Democracy, Governance, and Rule of Law

This Insight analyzes the immunity of Judge Aydin Sefa Akay, a Turkish citizen and a former judge of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, who was a judge at the United Nations Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (Mechanism) since July 25, 2016, assigned to the case of Prosecutor v. Ngirabatware, until June 2018.[1] The Mechanism was created to perform residual functions of the now terminated International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

Introduction

The consequences of the referendum on independence, held in Catalonia on October 1, 2017, have given rise to a broad debate and are still to be assessed in their entirety. In fact, the vote was just the last of a decade-long series of moves by the Catalan government and parliament, and counter-moves on the Spanish side,[1] putting the Spanish democracy and all of its branches of government under stress as never before in its recent history.