Opinio Juris: Recent Episodes
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[Phil Orchard is Professor in International Relations, Head of Discipline, Politics and International Studies and Co-Director of the Future of Rights Centre in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia. Mareen Brosinsky is Associate Lecturer and PhD Candidate in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Wollongong in New South...
[Azadah Raz Mohammad is a PhD Candidate at the Melbourne Law School where she is completing a PhD in international criminal law at Melbourne Law School. Karin M Frodé is a Lecturer and Clinical Supervisor at the Monash University Faculty of Law, where she also completed a PhD in international human rights law.] A well-known statement in international criminal law...
[Bhavani Fonseka is an Attorney-at-Law and Researcher based in Sri Lanka] May 2026 marked 17 years since the end of the war in Sri Lanka, a period in which accountability for the violations that occurred during the war have been elusive. Despite the passage of time, the demand for accountability persists with victims both in Sri Lanka and outside agitating...
[Antonia Mulvey is a British lawyer, and the founder and executive director of Legal Action Worldwide.] International law, international justice institutions, and human rights are under extraordinary pressure as conflicts are increasing and displacement is at record levels. Using the law to protect rights and demand justice has rarely been more important, or more difficult. The Rohingya accountability effort shows both...
[Emma Palmer is an Associate Professor at Griffith Law School researching the use of universal jurisdiction to prosecute international crimes in the Asia-Pacific. Prasadi Wijesinghe is a PhD Candidate at Griffith Business School researching intellectual property law and artificial intelligence.] This research was supported by the Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Award (project number DE250100597). The views expressed herein...
[Gaia Zoboli is a PhD candidate and Lecturer in Public International Law at Maastricht University. Ruben Peetam is a PhD candidate in Dutch Constitutional and Administrative Law at Maastricht University and a member of the Maastricht Research Centre for Society and Law.] Introduction ‘How many military flights connected to the illegal war in Iran make use of the Dutch airspace?’....
[Quazi Omar Foysal is a Bangladeshi-qualified international lawyer, currently pursuing a PhD at La Trobe University, Australia] While deliberating on the Provisional Measures Order in the Sudan Genocide case, the International Court of Justice (“ICJ” or “Court”) devoted most of its attention to the UAE’s reservation to Article IX of the Genocide Convention. Although the Court’s finding of a manifest...
[Sanjna Jain is an International Law and Human Rights Fellow at the International Commission of Jurists in their Africa Regional Program] After months of deliberation, on 7 July 2026 Zimbabwe’s President, Emmerson Mnangagwa, has signed into law a constitutional amendment that will that will keep him in office until 2030, delaying the originally scheduled 2028 presidential election. The constitutional amendment...
[Guy S. Goodwin-Gill is Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, Emeritus Professor of International Refugee Law, University of Oxford] In 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Coast Guard to stop Haitians on the high seas and return them to the country they had fled, despite international law prohibiting such conduct. In 2026, the Court allowed U.S. officials to...
[Emanuele Cimiotta is a Full Professor of International Law at the University of Perugia] Establishing a state’s genocidal intent is a hard task. Yet intent constitutes one of the building blocks of genocide: the so-called dolus specialis, whose presence is essential for a state to be held responsible. To this end, the violence that Israel has been perpetrating against Palestinian...
[José Enrique Conde Belmonte is a Professor of Public International Law and European Union Law at the Complutense University of Madrid. He writes here in a personal academic capacity.] On 30 July 2026, roughly 60,000 people crossed from Morocco into the Spanish city of Ceuta — population 84,000 — in under forty-eight hours, most of them by sea around the...
[Larissa Kojoue is a researcher at the LGBT division with Human Rights Watch] Legislation that strips people of their rights is gaining momentum across Africa, in the name of “African Family Values” and “Sovereignty.” It is not driven by popular demands, but rather because domestic actors find it politically rewarding, and external forces find the African continent a strategic arena...
[Dr Sergey Sayapin is Professor of Law at KIMEP University (Almaty, Kazakhstan) and Distinguished Visiting Global Scholar at the NUS Centre for International Law (2025)] The discussion in Part I of this blog post has examined how contemporary economic interdependence generates structural vulnerabilities within financial systems, sovereign debt, and global production networks. Yet the significance of economic fragility extends well...
[Dr Sergey Sayapin is Professor of Law at KIMEP University (Almaty, Kazakhstan) and Distinguished Visiting Global Scholar at the NUS Centre for International Law (2025)] For much of the post-war period, international economic law was built around a promise of stability. The architects of the Bretton Woods order sought to prevent a recurrence of the economic catastrophes that had contributed...
[Roar Mikalsen is the Leader of the Alliance for Rights-Oriented Drug Policies (AROD)] The author is the lead applicant in the Mikalsen v. Norway applications before the ECtHR (app. no. 67078/10 and subsequent filings). This connection is disclosed for full transparency The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) serves as the ultimate arbiter of the European Convention on Human Rights...
[Emmanuel U. Osayande is a JD/PhD candidate at Columbia Law School and Harvard University] National constitutions were among the most important sites where decolonization reshaped international law, alongside International Court of Justice decisions, United Nations General Assembly resolutions, and diplomatic conference proceedings. Between the Enugu shootings of 1949 in British Nigeria and post-independent Nigeria’s first military coup in 1966,...
In the wake of Prosecutor’s Khan’s removal from office, a number of people have asked me whether the current Deputy Prosecutors or the next Prosecutor could withdraw the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant. In this post, I will explain why I think the answer is formally no but practically yes. To begin with, nothing in the Rome Statute gives...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description (1-2 paragraphs) to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. Call for Participants – Geneva Trade Week’s Curated Conversations: On 16 September 2026, a Curated Conversation on “The Role of Secretariats in IOs’ Activities” will take place at the WTO within the framework of the Public Forum—Geneva Trade...
[Dr Erin Pobjie is Assistant Professor at Essex Law School and a Senior Research Affiliate at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law. She serves as co-Rapporteur of the International Law Association’s Committee on the Use of Force.] The author writes here in her personal capacity. Amidst the shadows cast by current global events, there is...
