Omer Shatz (Research Affiliate at CEU Rule of Law Clinic) delivered a lecture ‘EU Crimes against Humanity and Failed Success for Human Rights’ at the seminar organized by the European Union Student Association at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.
Using EU policies in the Central Mediterranean and Libya as a case study, Dr. Shatz discussed the interplay between his past and current research at Yale Law School and the CEU and the strategic litigation efforts of Front-LEX before the ICC, CJEU, and ECtHR. The talk highlighted the inadequacies of traditional legal frameworks of state responsibility, such as maritime and human rights law, in securing the lives and rights of people on the move, and the focus of Dr. Shatz’s projects on cultivating novel forms of liability that can better address and enforce border violence.
One such alternative is infra-statal: individual criminal responsibility under international criminal law. A paradigmatic example of this paradigm shift from human rights to criminal law is the 2019 case filed with the ICC by Dr. Shatz’s Sciences Po clinic, implicating senior EU officials with crimes against humanity. Based on Dr. Shatz’s doctoral research at Yale Law School, this case framed – for the first time – the policy of willful omission to rescue asylum seekers in distress at sea as a crime against humanity of murder.
Another alternative is supra-statal: organizational responsibility under EU law. In this context, Dr. Shatz presented the strategic litigation campaign of Front-LEX at the EU Court of Justice. This campaign includes filing the first human rights case against Frontex, the first damages claim on behalf of a ‘push-back’ victim, and broader challenges to EU policies in the Aegean Sea. The project aims to gradually establish jurisprudence that would hold the EU border and coast guard agency accountable for serious and persistent violations of fundamental rights and international protection obligations related to its activities in the Eastern Mediterranean.
