On July 23, 2018, the International Court of Justice (ICJ or Court) issued its Order on Qatar's request for provisional measures in the Qatar v. United Arab Emirates (UAE) case in which Qatar claims the UAE is responsible for violating the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD or the Convention). The Court has previously ordered provisional measures under CERD in the context of the Ukraine v. Russia case and in the Georgia v. Russia proceedings. As is already apparent in the Order and the dissenting and separate opinions, the Qatar v. UAE case raises important issues pertaining to the interpretation of racial discrimination on the basis of “national origin” under Article 1(1) CERD as well as to the reading of the procedural conditions under Article 22 CERD.

On June 8, 2018, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) delivered its eagerly anticipated judgment on the appeal of Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo against his conviction by Trial Chamber III in March 2016 for war crimes (murder, rape, and pillage) and crimes against humanity (murder and rape). Bemba's conviction was notable for the variety of “firsts” it gave rise to for the ICC. As a former vice-president of the transitional government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and president of the Mouvement de libération du Congo (MLC), he became the most senior leader to be successfully convicted by the ICC. His conviction was the first in which an individual was found responsible for the commission of crimes pursuant to command responsibility under Article 28 of the Rome Statute. Of particular significance was the fact that this was the first conviction at the ICC for acts of rape and sexual violence committed against women and men. Finally, this was the first case in the history of international criminal law where members of the defense team were arrested, tried, and convicted of crimes against the administration of justice during the course of the trial. The trial judgment was heralded as “a turning point in the ICC's history” following the debacles in the Lubanga, Katanga, Chui, and Kenya cases. However, we now have a new addition to the list of firsts: with the Appeals Chamber's majority judgment (decided 3-2), Bemba becomes the first accused to have his conviction overturned in full.

On January 31, 2017, the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union rendered its judgment in the case Commissaire général aux réfugiés et aux apatrides v. Mostafa Lounani. In the judgment, the Court had to interpret the exclusion grounds of the EU Qualification Directive of 2004 that in its Article 12(2) has literally duplicated Article 1F of the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. It had to answer the question of whether an applicant for international protection can be excluded from being a refugee even though it is not established that he himself committed, attempted to commit, or threatened to commit a terrorist act as defined by the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, but has “just” been convicted of participation in the activities of a terrorist group.

On May 11, 2018, the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights (African Court) delivered a judgment against Mali concerning its Persons and Family Code (Family Code). This case is groundbreaking because it is the first time that the African Court has found violations of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol) and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (African Children's Charter).

Given the high number of international crimes, it is practically impossible to prosecute all potential perpetrators at the international level. Impunity gaps at the national level aggravate this situation since they practically turn the International Criminal Court (ICC) into the lone or at least most visible enforcer of international criminal law (ICL). Thus, the Court suffers from a situation and case overload that manifests itself at the level of preliminary examinations conducted by its Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) which, in turn, suffers from “overall basic size and capacity constraints.” This situation leaves the Court/the OTP no other choice than to deliver mere distributive (instead of retributive) criminal justice, where the main challenge is not so much the fair or just delivery of sanctions to individual defendants, but the fair distribution of justice to a selected number of suspects/perpetrators. Against this background the rational and transparent selection and prioritization of situations and cases turns out to be of utmost importance for the success and legitimacy of the Court.

On July 18, 2018, the Organization of American States (OAS) adopted a resolution on the crisis situation in Nicaragua, almost thirty-nine years after the date of the triumph of the Nicaraguan Revolution over the dictator Anastasio Somoza. The crisis started three months earlier, on April 18, 2018, unexpectedly, when pro-government groups violently crushed a protest demonstration against reforms to Nicaragua's social security system announced by President Daniel Ortega's wife, Rosario Murillo. The “reforms” increased the contributions to be paid by workers and pensioners and decreased their benefits, in order to shore up the failing social security system, widely seen as a source of discretionary funds abused by previous governments. Corruption was not unique with Ortega. Arnoldo Aleman, for example, a former president of Nicaragua (1997–2002), was convicted in 2003 of money laundering, fraud, embezzlement, and electoral crimes, and sentenced to twenty years in prison. The demonstrators against the social security reform resented paying for the state's mismanagement of the system. Subsequently, as the demonstrations increased, the protesters equated Ortega with Somoza and called for his departure as they had done for Somoza's. Since April 18, some 400 Nicaraguan demonstrators have been killed and over 2,000 have been injured.

On September 17, 2018, the International Criminal Court (ICC) Trial Chamber VII delivered its re-sentencing decision for Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo, Aimé Kilolo Musamba, and Jean-Jacques Mangenda Kabongo, following the ICC Appeals Chamber judgment that had reversed the initial sentences against the men in March 2018. The Chamber “sentenced M. Bemba to one year imprisonment and fined him EUR 300,000. M. Kilolo and M. Mangenda were sentenced each to a total of 11 months of imprisonment. M. Kilolo was also fined EUR 30,000.” Because of the time they had already spent in detention, the sentences were considered to have already been served and the fines were ordered to be paid within three months.