[Alejandro Chehtman is Dean and Professor of Law at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella.] Prohibited Force (CUP, 2024) addresses a neglected issue in International Law, namely, the scope of the prohibition to use force. That this is a neglected issue might seem unexpected, given that this rule has been appropriately termed a “cardinal principle”, and one of the “cornerstones” of the...
[James A. Green is Professor of Public International Law at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK ,co-rapporteur of the International Law Association’s Use of Force Committee and a former editor-in-chief of the Journal on the Use of Force and International Law. His most recent book is Collective Self-Defence in International Law (CUP, 2024).] Pål Wrange once wrote...
[Andrew Clapham is Professor of International Law at the Geneva Graduate Institute and the author of “War”] During Dr Pobjie’s book launch at the Geneva Academy we discussed some of the contemporary challenges facing those working to ensure respect for the international law on prohibited force. It is obvious that states are not willing to take the necessary steps to...
[Tomohiro Mikanagi is Legal Advisor, Director-General, International Legal Affairs Bureau, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs] The following comments are made in the author’s personal capacity According to Erin Pobjie, “a ’use of force’ is a type, characterized by a basket of elements which do not all have to be present and which must be weighed and balanced to determine...
[Adil Ahmad Haque is a Professor of Law and Judge Jon O. Newman Scholar at Rutgers Law School. His first book, Law and Morality at War, was recently published by Oxford University Press.] Erin Pobjie’s Prohibited Force is an extraordinary book. Its combination of theoretical sophistication and empirical rigor is both striking and rare. While some readers may be tempted to skip...
[Claus Kreß is a Professor of Criminal Law and Public International Law, the Chair for German and International Criminal Law, and Director of the Institute of International Peace and Security Law at the University of Cologne. He formerly Served in the German Federal Ministry of Justice.] In para. 253 of its 19 July 2024 Advisory Opinion in Legal Consequences from...
[Alonso Gurmendi is Fellow in Human Rights and Politics at LSE and Contributor Editor at Opinio Juris] At Opinio Juris we are extremely happy to present the present online symposium on friend-of-the-blog, Erin Pobjie’s recent book, Prohibited Force: The Meaning of ‘Use of Force’ in International Law (available on open access here). In this fascinating contribution to the law on...
To have your event or announcement featured in our next post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. We are still officially on E&A hiatus while we bring on a new team member. Watch this space for regularly constituted E&A posts sometime in late November. Event: Book Launch Book Launch: Sights, Sounds, and Sensibilities of Atrocity Prosecutions...
[Karolína Babická is a Senior Legal Adviser at the International Commission of Jurists. Cristina Giacomin is a Legal Intern at the International Commission of Jurists] Overview In the past two years, the Committee on Artificial Intelligence (CAI) of the Council of Europe (CoE) has worked on the Framework Convention (FC) on Artificial Intelligence, Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of...
[Tamer Morris is a Senior Lecturer in international law at the University of Sydney] In early October, it was reported that Israeli authorities requested UNIFIL to relocate their position to the north of the Blue Line. On the 10 October the IDF directed attacks against UNIFIL personnel and installations, injuring two peacekeepers. On 14 October, UNIFIL reported that two IDF tanks...
[Mischa Gureghian Hall is a Researcher and Senior Status student in Law at the University of Oxford, University College, and a Legal Assistant at the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals.] On 25 October 2024, Ukraine deposited its instrument of ratification of the Rome Statute with the UN Secretary-General, completing the process of ratification of the statute of the International...
[Dr. Alonso Gurmendi is a Fellow in Human Rights and Politics at LSE and a contributor editor at Opinio Juris Dr. Nicolás Carrillo-Santarelli is a Researcher of International Law at the University of Cagliari and today’s Dungeon Master Dr. Juliana Santos de Carvalho is the Isaac Newton Trust Academic Career Development Fellow in Gender Studies and Human, Social, and Political...
[Maria Pilar Llorens holds a PhD in Law and Social Sciences and teaches International Public Law at the Faculty of Law of the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina. Dr Silvina Sánchez Mera teaches law and criminology at Robert Gordon University.] In the early 1970s, when asked about Mafalda, writer Julio Cortázar answered: ‘That does not matter at all. What is...
[Michael Randall is a Senior Teaching Fellow at the University of Strathclyde, Glasow, teaching two modules at undergraduate level which concern the representation of law in media] Cinema has a long history of depicting war on screen. As Knecht observes, war films are nearly as old as the business of cinema, identifying, for example, that even the highly controversial Birth...
[Ramón Barreto Pirela (LLM Public International Law) is a Venezuelan lawyer, political scientist and PhD candidate in social sciences at Oslo Metropolitan University] 2024 is an Olympic year. This centenary sporting event is constantly adapting, as it is not exempt from international matters such as apartheid or aggression. In our 21st Century world, where mobility is a defining feature, sports...
[Luis Mauricio Bulnes is a Professor of International Relations at Universidad San Ignacio de Loyola (Perú), a Peruvian diplomat and lawyer] All the views and opinions expressed in this article are personal and do not reflect the views or official positions of any of the authors employers. The album Brat by Charli XCX, released in 2024, was enthusiastically received by both critics...
[Dr Ilaria Infante is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in International Law at the Department of Law, University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”] Introduction Fullmetal Alchemist (original title Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) is a popular manga series by Japanese mangaka (the Japanese word for manga artist) Hiromu Arawaka, published in Japan between 2001 and 2010 and translated in several languages. It was also...
[Laurence Teillet is a PhD Candidate at Nottingham Law School, focusing on environmental activists prosecutions and convictions for piracy. With LLMs in International and Comparative Environmental Law, and Natural Resources Law, her research interests primarily lie in International Environmental Law and the Law of the Sea.] EPIC: The Musical is a creative reimagining of Homer’s Odyssey by Jorge Rivera-Herrans. The...
In Representations of the Intellectual, Edward Said paints a portrait of the public intellectual. Part description and part aspiration (and maybe a little autobiography as well), he represents the intellectual as an outsider, a subversive whose role is to challenge the status quo by “speaking truth to power.” While this statement was probably never intended as more than a catchy...
