Expert Witness is a podcast on the intersection of international law, human rights and public policy. Hosted by Sondos Asem, Middle East Eye news editor.
Martin Griffiths: Has the UN failed to prevent two genocides in Gaza and Sudan?
In this episode of Expert Witness, Middle East Eye news editor Sondos Asem speaks to Martin Griffiths, the former UN aid chief to discuss the latest in Gaza and Sudan, where two of the worst humanitarian crises in the world have been taking place over the past two years. Griffiths had over fifty years of professional experience as a humanitarian, British diplomat and conflict mediator with the United Nations and other global institutions. He has served as the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, which is the top humanitarian aid position at the United Nations. In this capacity he served for three years between July 2021 and July 2024, under the leadership of Secretary General Antonio Guterres. He presided over the UN’s humanitarian aid efforts in the first nine months of Israel’s devastating onslaught on Gaza, widely considered a genocide.
19 Jul 2025
UN rapporteur Ben Saul on Gaza, Unrwa and the legality of arms transfers to Israel
Ben Saul is the UN Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights and the Challis Chair of International Law at the University of Sydney. In this episode of Expert Witness, he discusses the legal implications of US President Donald Trump's Gaza "take-over" plan, Israel's ban on the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), and other international law questions arising from Israel's war on Gaza.
Filming date: 26 February 2025
19 Jul 2025
What is The Hague Group? | Interview with Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla
In this in-depth interview, Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla, the chair of The Hague Group, discusses why nine states launched a coalition in January 2025 to hold Israel accountable under international law.
Filming date: 17 March 2025, London
19 Jul 2025
The future of the UN agency for Palestinians | Unrwa's Philippe Lazzarini
What is the future of Unrwa, the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees?
In this episode of Expert Witness, Unrwa chief and Swiss-Italian humanitarian Philippe Lazzarini talks to Middle East Eye’s news editor Sondos Asem on the current humanitarian situation in occupied Palestine, and the future of the cash-stapped agency.
Lazzarini is the 11th commissioner-general of Unrwa, the largest provider of humanitarian assistance to some six million Palestinians in occupied Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. He reflects on the funding crisis faced by the organisation and calls on UN member states and the Arab world to step in to compensate for the vacuum left by the withdrawal of US funding in January 2024.
Filming date: 22 May 2025, Geneva,Switzerland
19 Jul 2025
How can the ICC be protected against sanctions? | Meg Satterthwaite
What steps should be taken to protect the International Criminal Court? In this episode of Expert Witness, Professor Margaret Satterthwaite, the UN special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, discusses with Sondos Asem the implications of President Donald Trump’s executive order of 6 February, which sanctioned the ICC’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan over his investigation into top Israeli officials.
19 Jul 2025
Agnes Callamard on how Amnesty International concluded that Israel is committing genocide
In this episode of One on One, journalist and news editor Sondos Asem spoke with Agnes Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International, the world's leading human rights group. Callamard joined MEE from The Hague, on 5 December 2024, following Amnesty's release of a landmark report concluding that Israel has committed and continues to commit the crime of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. In the interview, she discusses the main findings of the report, how the organisation's legal team established the threshold of genocidal intent, and what countries around the world should do to prevent genocide and hold the state of Israel accountable under international law.
19 Jul 2025
Can Biden be tried for war crimes in Gaza? | Sarah Leah Whitson
Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the US rights group Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn), explains to Sondos Asem the organisation’s submission to the International Criminal Court in January 2025, urging Prosecutor Karim Khan to investigate former US President Joe Biden and members of his administration for their alleged complicity in Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Filming date: 10 March 2025
19 Jul 2025
Immunity or impunity? International justice after Gaza | William Schabas
What can more than 100 years of the international justice system tell us about its present and future? In this episode of Expert Witness, Professor William Schabas, widely recognised as one of the world’s leading scholars of international criminal law, provides a reflection on his decades of experience as an academic lawyer and genocide expert, and the challenges facing international law after Israel’s war on Gaza in 2023. Schabas is the former president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars and the author of more than 20 books on genocide, the International Criminal Court, and international human rights law.
Date of filming: 4 April 2025, London
19 Jul 2025
'International law on a knife's edge': Francesca Albanese on genocide and global complicity
In this episode of One on One, journalist and news editor Sondos Asem is sitting down with Francesca Albanese, an outspoken international human rights lawyer and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.
She is the 8th person to hold that role, and the first woman. She is a self-described “reluctant chronicler of Genocide”, as she has been one of the most vocal critics of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza since 7 October. Within the past year, she has submitted two reports to the UN human rights council, where she outlined her legal opinion on why the attacks on the Palestinian population constitute genocide.
Filming date: 13 November 2024, London
19 Jul 2025
Starvation, famine and failure to prevent genocide in Gaza | Tom Dannenbaum
Has Israel been using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza? In this episode of Expert Witness, leading international law scholar, Professor Tom Dannenbaum, discusses with Middle East Eye news editor Sondos Asem the nuts and bolts of the starvation war crime throughout history and what needs to be done to make the law more effective. He argues that under international law, there’s a very strong case for implicating Israeli leaders for the crime of weaponising starvation, and for failure to prevent genocide.
Filming date: 16 May 2025 London and Massachusetts
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