Disclaimer: Asymmetrical Haircuts is produced as a podcast, meaning it is meant to be listened to and not read. Because of this, we recommend that you listen to the episode while reading, because the written word does not do justice to the emotion or tone used by our speakers. However, because we recognise there might be bandwidth issues or you might be using a hearing aid, we have provided written transcripts for all our available episodes

 Asymmetrical haircuts Justice. Update with Janet Anderson and Stephanie Vandenberg in partnership with Justice info.net. 

Janet 00:42  Hi Steph. Hi Jeanne. So I’m going to start off with a little test for you. Steph, I’m going to put you on the spot. If you had to sum up the Dutch approach to universal jurisdiction, which is what this podcast is all about, would you be able to? What would you say?

Steph  01:00  Well, I mean, I have to do this often for Reuters, because it has to go into my story to explain why on earth they are doing these cases. I looked up the Reuters blurb, kind of cheating, but we say that under the concept of universal jurisdiction, Dutch law broadly allows cases to be brought against foreign nationals for crimes committed abroad if the victims or perpetrators are present in the Netherlands.

Janet 01:24  And what would you say if somebody put you on the spot again and said, okay, so what’s different about universal jurisdiction in the Netherlands from other versions around the world?

Steph 01:36  I think the main thing is the kind of presence requirement. What we’ve seen mostly are cases where perpetrators are present on Dutch soil. But that recently shifted a little bit when we had the Ethiopian human trafficking case that we covered as well, where it was just the victims and part of the crimes that had to be committed on Dutch soil. So we see it shifting a bit. But I think that is the main difference. It’s not just anybody, anytime. It has to be there. It has to be kind of linked to the Netherlands.

Janet 02:07  Yeah, I’m also conscious, and correct me if I’m wrong, that they don’t do structural investigations. So they can’t just kind of take a whole situation and say, let’s find out everything around it and then slot some people in. They have to start more or less with somebody. Is that right?

Steph 02:26  Yes, indeed. I couldn’t come up with the word “structural investigation,” but indeed, you cannot have, like France has, a case against X, or Germany has, just looking at a structural investigation into Syria, I think. And that doesn’t work for the Netherlands.

Janet 02:43  Okay, well, you’ve let the cat out of the bag already, because I’ve fooled the listeners into thinking we’re doing Dutch universal jurisdiction, and we’re not. We’re doing French universal jurisdiction. And the reason why I did that thing about the Dutch is because I can more or less sort of explain it, but I can’t explain French universal jurisdiction. I don’t know what their approach is. I know that it expanded a couple of years ago, and I know that it’s very active now. Do you have any assumptions, Steph? Any other knowledge?

Steph 03:12  I know that they need to have a French victim, usually, because there’s always a lot of searching for somebody with dual nationality. At least I think I know this. These are all assumptions. And structural investigations, and this case against an unknown person, they can bring. But we need somebody with a lot more knowledge to help tell us what’s really going on.

Janet 03:33  Okay, well, to satisfy both of our curiosities, and hopefully the curiosity of some listeners as well, we’ve invited Jeanne Sulzer of impact litigation and also connected to Amnesty France to help us out. Hi, Jeanne.

Jeanne Sulzer 03:48  Hi.

Janet 03:49  So let’s start, shall we, with some of the most recent cases? Again, I am conscious that we have not picked up the details on these, even though we’ve been aware of them. I was going to use those as ways to explore what the nuances are, and how the field is developing. And the two that I was going to suggest that we have a quick look at would be the Lumbala case and then the Lafarge case. I’m sure you have some other examples to offer. So I’m going to kick off and do a “Stephopedia,” and then hand over the real role to the other real Stephopedia for the next one.

Janet 04:24  So, Lumbala. This is the summary I did. It’s about Roger Lumbala, former rebel leader from the Democratic Republic of Congo. He’s been sentenced recently to 30 years because he was found guilty of complicity in crimes against humanity, including ordering or aiding and abetting torture and inhumane acts, executions, rape constituting torture, sexual slavery, forced labour and theft. Goodness, what a lot. And really interesting in that case, he refused to accept the legitimacy of the court, which was in Paris, and he did not actually appear, I think, in court. But we can get into that. So, Lafarge, from the real Stephopedia. 