September 2024 António Guterres Secretary-General United Nations New York, NY 10017 United States Dear Secretary-General, We are writing to urge the United Nations to initiate a comprehensive global study on apartheid practices and to affirm an inclusive understanding of victims protected from the crime of apartheid. UN experts are increasingly pointing to apartheid practices and policies in different regions of...
[Emily Mullin is a legal intern and lead of the Ukraine Advocacy Initiative atGenocide Watch.] [Dr. Gregory Stanton is the founder and president of Genocide Watch and the Chair of the Alliance Against Genocide.] Overview Since Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, international lawyers have discussed creation of a Special Tribunal for the crime of aggression. Philippe Sands proposed the idea in...
[Dr Letizia Lo Giacco is Assistant Professor of Public International Law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies of Leiden University] A default mode to understand and reflect on the activity of the International Criminal Court (ICC, ‘the Court’) is from the standpoint of international criminal law. This comes of course quite natural, being the Court a permanent pivot...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. Calls for Papers Conference on Indigenous and Minority Rights: The Congress of Nations and States (CNS) along with The University of Stirling will be co-hosting a conference on Indigenous and Minority Rights from March 5-7, 2025. The call for papers...
[Ankit Malhotra is an Advocate, Felix Scholar and co-editor of Re-Imagining the International Legal Order] “The principles and rules of diplomatic privileges and immunities are not—and this cannot be over-stressed—the invention or device of one group of nations, of one continent, or one circle of culture, but have been established for centuries and are shared by nations of all races and...
[Artemis Akbary is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of ALO: the Afghan LGBT+ Organization. Kirby Anwar is a Senior Legal Fellow at CUNY School of Law and an Advocacy Director for MADRE.] Taliban Soldiers brutally beat a trans woman and cut her hair while passers by gawked. They then blindfolded her, took her to an unknown location, and raped her....
[Parisa Zangeneh is a PhD researcher at the Irish Centre of Human Rights, University of Galway, where she is supported by the Hardiman Scholarship] Introduction This blog post focuses on the interpretation of Common Article 1 that was presented to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Nicaragua v Germany proceedings. It argues that Germany’s interpretation of Common Article...
[Pedro Serodio holds an LL.M in International and European Law at the Universität des Saarlandes and a Legal Assistant at MarketVector Indexes, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany] Introduction The global issue of deforestation and its environmental consequences stand at the forefront of Brazil’s agenda as it directs a critical crossroads. In this context, the Brazilian Ecological Transition Plan, an initiative...
[Silvia Rojas Castro is a Legal Advisor at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) in Germany and a South-North Expert between ECCHR and the Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS) in Argentina. Both ECCHR and CELS supported the filing of the complaint against Uribe Vélez in Argentina. Dr. Julieta Mira is a researcher at the National...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. Events Webinar: The ICJ between Tradition and Transition: Accommodating Interdisciplinarity and Grey International Law zones in the Advisory Opinion on Israel and the West Bank: 23 September at 10.00 AM EST. The American Society of International Law together with...
[Dr. Amrei Müller is Assistant Professor/Lecturer (Ad Astra Fellow) at University College Dublin, Sutherland School of Law. Dr. Silvia Behrendt is the founder and director of the Global Health Responsibility Agency.] Part I of this contribution elaborated on the procedural irregularities of the adoption of the 2024 IHR amendments. Without any claim to exhaustiveness, Part II focuses on the analysis of some substantive...
[Dr. Amrei Müller is Assistant Professor/Lecturer (Ad Astra Fellow) at University College Dublin, Sutherland School of Law. Dr. Silvia Behrendt is the founder and director of the Global Health Responsibility Agency.] Introduction At the last hour of the last day of the 77th session of the World Health Assembly (WHA), at 9 pm on the 1st of June 2024, the WHA adopted far-reaching...
[Tatjana Grote is a PhD Candidate at the University of Essex] Once again, the International Court of Justice (ICJ, ‘the Court’) has made its way into the headlines of the world. In its recent Advisory Opinion on ‘Legal Consequences Arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Including East Jerusalem’, the Court left no doubt...
[Jens Iverson is an Assistant Professor of International Law at Leiden University.] Mongolia is obliged by its treaty obligations to arrest Vladimir Putin if it can. It could have, but it didn’t. Why? The answer lies mainly in politics, but also in the cover created by an academic dispute. This post attempts to explain the dispute to those who haven’t...
[Hussein Badreddine is a Ph.D. Candidate in Public International Law at the University of New South Wales, Canberra] Since October 8, 2023, Hezbollah and Israel have been engaging in a low-level armed conflict. This conflict has however been intensifying, and further talks about an imminent ground invasion of Lebanon by Israel are on the rise. A previous conflict between Hezbollah...
[Elke Schwarz is a Professor in Political Theory at Queen Mary University London, specialising in ethics of war and ethics of technology with an emphasis on unmanned and autonomous / intelligent military technologies and their impact on the politics of contemporary warfare] The second REAIM summit was underway in Seoul last week. The event, co-hosted by the governments of the...
[Richard Dicker was the longtime international justice director and is now a senior legal adviser for advocacy at Human Rights Watch. He teaches courses on international criminal courts at Columbia Law School.] Goitom, a 42-year-old ethnic Tigrayan farmer, living in that northern region of Ethiopia, watched helplessly when, on January 17, 2021, Amhara Special Forces – a brutal paramilitary group...
[Patricia Vella de Fremeaux is Professor and Head of the International Law Department of the Faculty of Laws, University of Malta. Dr Felicity G. Attard is a lecturer in the Department of International Law at the University of Malta.] In Part One, an overview of the Pact was examined in order to set the context for the following discussion on...
[Patricia Vella de Fremeaux is Professor and Head of the International Law Department of the Faculty of Laws, University of Malta. Dr Felicity G. Attard is a lecturer in the Department of International Law at the University of Malta.] The problem of maritime migration has been at the forefront of the European Union (EU)’s legislative and policy making landscape for...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. Calls for Papers Autonomy under pressure: The European Union (EU) – and its legal order – occupies a unique position in international law. In this context, the ‘autonomy of EU law’, since its judge-made creation in the 1960s, continues...
[André de Hoogh is Associate Professor in International Law, University of Groningen; his research covers a wide range of topics in public international law. He is a member of the Advisory Committee on Public International Law, a statutory body which provides advice to the Dutch government and parliament; this contribution has been written in his personal capacity, and does not...
