Mission

The Journal of Global Rights and Organizations and Impunity Watch News (JGRO/IW) is a professional organization focused on publishing high-quality legal scholarship and providing unbiased, objective reporting on human rights and impunity issues throughout the world.  JGRO/IW seeks to expose and examine human rights and impunity issues from both a grassroots and an academic perspective.

Through its web-based presence, JGRO/IW strives to alert the world to rights determinations and impunity issues as they arise and to provide open access to thoughtful and cutting-edge academic debate.

An annual participant the International Humanitarian Law Roundtable hosted by the Robert H. Jackson Center each summer at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York, JGRO/IW maintains close ties with the Syrian Accountability Project and other human rights organizations.  NGOs, government officials, international lawyers, and person around the world regularly visit IW’s website.

As a professional organization, we have high standards; our inquiries and enterprise are needed now more than ever. We hold ourselves responsible for staying apprised of current developments in the regional courts and analyzing the ever-growing list of human rights issues throughout the world.

Foundation and Organization Structure

Impunity Watch was founded in 2007 by retired Professor David M. Crane L’80, the founding Chief Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone. In 2018, Professor Cora True-Frost G’01, L’01 took the helm, continuing our mission to alert the world by focusing on the regional human rights courts.

Today, JGRO/IW is comprised of two publishing entities: a student-run law journal, the Journal of Global Rights and Organizations, and a news branch, Impunity Watch News.

The Journal of Global Rights and Organizations is a corresponding, biennial academic journal run by Syracuse University College of Law students, and serves as a platform for cutting-edge legal scholarship and research in the area of human rights.  Publishing a diverse range of professional articles and student notes, JGRO is available for free on IW’s website and the U.S. Library of Congress electronic database. Additionally, JGRO will soon be commercially available on HeinOnline and LexisNexis.

Filling a gap in both existing scholarly and practitioner-oriented legal blogs, Impunity Watch News strives to publish timely news and opinions about cases, applications, and pleadings, including those before the International Criminal Court, Inter-American Court and Commission of Human Rights, European Court of Human Rights, and African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights.  The news focuses on impunity and six core rights areas: 1) the right to life, 2) freedom of thought and belief, 3) freedom of expression, 4) the right to education, 5) the cross-cutting theme of disability rights, and 6) equal protection.

The global conception of human rights may change rapidly, and may vary from one region, nation, or culture to another.  The proliferation and strengthening of regional human rights courts and organizations both facilitates and complicates the development of these human rights norms. As long as impunity and human rights violations occur, as their governing authorities evolve, JGRO/IW will continue to publish cutting-edge legal commentary, tracking and analyzing those changes.