Steph 50:02  The real Stephopedia went to the Reuters blurb, but we wrote that cement maker Holcim’s Lafarge unit went on trial on charges that its Syrian subsidiary financed terrorism and breached European sanctions to keep a plant operating in northern Syria during the country’s civil war, when there were armed militias in the neighbourhood. Investigative judges allege that Lafarge paid jihadist groups, including Islamic State and the al-Qaeda affiliated Nusra Front, both designated as terrorists by the EU, a total of 5 million euros to keep the plant operating between 2013 and 2014. 

Janet 05:42  Goodness, you pack a lot into a Reuters blurb, don’t you? So, Jeanne, tell us, what do each of these cases illustrate? I mean, I’m wondering, should we expect more of these kind of Lafarge-type cases about complicity to do with corporations and what they’re up to? Or would we expect more of the Lumbala cases, which to me look like somebody who thinks that they’ve got a safe place to kind of hide themselves away, and in fact they’re being put on trial for stuff. So wave your magic wand. Tell us what’s going to happen. Are we going to see more of one or the other, or maybe both?

Jeanne Sulzer 06:15  Well, actually, these two cases are relatively unique right now, because they are very good examples of a policy that is going on within the counterterrorism unit, which is the umbrella unit of the specialised war crimes unit in France, which currently has over 150 cases. I’m looking at more than 30 countries. But the reality is that the distribution of those cases is that more than half of them relate to Rwanda, and another large part relate to Syria and Iraq. Within those 100 or so cases, only a few, quite a few, but still a minority, relate to corporate accountability cases, so Lafarge-type cases, in relation only to international crimes. In theory, we can expect more Lafarge-type cases because France has extremely progressive legislation that allows accountability for any crime within the Criminal Code. Basically, there used to be a principle of specialty where only a few crimes could be attached to corporate accountability, but it’s not the case anymore. So there are investigations in relation to corporate accountability that look into surveillance technology, for example the Amesys case, in relation to surveillance technology that may have dual use. There are cases that relate to the weapons industry, in relation to Yemen but also in relation to Gaza. There are cases that relate to the textile industry. But all of these are at different stages, and all of these will have very difficult implementation and legal issues attached to them. And the Lafarge case, the one that we’ve heard about from November and December of 2025, that reached trial, was only part of the Lafarge case, because the Lafarge case has been severed. So there are two cases. One that is relatively easier, which is the financing of terrorism, which did happen. That was the two-month hearing of November and December, with an expected decision in April of this year, so we’re still waiting for the decision. That’s financing of terrorism. And why I’m saying that it’s relatively easy, it wasn’t an easy trial at all, but it’s because, for a couple of reasons. First of all, it was financing of terrorism, so we were not in complicity for crimes against humanity. And in addition, Lafarge had pleaded guilty in the US for the same charges. So there were a lot of very interesting issues with respect to who can be a civil party in this case, etc. But the ongoing investigation is the one on complicity in crimes against humanity, and that’s ongoing, and Lafarge has not yet been sent to trial for that.

Steph 09:12  I had a question, or actually, my very smart intern had a question, on the Lafarge case. She asked me: is it the people or is it the company on trial? And I couldn’t really answer, because I know the Lundin case in Sweden, which is the oil company, but their executives are on trial for individual criminal responsibility for international crimes, war crimes in that case. And it seems that Lafarge is kind of the same. But is it then the managers of Lafarge, or under French law can the company be held responsible for atrocity crimes?

Jeanne Sulzer 09:51  It’s the company. And that’s what really raises fascinating but very complex issues of sending a company to court for the most serious crimes, complicity in crimes against humanity. And that was why the indictment for complicity in crimes against humanity was challenged by the defence before the Supreme Court, which led to a historic decision in 2021, which confirmed the indictment of Lafarge and its subsidiary for complicity in crimes against humanity. It also explained that it is not required that Lafarge show any adherence to or approval of the criminal act, but only that it had knowledge of the criminal act and that, through aiding and abetting, it would facilitate the preparation or the commission of the act. Now, once we’ve said that, that’s nice on paper, but how do you concretely take a company to the Cour d’assises, so the highest criminal court? This is what the ongoing investigation is about.