[André de Hoogh is Associate Professor in International Law, University of Groningen; his research covers a wide range of topics in public international law. He is a member of the Advisory Committee on Public International Law, a statutory body which provides advice to the Dutch government and parliament; this contribution has been written in his personal capacity, and does not...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. Events Levan Alexidze International Law Moot Court Competition (LA-IL-MCC): The Academician Levan Alexidze Foundation, in close cooperation with the ICMPD, as well as the Georgian American University and the International Criminal Law Centre at Tbilisi State University is pleased to...
[Dr Iryna Marchuk is an associate professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark) Dr Aloka Wanigasuriya is an assistant professor at the Department of Law at the University of Southern Denmark (Denmark)] Introduction The international law community is abuzz with the news of ratification of the Rome Statute (RS) by the Ukrainian parliament on 21 August 2024,...
[Dr Yvonne Breitwieser-Faria is a Lecturer at Curtin Law School, and has published on atrocity law, international human rights law, and State responsibility] In the last two years, we have seen an unprecedented number of interventions filed in cases before the International Court of Justice which concern allegations of serious human rights violations, genocide, torture, or war crimes. A considerable...
[Géraldine Giraudeau is a Professor of Law at the University of Paris-Saclay (UVSQ)] Introduction Since May 13, in the context of a controversial project on electoral reform, New Caledonia (Kanaky), an archipelago of South Pacific under French administration has been in the grip of a violence that has already caused at least 11 deaths, numerous injuries and considerable damage. After...
[Shlomo Levin holds an M.A. in International Law and Human Rights from the U.N. University for Peace in Costa Rica and the author of The Human Rights Haggadah] In its recent advisory opinion, the ICJ decided by votes of 11-4 that Israel’s continued presence in occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful and that Israel is obligated to bring it to an end...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. Calls for Papers The diversification of civilian agency in armed conflict: In recent conflicts we have seen states increasingly rely on alternative actors. Civilians, including corporate actors, are playing an increasingly active role in national defence doctrines. In a...
[Michelle Burgis-Kasthala is Professor of International Law and Global Governance at the University of Edinburgh Law School. Matilde Masetti Placci is a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh Law School, and her thesis focusses on the history and theory of international law.] On 19th July, the ICJ handed down its long-awaited advisory opinion examining the legal status of Israel’s...
[Philip Collins is a US-based immigration attorney and a PhD Researcher at the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the University of Galway, Ireland, where he also holds a Master’s Degree in International Human Rights Law.] On June 5, 2024, President Biden’s ‘Proclamation on Securing the Border’ went into full effect, with the stated purpose of suspending and limiting ‘[t]he...
[Mark A. Drumbl is Class of 1975 Alumni Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University. Barbora Holá is Professor in Empirical Legal Studies of International Criminal Justice at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.] Even the journey can be the destination… Mňága a Žďorp, Czech rock band Writing this book, as we note in its opening pages, lifted us to many places...
[Dr. Mia Swart is Visiting Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand Law School] Informers Up Close focuses almost exclusively on informers in the context of Communist Czechoslovakia. Drumbl and Holá state explicitly that, but for a sideways glance here and there, the book is not comparative in nature. It zooms in on individuals that informed to the secret police...
[Nesam McMillan is an Associate Professor in Criminology at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and author of Imagining the International: Crime, Justice and the Promise of Community (2020)] In their new book, Drumbl and Holá offer a meditative scholarly inquiry into the practice, motivations and social significance of informing. They invite the reader to better appreciate the everydayness of informing...
[Saira Mohamed is Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley] Mark Drumbl and Barbora Holá’s fascinating Informers Up Close: Stories from Communist Prague offers a rigorous and engrossing account of the lives of informers in Czechoslovakia and the reckoning that comes for them after the fall of Communism. The book gives the reader so much to grapple with...
[Sergey Vasiliev is Professor of International Law at the Open University in the Netherlands] Why bring a new book about the secret police (StB) collaborators in Communist Czechoslovakia, of all topics, into the burning, drowning, and splintered world of 2024? Can it serve purposes other than indulging one’s historical curiosity or wanderlust – an unaffordable distraction? I certainly thought so,...
[Mark A. Drumbl is Class of 1975 Alumni Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University. Barbora Holá is Professor in Empirical Legal Studies of International Criminal Justice at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.] She was practiced at the art of deceptionWell, I could tell by her blood-stained hands ‘You can’t always get what you want’ (1969) from Let it Bleed by...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. Events Nuremberg Forum 2024: The International Nuremberg Principles Academy cordially invites you to attend the Nuremberg Forum 2024, which will take place from 10 to 12 October 2024 at Courtroom 600, Palace of Justice, entrance via Memorium Nuremberg Trials,...
[I serve as the ICC Prosecutor’s Special Adviser on War Crimes. This post is written in my academic capacity and does not reflect the position of the Office of the Prosecutor.] It is being widely reported that President Zelensky has submitted the Rome Statute to Ukraine’s parliament for ratification. If so, that is great news: although Ukraine’s two Art. 12(3)...
[Sanjana Ragu is an Bachelor of Laws graduate from Strathmore University and currrenly works as a trainee lawyer at Anjarwalla & Khanna] Be it Palestine in the East, or Sudan in the South, in the chessboard of global politics and economy, the suffering of the Global South is often a pawn, sacrificed for strategic advantage. This wretched reality becomes apparent...
[Dr Cristiano d’Orsi is a Lecturer and Senior Research Fellow at the Faculty of Law, University of Johannesburg and Senior Consultant in AFRICAN Refugee Law at Witness Experts in London] Mandela and his First Struggles with the ANC Nelson Mandela’s birth coincided with the beginning of British rule in Palestine (1918) and what has been called the Third Aliyah, another...
[Lazola Nomkala holds Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Laws degrees from the University of the Western Cape (UWC)] On 19 July 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that the Israeli occupation in Palestine was illegal. Despite the disputed nature of Israel’s origins, the occupation formally began in 1967. What followed was the violent dispossession of Palestinians achieved...
