International Criminal Responsibility for Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide Against the Uyghur Population in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region

The Essex Court Chambers was instructed by the Global Legal Action Network, the World Uyghur Congress and the Uyghur Human Rights Project to provide a written Opinion on the characterisation, under international criminal law, of acts carried out by the Chinese government in respect of the Uyghur people living in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (“XUAR”) in China. This Opinion addresses the potential substantive liability of certain individuals, under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (“Rome Statute”) and the applicability of the United Kingdom’s “Magnitsky sanctions” regime to those individuals.