Steph 11:01  Because I would imagine that then Lafarge could say, or lawyers for Lafarge could say, we have a rogue manager who decided this and we didn’t know about it, this kind of command responsibility situation. Is that the kind of scenario that’s envisioned? And would that be the first time that you have a kind of corporate command responsibility?

Jeanne Sulzer 11:25  It would definitely be the first time that you would have a corporation taken to court for complicity in crimes against humanity. Definitely. What is unclear is whether or not this investigation is going to, at some point, lead to a trial. But I think many organisations, many individual victims that are joining the case, are going to push very much, and are going to support the investigative judges in their functioning and in their reasoning and in being creative also. But of course, this is a case where the defence is very strong, and that’s fair enough, of course, but it’s going to be a very difficult case. It’s important to distinguish the two Lafarge cases: the terrorism one, the financing of terrorism on one side, and the international crimes case, complicity in crimes against humanity, which raises very difficult issues, but fascinating ones.

Janet 12:24  What about the Lumbala case? What does that show us? And are there more cases of that type? I can imagine, you mentioned a number of Rwanda cases, maybe those are more of the style of the Lumbala one?

Jeanne Sulzer 12:39  The majority of the cases before the specialised war crimes, crimes against humanity unit relate to individual responsibility. The majority of the cases that have been tried until now have a relation to Rwanda. There have been 15 cases, more or less, that have been tried in France for international crimes. A huge majority of them relate to Rwanda, one to Liberia, Kunti Kamara, and recently the Democratic Republic of the Congo with Lumbala. Now, a case where you have the accused in court, because one of the features of France is that you can have trials in absentia. So I would say, when you described the Netherlands, I was thinking: what would I say is really specific to France? Well, first of all, we have a number of cases that are in absentia, where you have no one in the box and actually no defence either, not even lawyers representing the interests of the defence. It’s really the prosecutor and the civil parties, the victims, and the judges with a jury. There are a number of cases that are in absentia that are going to come up to court soon, including on Syria. But what was really important and unique with Lumbala is that it’s a pure universal jurisdiction case. It has no nexus to France. You mentioned the fact that maybe there’s a need to have a French victim, whereas Lumbala is one of those very rare cases where there is absolutely no link to France, except that he was indeed on French territory. But why was he on French territory? It’s because he had tried to seek asylum status and the protection of the Refugee Convention, and he was denied based on the 1F clause. That articulation between the immigration services and the prosecutorial services is new. It comes from a law in 2015, and that has created a very large amount of new cases, because before, this grey zone consisted of people that had been rejected from the protection of asylum, but that could not be sent back for obvious reasons, that they could face torture or the death penalty. They were in a grey zone and were not necessarily being investigated. Now automatically, all the 1F cases, that’s how we call them, those that have been rejected from the protection of asylum, are sent automatically to the war crimes unit. And that has raised a very large number of new cases. And Lumbala is one. So he was on the territory basically because he was trying to seek refuge. Whereas France is, as you rightly said, a very difficult place to bring a case based on universal jurisdiction, because the conditions are quite harsh, actually. It’s funny to see that you have 160 cases while the conditions are harsh, and that’s because most cases have a French nexus: either a French victim, so it’s a passive personality case, or a French corporate perpetrator. All the corporate cases are French companies, not pure universal jurisdiction cases, whereas Lumbala is a pure universal jurisdiction case, with an accused in the box who refused to appear, but he’s in France. The Lumbala case, for other reasons, is a very interesting one in terms of the fight against impunity in the DRC. It was the first trial emerging from the UN Mapping Report of the crimes committed in the eastern part of the Congo in 2002 and 2003, which recommended a number of justice avenues, but nothing had ever been tried. So Lumbala was really the first person to be tried. The court used the UN MONUC Mapping Report a lot, and a lot of NGOs as well. And this trial, I think, was very interesting and unique because it showed how a country like France, which has a very strong civil party system, so a country which allows victims to be represented, to appear in court, to put questions to witnesses and experts, who can ask for investigative acts at the pre-trial stage, gives victims a very, very important part. And this, in the Lumbala case, more than 30 victims came from the DRC. They were supported by the French Embassy, by NGOs themselves, by Trial International, by the Clooney Foundation, and also by the organisation that I represented, Minority Rights Group. That included extraordinary participation by people from the Bambuti community, so pygmies from the eastern part of the Congo, who came from the DRC to testify and to be heard before the court. So that trial, and it’s true for Rwanda-related trials as well, this possibility for victims to be heard and be legally represented really shifts a lot in those trials, particularly when they’re in absentia, which was almost the case of Lumbala in reality, because he refused to come up from jail.