[Madhav Mallya is an independent legal researcher based in Toronto. He is a former associate professor at the Jindal Global Law School.] In Van Pezold v Zimbabwe, an investor-state arbitration tribunal ruled that Zimbabwe’s compulsory land redistribution scheme—intended to acquire land from white settlers without compensation and redistribute amongst the native population—violated the international law on the prohibition of racial...
[Trésor Muhindo Makunya is an Associate Professor of Constitutional and International Human Rights Law in Africa at the University of Goma] Article 19: All peoples shall be equal; they shall enjoy the same respect and shall have the same rights. Nothing shall justify the domination of a people by another’. Article 20(3): ‘All peoples shall have the right to the...
Wale ni sisi: Na sisi ni wale: This Swahili phrase means “They are us: and we are them.” It has been borrowed from Katama Mkangi, ‘Walenisi’ (1995). [Dr. David Ngira is an African who lives in Kenya. The views are his own and do not represent those of any organization or entity.] Introduction The Global North’s imperialism has significantly shaped...
[Nadeshda Jayakody is an Australian qualified lawyer specializing in international human rights law, international humanitarian law (IHL), international criminal law and transitional justice. Nadeshda previously worked on accountability for human right and IHL violations that occurred in Sri Lanka as a Senior/Legal Officer at the Public Interest Advocacy Centre in Australia and as a Senior Researcher at the South Asian...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. Calls for Papers Increasing Avenues for International Justice and Accountability in Asia: The Asia Justice Coalition and Universitas Andalas Law Faculty are seeking abstracts for a workshop entitled ‘Increasing Avenues for International Justice and Accountability in Asia’. The workshop will be held from 23rd-24th September...
[Tor Krever is University Assistant Professor in International Law at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, Official Fellow in Law at Girton College, and co-General Editor of the London Review of International Law] The International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion on Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the...
[Maryam Jamshidi is an Associate Professor of Law at University of Colorado Law School] As Israel has stated again and again since October 7, its military objective in Gaza is to destroy Hamas, the political party and armed group that has governed the Gaza Strip since 2007. Israel has deployed a version of this argument to challenge South Africa’s case...
[Rosemary Grey is a Senior Lecturer at Sydney Law School, The University of Sydney. Valerie Oosterveld is Western Research Chair in International Criminal Justice and Professor at the Faculty of Law, Western University (Canada). While she serves as Special Adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on Crimes Against Humanity, this post was written in her personal capacity, and she...
[Rosemary Grey is a Senior Lecturer at Sydney Law School, The University of Sydney. Valerie Oosterveld is Western Research Chair in International Criminal Justice and Professor at the Faculty of Law, Western University (Canada). While she serves as Special Adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on Crimes Against Humanity, this post was written in her personal capacity, and she...
[Eoin Jackson is a PHD Candidate at LSE] At present, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) is considering its Advisory Opinion on the Climate Emergency and Human Rights. The proceedings follow on the heels of the landmark European Court of Human Rights decision in KlimaSeniorinnen v Switzerland, where the Court issued a declaratory judgment that the human rights of...
[Elvis Mogesa Ongiri is the Managing Editor at the Kabarak Law Review and an Editorial Assistant at the Kabarak University Press. He is also an early career researcher interested in African approaches to international law.] In a world where information is power, African national mainstream media plays an important role in informing and shaping perceptions of the African public. By shaping public consent...
[Rugenge wa Nciko is an LLB student at Kabarak University Law School, a Kabarak Legal Aid Clinic (CLACLE) board member and a Trainee Editor at the Kabarak Law Review. He was born in the war-torn Eastern DRC and a citizen of DRC and interested in contributing to addressing the human rights and humanitarian situation in his country, across Africa.] International...
[Mariam Hiba Malik is an international lawyer and LL.M. in International Law Candidate at the Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, specialising in the Protection of the Individual in International law] The recent ICJ Advisory Opinion on the illegality of Israel’s occupation in Palestine underscores the international community’s recognition of systemic injustices and the urgency for enforcing existing...
[David Arita is a student at Kabarak University] European colonial powers used pseudo-scientific racial underpinnings to justify their conquest and the exploitation of African lands and peoples. This racial ideology served multiple purposes including providing a moral justification for colonisation, facilitating the exploitation of African labour, and underwriting the policies of segregation and unequal development. Similarly, the Zionist settler project...
[Mohsen al Attar is Associate Dean of Learning & Teaching at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University as well as a Contributing Editor to Opinio Juris. Nciko wa Nciko is an Amnesty International Climate Justice Advisor in East and Southern Africa and its lead advisor on human rights in Madagascar.] African peoples and states have long stood in solidarity with the liberation struggle...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. Calls for Papers Fourth Annual Opinio Juris Symposium on Pop Culture & International Law: There’s only a few days left to submit your abstracts for the pop culture symposium! Submissions are due by 1 August. More information here. SAIELIN...
[Ton Nu Thanh Binh is an LLM student at Trinity College Dublin and a recipient of the Ireland Fellows Programme] The opinions expressed in this post are the author’s own and do not reflect the views of any institution the author might be affiliated with. On 28 June 2024, Spain became the sixth country to submit a declaration to intervene...
Twitch is a live-streaming platform launched in 2011 to cater to the growing supply of amateur and professional gamers playing videogames for an audience. Twitch allows the user to stream, simultaneously, footage of themselves and of their videogame at the same time, which meant that gamers could build entire communities around a shared activity. This rapidly grew into much more...
[Andreas Piperides is a PhD candidate and Graduate Teaching Assistant in Public International Law at the University of Glasgow] Introduction The recent unanimous judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR or the Court) on the merits of Ukraine v. Russia (re Crimea) has been described as a ‘a clear and undeniable victory for Ukraine’. In the judgment the...
[Amanda Alexander is a senior lecturer at the Australian Catholic University] The ICC’s delayed judgement in the Al Hassan case had been long-anticipated in the hope that it might contribute to some emerging areas of international criminal law – in particular gender-based crimes and the treatment of non-state actors’ governance. When, however, the long and complex judgement was published, it...
