Leaders of the BRICS group of major emerging economies are meeting in the Brazilian metropolis of Rio de Janeiro on Sunday for a two-day summit. The BRICS acronym is derived from the initial letters of the founding member countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. In early 2024, Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt and the United…
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping will not travel to Brazil for the BRICS Summit scheduled for early next month. Although there is no official announcement yet, media reports suggested that Xi plans to skip the BRICS Summit, which, if confirmed, will be his first-ever absence from the meeting of the bloc…
A former UN secretary general has called for an overhaul of the United Nations to better confront global challenges as “some powerful nations” seek to undermine the institution. Ban Ki-moon, who was secretary general of the United Nations from 2007 to 2016, said in Hong Kong on Tuesday that the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza…
I have just returned from the Commonwealth Lawyers Association (CLA) conference in Malta, which was my first overseas trip since assuming the chairmanship of the Hong Kong Bar Association. The CLA, which is governed by a council drawn from some of the most senior legal professionals in the Commonwealth, was one of many that spoke…
There aren’t a lot of countries Israel’s prime minister can visit without risking arrest. Which makes the red-carpet treatment Benjamin Netanyahu received in Hungary — Europe’s only proud “illiberal democracy” — all the more noteworthy. Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, invited Mr. Netanyahu right after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant last November…
Rodrigo Duterte has been kept in a cell in The Hague for more than three weeks on charges of crimes against humanity for the deadly antidrug campaigns he oversaw in the Philippines. But the former president is still on the ballot in elections for mayor in his home base next month, a race that political…
What is the I.C.C.? The I.C.C., established under a 1998 treaty, is the world’s highest criminal court. It has the jurisdiction to investigate and try people for what it describes as “the gravest crimes of concern” to the world: war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression. But the court cannot enforce…
Hungary said on Thursday that it would pull out of the International Criminal Court, announcing its decision just hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel arrived there for a visit despite facing an international arrest warrant. The government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban had made clear that it would ignore its obligations to act…
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Thursday began a visit to Hungary, confident that Europe’s self-declared bastion of “illiberal democracy” would ignore an arrest warrant issued against him in November by the International Criminal Court. The visit is Mr. Netanyahu’s first to a country that has recognized the jurisdiction of the court, raising the…
The State Department has ended funding for the tracking of thousands of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia, and American officials or contractors might have deleted a database with information on them, according to a letter that U.S. lawmakers plan to send to Secretary of State Rubio on Wednesday. The work on the abducted children by…