Steph 18:18  It’s funny to hear you explain this novel 1F thing in France, because this is what the Netherlands has done, I think, since we got the UN tribunals for the former Yugoslavia. There was this idea that we can’t have these people on our soil. The 1F exception: somebody demands asylum but can’t be allowed because he is possibly suspected of being a war criminal. Those automatically indeed in the Netherlands go to a special unit, and have gone there for years. And this is how we have gotten these cases in the Netherlands of indeed also a Congolese person, I think the nickname was the ‘Roi des bêtes’, the king of the beasts. I don’t remember his name. But he was on trial in the Netherlands. We had a lot of Rwandan alleged génocidaires on trial in the Netherlands, some people from the former Yugoslavia and also Afghan security services people, all under this. But because they had asked for asylum and couldn’t be sent back, they had that presence in the Netherlands, which got the Netherlands this glut of cases. Now the Netherlands may be slightly expanding again, but for a while they looked like they were shrinking their amount of universal jurisdiction cases, and France is now kind of catching up to the Netherlands. But as you say, in France you have much more involvement of victims in these trials, which in the Netherlands is still kind of limited. What we see more and more in other European countries, including the Netherlands, is that where they have cases of foreign fighters, they tend to come with terrorism-related charges or membership of a terrorist organisation rather than focus on international crimes. Is that the same in France? Do you see that same trend, where they tend to go for terrorism charges rather than crimes against humanity and war crimes?

Jeanne Sulzer 20:17  Yes, indeed. Since 2013–2014, there has been a very big increase in litigation, in cases led by the counterterrorism unit. France had quite a big number of people that left for Syria and joined, wherever it was initially, Jaish al-Islam and then Islamic State. And France has a very repressive and very proactive prosecutorial policy to go after any person that has been there. The majority of cases are brought under terrorism charges, and the prosecutor’s office would, I believe, always, in terms of efficiency of their repressive system, prefer terrorism charges of membership, particularly because they are relatively easy to prove. And as you know, we also had major trials with regard to the 13 November 2015 attacks, which were only based on terrorism charges, which personally I think could also have been pursued under different charges, because I think the elements of crimes against humanity were met considering the massive and systematic nature of the crimes committed on French soil in 2015. But the prosecutorial choice was terrorism. What has changed recently is the proactivity of NGOs in trying to push the prosecutor’s office to realise that the reality of the prejudice of some of the victims needs to be portrayed and mirrored in the legal characterisation. So there was a push to reflect that, particularly in the Yazidi cases. It’s through the Yazidi-related cases, and NGOs supporting those cases, that cumulative charges started to appear in cases.

Janet 22:07  Yeah, I wanted to pick up on Yazidi cases, because I understood here we are in 2026 that there is one very major one at least planned: three different people on trial, two men, one woman, including extermination charges and enslavement charges. Can you talk us through what that prospective trial will show for us?

Jeanne Sulzer 22:29  Well, there’s actually a fourth one.

Janet 22:31  Let me stop you there then, Jeanne. Tell us more.