[Melanie O’Brien is Associate Professor of International Law at the University of Western Australia and President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.] [Kathleen M. Maloney is Visiting Law Professor at Lewis & Clark Law School and Founding Board Member of the international human rights organization, Just Planet.] [Valerie Oosterveld is Western Research Chair in International Criminal Justice and Professor...
[Sindhura Polepalli is a Maritime Legal Consultant to the Directorate General of Shipping (Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, Government of India)] This post is written in the author’s personal capacity. On May 21, 2024 the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) confirmed in its Advisory Opinion (AO) that climate change poses an existential threat (ITLOS AO,...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. Calls for Papers Opinio Juris Fourth Annual Symposium on Pop Culture and International Law: There are two more weeks left to submit an abstract for the Fourth Annual OJ Symposium on Pop Culture and International Law! Abstracts of up...
[Mischa Gureghian Hall is a W.M. Keck Research Fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles] After a considerable delay, Trial Chamber X of the International Criminal Court (ICC) delivered its much-anticipated trial judgment in the Al Hassan case. While preliminary engagement with the judgment (including on this blog) has surrounded the Chamber’s unclear approach to gender-based persecution, it can be easy...
[Faraz Shahlaei is an Adjunct Professor of law at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles] Introduction The intersection of human rights and sports has reached a crucial point with the Grand Chamber (GC) of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) taking over the Caster Semenya case. The case alleges human rights violations on several grounds due to DSD (Differences of...
[Eva Buzo is a barrister and Executive Director of Victim Advocates International. Clare Brown is a Senior Legal Officer and Gender Advisor for Victim Advocates International. Kate Gibson is an international criminal lawyer and Senior Counsel to Victim Advocates International. Pia Conradsen is Rohingya Victim Coordinator of Victim Advocates International.] On 28 June 2024, the Argentine Prosecutor Guillermo F. Marijuán...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. Calls for Papers Volume XIV Issue I of NLIU Law Review: The NLIU Law Review is the flagship journal of the National Law Institute University, Bhopal. It is a peer-reviewed academic law journal, published biannually by the students of...
[Ayesha Malik is Deputy Director at the Research Society of International Law where she leads the Conflict Law Centre. She is also Adjunct Faculty at the Lahore University of Management Sciences where she teaches international criminal law to undergraduate students.] On April 1, Israel attacked Iran’s consulate in Damascus killing Iranian generals and military officers. Nearly two weeks later, Iran...
[Professor Luke Moffett is chair of human rights and international humanitarian law at Queen’s University Belfast.] As the war in Ukraine continues in its third year, efforts for accountability and redress are increasingly turning to external adjudication and intervention. Whether through the International Court of Justice, International Criminal Court (ICC) and European Court of Human Rights to the increasing involvement...
[Darryl Chan, LLM, is currently at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and has previously served as a research assistant to a member of the UN International Law Commission and at the Legal Division of the International Committee of the Red Cross.] The author was present at the Committee’s 140th session in Geneva, including for the 8th periodic...
[Moritz Koenig is a research fellow at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague. His research focusses on the history and theory of international law and anti-colonial movements.] It has become a well-established argument that international law is plagued by several indeterminacies. Scholars such as David Kennedy and Martti Koskenniemi have long argued that this indeterminacy is...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. Featured Announcement: BIICL Short Courses – Autumn 2024 The British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) is delighted to launch its programme of training courses for Autumn 2024. During this period we will be offering a number a...
It’s that time of the year again! The editorial team at Opinio Juris is pleased to announce the call for papers for our Fourth Annual Symposium on Pop Culture and International Law. We welcome abstracts of up to 400 words on any topic relating to international law and popular culture (film, tv, books, video games, or more–get creative!). To be considered, please...
[Kate McInnes is a practicing lawyer based in Vancouver, Canada, and a student in the M.Sc. in International Human Rights Law program at the University of Oxford] In 2023, 25 people in the border town of Ciudad Juárez died by feminicidio, or feminicide — the highest number in Mexico, which itself is a global epicentre of gender-based violence. The year...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. Calls for Papers Human Rights and Climate Change: Where Next?: The Catholic University of Portugal, the University of Turin, and Koç University are organizing a conference on “Human Rights and Climate Change: Where Next?”. The conference aims to discuss...
[Emre Acar is a PhD candidate at Leiden University’s Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies researching “The Role of International Judicial Governance Institutions in Respect of State Resistance to International Courts and Tribunals”.] Applications for arrest warrants against Israeli officials in the Situation in Palestine have triggered political attacks from Israel and the United States against the International Criminal Court...
[Dr Shea Elizabeth Esterling is a Senior Lecturer Above the Bar in the Faculty of Law, University of Canterbury (Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand), Co-Chair of the American Society of International Law Rights of Indigenous Peoples Interest Group (2021-24) and Chair of the Cultural Heritage and the Arts Interest Group (2024-27). She is the author of Indigenous Cultural Property and International Law:...
Note: although I serve as Special Adviser to the ICC Prosecutor on War Crimes, I was not involved in the Al Hassan case. The Trial Chamber released its 822-page (!) judgment in the Al Hassan case yesterday. Al Hassan was convicted of a number of serious crimes, including the crime against humanity of torture and the war crimes of torture...
[Michelle Burgis-Kasthala is a Senior Lecturer in Public International Law at the University of Edinburgh] On 28 May 2024 Norway, Spain and Ireland jointly recognised Palestine’s statehood. Slovenia and Armenia followed suit on 5 and 21 June respectively and Belgium and Malta and even the UK’s Labour Party, at the time of writing, are considering similar steps. Given that as...
[Yvonne McDermott is a Professor of Law at the Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law, Swansea University, UK and Principal Investigator of the TRUE project. Stephen Sharp Queener is an associate of the Law program at the Starling Lab for Data Integrity, a Masters Student in Public Policy at Stanford University, and a current Fulbright Student Scholar in Germany. Basile...
Note: I serve as Special Adviser to the ICC Prosecutor on War Crimes. Twitter is awash with commentary about tweets issued by the Registry that explain the difference between arrest warrants and summonses. Many people have speculated that perhaps the tweets are related to the Palestine situation. Any such speculation is unwarranted, as the tweets are part of a long-scheduled...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. Calls for Papers Renewing the Social Contract: The Challenge of Inclusivity and Democratic Government in Social Contract Theory: The Center for Critical Democracy Studies at the American University of Paris is pleased to announce an international conference on “Renewing...
