is on the brink of a "humanitarian catastrophe," possibly more civilians will die from disease and starvation than bullets and physical violence. As UN officials and international leaders contend with the pros and cons of the strategic political and military options under international law to respond to rebel-led attacks on UN peacekeepers and civilians, this blog considers whether the international community can consider retributive justice through international criminal prosecution under the Rome Statute for deliberate acts leading to the starvation of civilians and explores proposals to amend the Rome Statute to strengthen food security protections for civilians. More