Jeanne Sulzer 22:36  Yeah. Well, it’s a similar type of case. The alleged perpetrators sent to trial are all French nationals. First of all, they’re all persons that either are returnees or have been repatriated, whether voluntarily or not. Some of them, and that’s a practice the French counterterrorism unit has been doing for a while, are alleged to be dead, but they are still going on trial. We can talk about that from a human rights perspective and whether or not that is fair, but until it is proved, at least from the prosecution side, that they are dead, they seem to be okay going for trial. That’s actually the case coming up, the first Syrian case coming up in absentia, I believe on the 20th of March in France, which, of course, is more than symbolic. It’s a very important one because it’s the first case that will include cumulative charges: terrorism and crimes against humanity and genocide in relation to crimes committed against members of the Yazidi community. It is one where the accused box will be empty. The other cases relate to French women who left in order to join their husbands, or married there, to persons that were very well-known Islamic State leaders, some of whom have probably died as well, and who returned. So there will be presence, and there’s going to be very interesting discussion about their responsibility. So for the latest one, Lolita Chochi, in relation to enslavement and sexual violence against an eight-year-old Yazidi child who was detained and enslaved in her house, apparently, that’s from what we hear in the media. So that’s the fourth case that has been sent. The other one is Sonia Mejri. I don’t think we know yet of a trial date, but I think around 2027, because there are not that many UJ-related cases that can be taken for trial. There is a backlog, so it’s around three to four cases maximum per year. A lot of Rwanda cases are also on appeal. So that should be around 2027, and it’s the same kind of profile of a woman who was the wife of a very well-known jihadist, and it’s her accountability and responsibility with regard to enslavement charges and sexual violence. So there has been this proactive push from NGOs, and I don’t know if you know, but NGOs can be civil parties in France, so they can have the status of victims that are legally represented and that can also be proactive at the pre-trial stage. And that’s how all these cases move: thanks to the proactivity at the pre-trial stage of NGOs, lawyers and victims that participate. Because at the pre-trial stage, we have access to the case file. As lawyers, we have access to the case file. You have in front of you an investigative judge who investigates for all the parties, for the prosecution, the defence and the victims, civil parties. And so you put requests to the investigative judge: I would like X person to be heard; I would like this thing to be filed. And that’s how victims in France are being able to shape the investigation.

Steph 26:27  There’s another case that we haven’t mentioned yet, which is the Bashar al-Assad Syria chemical weapons case. We know you’re active in that now. The political landscape changed a year ago because Assad fled and he no longer has immunity. So can you explain a bit about this chemical weapons case, who has been investigating, where it is, and what your role as a civil party in that can be?