[William Worster has taught public international law, the law of international organizations and international migration and refugee law at The Hague University of Applied Sciences for more than fifteen years] This is the second part of a post analyzing the US State Department Report on assurances it has received that exported arms will not be misused. In the first part,...
[William Worster has taught public international law, the law of international organizations and international migration and refugee law at The Hague University of Applied Sciences for more than fifteen years] After a short delay, the US State Department delivered its first report to Congress under National Security Memorandum 20 (“NSM-20”) providing its analysis of assurances that exported arms will not...
[Luciana Maulida holds an LLM (Environmental Law) from Melbourne Law School and is an incoming PhD student at King’s College London, focusing on the intersection of international law and climate change] The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS or the Tribunal) issued a landmark unanimous Advisory Opinion (the Opinion) on climate change, on 21 May 2024. The Opinion...
[Mohamed Eltawila is a judge at Egypt’s Court of Cassation’s Technical Bureau, and a former prosecutor and visiting professional at the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. He holds a master’s degree in international law from the Geneva Graduate Institute.] The intersection of national statutes like the American Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA) of 1991 and the...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. Calls for Papers 100 Years of Lotus: The Lotus Project is inviting reflections on the legacy of the Lotus Case and the principle it stands for. The aim is to discuss the historical significance of the case, assess the impact it had on...
[Fred Abrahams covered the Kosovo conflict for Human Rights Watch. He wrote the book Modern Albania and co-wrote A Village Destroyed: War Crimes in Kosovo. Marija Ristic covered Serbian war crimes trials as a journalist for local and international media.] This April, a modest courtroom in Belgrade, Serbia, offered a lens into the global debate on justice for atrocity crimes....
[Isabelle Hassfurther is a legal advisor in the International Crimes and Accountability program at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR). The ECCHR submitted a statement on the draft bill and participated in the expert hearing in the parliament’s legal committee.] [The text has also been published in German in a slightly shorter version on Verfassungsblog.] One Step...
[Isabelle Hassfurther is a legal advisor in the International Crimes and Accountability program at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR). The ECCHR submitted a statement on the draft bill and participated in the expert hearing in the parliament’s legal committee.] [The text has also been published in German in a slightly shorter version on Verfassungsblog.] On 6...
[Jérôme de Hemptinne is an Assistant Professor at Utrecht University] Several posts have been devoted to the delicate question of whether Western States could be implicated in an international armed conflict (IAC) against Russia because of the military, financial, and intelligence support they provide to Ukrainian authorities (see here, here, here, and here). The same question could also be raised...
[Dylan Jesse Andrian is a legal assistant for the Al Hassan Defence Team at the International Criminal Court and an LL.M. candidate at Cambridge University] Not even a year after the Monetary Gold principle was litigated in the ICJ’s 2023 Arbitral Award judgment (which I criticized in a post on Opinio Juris previously), Germany has invoked the same principle in...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. Events Online symposium ‘Futureproofing human rights, developing thicker forms of accountability’: With this symposium on 18 June 2024, we aim to strengthen human rights law by identifying means or mechanisms that ensure a thicker form of accountability that it can...
[Toby Cadman, co-founder of The Guernica 37 Group and joint head of Guernica 37 Chambers. Dr Tomas Hamilton, Guernica 37 Chambers and Adjunct Faculty at the University of Amsterdam. In recent allegations that Israeli officials interfered with the ICC’s work on Palestine, +972 Magazine, Local Call, and the Guardian documented a nine-year, state-orchestrated campaign of spying, hacking and intimidation against the Court. Described...
[Kateryna Busol is a Ukrainian lawyer and an Associate Professor at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy] This post forms part of the Opinio Juris Symposium on Reproductive Violence in International Law, in which diverse authors reflect on how the International Criminal Court and other jurisdictions have responded to violations of reproductive health and reproductive autonomy. The symposium complements a...
[Wai Wai Nu, originally from Myanmar, is the Founder and Executive Director of the Women’s Peace Network. Grant Shubin is a Senior Legal Advisor with the Global Justice Center.] This post forms part of the Opinio Juris Symposium on Reproductive Violence in International Law, in which diverse authors reflect on how the International Criminal Court and other jurisdictions have responded...
[Boravin Tann is a researcher and lecturer at the Center for the Study of Humanitarian Law based at the Royal University of Law and Economics (RULE), Cambodia. Rosemary Grey is a Senior Lecturer at Sydney Law School, The University of Sydney.] This post forms part of the Opinio Juris Symposium on Reproductive Violence in International Law, in which diverse authors...
[Judy Mionki is an International Criminal and Human Rights Lawyer. She has been part of defence teams at the International Criminal Court in the Kenya and the DRC situations. The views expressed in this posts are the author’s own. This post summarises an upcoming journal article (forthcoming, Journal of International Criminal Justice, 2024).] This post forms part of the Opinio...
[Valeria Babără works as Legal and Advocacy Officer with the Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice, where she monitors and researches developments on the prosecution and adjudication of gender-based crimes, and contributes to legal publications including ‘The Hague Principles on Sexual Violence‘ and ‘Judicial Approaches to SGBC at the ICC‘.] This post forms part of the Opinio Juris Symposium on Reproductive Violence in...
[Kimberly Mutcherson is a Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School] This post forms part of the Opinio Juris Symposium on Reproductive Violence in International Law, in which diverse authors reflect on how the International Criminal Court and other jurisdictions have responded to violations of reproductive health and reproductive autonomy. The symposium complements a one-day conference to be held on...
[Alix Vuillemin is the Executive Director of Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice. Rosemary Grey is a Senior Lecturer at Sydney Law School, The University of Sydney.] This post forms part of the Opinio Juris Symposium on Reproductive Violence in International Law, in which diverse authors reflect on how the International Criminal Court and other jurisdictions have responded to violations of...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. Featured Announcement: BIICL Summer Schools This summer, the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) is hosting two summer schools for those seeking to enhance their legal knowledge. The first programme focuses on Law and Technology and provides an extensive overview of...