Jeanne Sulzer 26:54  So it’s a case that was brought in 2021, while the regime was still going on, specifically on two attacks: a relatively smaller attack on 5 August 2014, and then the major attack on Ghouta on 21 August 2014. The case was brought by both survivors and NGOs, both international and national NGOs, so Syrian NGOs, SCM, for example, the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, Mazen Darwish and his team, who were documenting back then, in 2014. They were called VDC, and they were documenting the crimes in Syria. So they had a lot of information, a lot of open-source investigation, but also a lot of information to share and to be analysed, supported by Open Society Justice Initiative, which has been a key player as well and which became a civil party, then joined by Syrian Archive, Mnemonic, which are major actors in the analysis of open-source investigations in Syria, dozens and dozens of Syrian victims, as well as medical NGOs like Physicians for Human Rights and other Syrian organisations. So the case was brought basically with a lot of information. Given that there is no possible access to Syria, a lot of the main evidence came from the victims themselves when we filed the case, and then victims were heard. So it is indeed a passive personality case, because in order to have the key to open the door to jurisdiction in France, given that none of the alleged perpetrators are on French territory, the only way was indeed to be able to have a dual citizen or dual citizens, which is what happened in this case initially. So the key to the door was found. Once that door was open, dozens of Syrian victims joined as civil parties in the case. And that led to setting up and investigating the crime base for a number of years, and then the chain of command. And here again, the NGOs, with their knowledge of the Syrian chain of command and their capacity to explain that to the investigative judges, helped a lot in identifying responsibilities. And at some point, the responsibility of Bashar al-Assad was so central in this case, which is really a case of deciding to launch a major attack that led to more than 1,500 persons dying and thousands being wounded, that the investigative judges decided to issue an arrest warrant. And that really was historic, because never had a national judge issued an arrest warrant against a sitting head of state because of this so-called absolute personal immunity, which at the domestic level exists, even though it doesn’t exist at the ICC. So that was a bit of a tsunami, really. An arrest warrant against a sitting head of state. So you can imagine how exciting everyone was, particularly the Syrian clients and victims and those that had been in the fight against impunity. But that’s when there started months and months of procedure, because the prosecutor’s office decided to challenge that arrest warrant. So it’s not the defence, there’s no defence in the case that actually appeared, it’s the actual French prosecutor that challenged it on the basis that there is personal immunity, even though France officially and politically, in the Security Council and everywhere, says that they want the regime of Bashar al-Assad to be held accountable, including for the crimes in Ghouta in 2014. But that’s the legal issue of personal immunity. So that went up to the Supreme Court until 25 July, where there were two cases before the Supreme Court in France on issues of immunities, both functional and personal. Functional immunity is any immunity that is attached to the function of the person, and personal immunity is only attached to the highest level, for example a sitting head of state or a sitting minister of foreign affairs. Up until then, there had been no possibility of ever withdrawing that personal immunity. The only hearing that happened where the arrest warrant against Bashar was confirmed was the Court of Appeal before the Supreme Court. We won before the Court of Appeal, a beautiful decision that said that sending and launching a chemical attack against your own population is not part of the normal function of a head of state, basically, in short. But it was appealed again by the prosecutor, who took it to the Supreme Court. We lost on the personal immunity. The Supreme Court acknowledged that indeed there is a personal immunity for sitting heads of state. But it’s okay, because at some point sitting heads of state are no longer heads of state. It’s the ICJ Arrest Warrant decision, basically, and at some point they will not be protected by that personal immunity anymore, either because there will be a case before the ICC or they will not be head of state anymore. And the reality was that it was a bit of a scenario in July, because Bashar was not a head of state anymore. So we were sitting at the Supreme Court knowing that Bashar al-Assad could not enjoy personal immunity anymore because he was already in Moscow, and he had no personal immunity. So we knew in any case that a new arrest warrant was going to be issued, which is what happened, because the Supreme Court said very clearly that in the presence of international crimes there is no functional immunity anymore. And that’s big for France, because until now the Supreme Court in France was quite conservative on the issue of functional immunities. Even Donald Rumsfeld, there was a case against him for Abu Ghraib and for signing the torture memo, the Supreme Court said, well, there’s functional immunity. So there was really very little chance for France to move. But the Supreme Court, which was the practice of the prosecutor’s office, did acknowledge that in the presence of international crimes there is no functional immunity. So the next day, basically, the investigative judges issued an arrest warrant against Bashar al-Assad, who is no longer a sitting head of state. And so we currently have in France 21 arrest warrants in relation to Syrian individuals, including Bashar al-Assad, who is targeted in three different cases: the chemical weapons case; the media case in Homs, where Marie Colvin and Rémi Ochlik were killed, which is a case that is ongoing and that led to the issuance of seven arrest warrants, including one against Bashar al-Assad; and also against Maher al-Assad, his brother, who led the Fourth Division, who is alleged to have been central in the bombing of the media centre, which killed Marie Colvin and Rémi Ochlik, as well as the chemical attacks and a number of other cases. So now the issue is more about implementing those arrest warrants and hoping that one of them will be arrested and extradited to France.

Janet 35:06  Wow. Tour de force, Jeanne, with so many different elements there. We’ve done immunity and different cases, and I was really pleased to get this understanding of what’s been going on on the French side of things, because we’ve acknowledged it, but we haven’t gone into it in depth. I had a ton more questions for you, but I think it’s probably time to wrap up the podcast. You’ve already indicated a few things to look out for, cases that are coming up. Is there anything else that you would like us to look out for in the next year on the French international crimes legal landscape before we wrap?

Jeanne Sulzer 35:45  The Lumbala case was a good example that the prosecutor’s office is now being keen and careful in looking at sexual violence. Lumbala was convicted for sexual violence. Unfortunately, or fortunately, the law is like that, there’s no retroactive application. He was convicted based on the legislation in France before France implemented the Rome Statute, so there were no underlying sexual crimes as crimes against humanity then. He was indicted for sexual violence amounting to torture, and he was also, and this is something I think is really new and unique, indicted for sexual slavery as well. Both this and the Kunti Kamara case show that there is now a strong focus in investigations on sexual violence from the prosecutor’s office, and also from the lawyers and NGOs that work with the investigative judges and prosecutors. So that’s, I think, important. And of course, that will come up in the Yazidi cases as well.

Janet 36:49  Just to say that if you are enjoying this podcast and you’d like to give us a bit of extra support, you can head over to our Support Us page where you can give us a tip, or you can follow us on Patreon, and you can download our newsletter. And we really appreciate everybody who gives us a bit of extra support there.

Steph 37:11  Our final question always at Asymmetrical Haircuts is: what do you do, what are you reading, what are you listening to, what are you watching, what’s on your Netflix or HBO queue? Or are you listening to any other podcasts that we should know about, or are you reading any good books that you want to recommend? And it can be related to the field, but of course it doesn’t have to. Let’s also normalise that we like to do other things than read about war crimes all the time or listen to them all the time. But maybe you’re one of those workaholics that recommends a lot of work books, which also we don’t want to shame.

Jeanne Sulzer 37:57  I try to do both. I’m actually reading two legal-related textbooks, but they are quite funky, I think. One is because I have a special interest in the issue of music and human rights. So I’m reading a textbook that I’ve just ordered and received, which actually is called Music and Human Rights, which looks at how music can be both reparative but also an avenue for protest, for resistance, and it’s quite fascinating. So I’m just starting to look into that book. That’s because I have this little side project that relates to partying as a human right, which is about trying to look into both the human rights narrative of those places where it’s not possible to party for different reasons, political, etc., and at the same time how important it is to enhance that possibility of being together. And also, unfortunately, seeing that often terrorism crimes and other related crimes happen in places where people are enjoying themselves. So I think that’s why I ordered this book, Music and Human Rights. So yeah, I’m trying to, it’s both related and completely not.

Steph 39:16  In that vein, I need to recommend a podcast I’ve been listening to, which is a new podcast about Fela Kuti and his music and how it related to challenging the Nigerian regime. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes, but I’ve been enjoying that very much. And Janet, we now need to put that picture of you with Fela on the website. Exactly.

Janet 39:42  I’m just going to do my claim to fame of meeting Fela, being on the beach at a concert with him, having my bracelet stolen as I walked back through the crowd afterwards, but definitely being there. Did I partake? Did I smoke? Did I not? You’ll never know, but I have some photos. Okay, Jeanne, thank you so much for making time to run through one of my blind spots to understand exactly what goes on in France. And please come back to us and tell us more about any individual case as they progress, because these all sound like really important ones.

Jeanne Sulzer 40:18  We’re working almost every day to update a mapping of universal jurisdiction cases at Amnesty France. That’s our little baby. We can put a link to that. It’s a visual mapping with fact sheets for each of the cases, and we’re really trying, as volunteer work, to update it whenever there’s a new development. So I hope this can be useful. It’s only France, but all universal jurisdiction cases.

Steph 40:48  We’ll link to it because, like us, there are plenty of international law geeks who listen to this podcast who would love to look at these maps, and I really like those maps as well, so we’ll definitely link to that. Thank you so much for taking the time. I think we’re definitely going to get back to you on this. I have a personal mission to do a big Yazidi story and Yazidi universal jurisdiction story for Reuters this year, so I’m sure some of that will bleed over into the podcast as well, and I’m sure I will call you also to get some more background for that. So thank you so much, and we’ll have you back on anytime when these cases come to fruition.

Jeanne Sulzer 41:30 Thank you so much.

[OUTRO MUSIC]

This was asymmetrical haircuts, your internationa​​l justice podcast, created and presented by Janet Anderson and Stephanie van den Berg. This episode was created in partnership with Justiceinfo.net, an independent site covering justice efforts for mass violence, and with the Hague Humanity Hub. You can find show notes and everything about the podcast on asymmetricalhaircuts.com. This show is available on every major podcast service, so please subscribe, give us a rating and spread the word.