[Benjamin Meret is a PhD Candidate and teaching assistant at the University of Geneva. He holds an MA in international law from the Geneva Graduate Institute of international and development studies.] On the evening of January 9th, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa declared that the country’s armed forces were in an internal armed conflict against various criminal groups. This followed several...
[Lucas Carlos Lima is a professor of international law at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais] It was expected that the advisory opinion on the climate emergency and human rights requested by the Republic of Colombia and the Republic of Chile to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (‘IACtHR’ or ‘Court’) would attract a high level of participation. While the 2017...
[Gerhard Kemp is Professor of Law at UWE Bristol and Extraordinary Professor of Public Law at Stellenbosch University. Victor Kattan is Assistant Professor in Public International Law at the University of Nottingham School of Law.] The Republic of South Africa deposited its instrument of accession to the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (‘Apartheid...
[Javier Eskauriatza is an Assistant Professor in criminal law at the University of Nottingham School of Law. He is also the Co-Director of the Criminal Justice Research Centre, and the Convener of the Criminal Law and Criminal Justice stream for the Society of Legal Scholars.] On 24 April 2024, twelve U.S. Senators (Republican Party) sent a letter to Karim Khan,...
[Patricio Trincado Vera is a Research Assistant at the Transboundary Legal Studies Department at Groningen University.] March 2024 was a month with significant advances in the area of human rights and environmental protection on a regional level. The European Court of Human Rights has been at the centre of the debate with the three judgements on climate change and environmental...
In this post I want to provide an overview of the Rome Statute‘s principle of complementarity. The principle has been consistently misrepresented by politicians and journalists since word first got out that the Prosecutor, Karim Khan KC, intended to seek arrest warrants in the Palestine situation not only for Hamas leaders but also for senior Israeli government officials. Let me...
[Megan Karlshøj-Pedersen is a Policy Specialist at Airwars, working across the U.K., U.S., the Netherlands and other European countries. Jessica Dorsey is an Assistant Professor of International and European Law at Utrecht University and the Managing Editor of Opinio Juris. Both authors are part of the civil society and academic consortium advising the Dutch Ministry of Defence described in this...
[Megan Karlshøj-Pedersen is a Policy Specialist at Airwars, working across the U.K., U.S., the Netherlands and other European countries. Jessica Dorsey is an Assistant Professor of International and European Law at Utrecht University and the Managing Editor of Opinio Juris. Both authors are part of the civil society and academic consortium advising the Dutch Ministry of Defence described in this...
[Marion Sandner is a doctoral researcher at Hasselt University and University of Antwerp, Belgium. Dr Koldo Casla is a senior lecturer in International Human Rights Law at Essex Law School and Director of Essex Human Rights Centre Clinic, UK.] The word solidarity is no stranger to the legal and political discourse surrounding human rights, and it features in various international...
[Ignacio Portela Giráldez is a Ph.D. student researching novel climate litigation pathways under the UN Convention on the Law of The Sea. He is a teacher of International and Political Studies at the University of New South Wales (Canberra) and lecturer in International Environmental Protection at the Open University of Catalonia.] The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has finally...
[Raelee Toh is an undergraduate law student at the Singapore Management University Yong Pung How School of Law] Introduction Although there are several conceptions of the clean hands doctrine (for example, ex turpi causa (“an action cannot arise from a dishonourable cause”), ex injuria jus non oritur (“illegal acts do not create law”) and ex delicto non orituractio (“an...
[Miguel Lemos is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Coimbra] On 28 February 2024, Ukraine’s Supreme Court decided that only persons who play a “decisive role” in an aggressive state policy and those “directing” aggressive military operations are “capable of committing the crime of aggression” (all references to the judgment of the Supreme Court can be...
[Raquel Vazquez Llorente is the Associate Director, Technology Threats and Opportunities, at WITNESS. Sarah Zarmsky is an Assistant Lecturer and PhD Candidate at the University of Essex Human Rights Centre. In 2023, she was a Visiting Scholar at the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. Daragh Murray is a Senior Lecturer in International Human...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. Calls for Papers ASIL International Criminal Law Interest Group Works-in-Progress Conference: The ASIL International Criminal Law Interest Group will be holding its annual Works-in-Progress Conference in person on Monday, June 24, 2024 at Boston University School of Law in Boston, Massachusetts. ...
[Yue Cao is a DPhil Law student at the University of Oxford. He holds an MPhil in Law and a Magister Juris (MJur) from the University of Oxford, and a Bachelor of Law (LLB) from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU).] On February 2, the ICJ delivered its Preliminary Objections Judgment on Genocide (Ukraine v. Russian Federation). (see general comments here...
[Dearbhla Minogue is a senior lawyer at the Global Legal Action Network and a consultant solicitor with Bindmans LLP. Leanna Burnard is a lawyer at the Global Legal Action Network and a consultant with Bindmans LLP.] The authors represent the World Uyghur Congress before the UK Court of Appeal. The commission of atrocities, including correctional forced labour, by the Chinese...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. Calls for Papers Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law, Volume 27 (2024): The theme of this year’s Call for Papers is “International Humanitarian Law Under Pressure”. Interested authors should send an abstract of a maximum of 500 words to the...
[Swati Singh Parmar is an Assistant Professor (International Law) at Dharmashastra National Law University, India. She has an interest in international legal theory and Critical International Law.] “Let Us All Agree to Die a Little”: TWAIL’s Unfulfilled Promise, published in the Harvard Journal of International Law on 11 April 2024 by Professor Naz Khatoon Modirzadeh, is bound to have the...
[Chuka Arinze-Onyia is a Nigeria-based lawyer with an avid interest in international criminal justice and other adjacent subjects] Introduction Race and nationality play critical roles in understanding and experiencing international criminal justice. While international justice may ultimately aim to address prohibited crimes committed anywhere in the world without regard to the status of the perpetrator or victim, in practice however,...
[Noam Kozlov is a research fellow and lecturer in the Faculty of Law and Criminology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He previously received a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and Philosophy and an LLB from the Hebrew University.] After six months of intensive fighting, the Israel-Gaza war is no more. While political forces – both in Israel and abroad –...
[Subash Jai Devaraj is a 2020 University of London LLB Graduate currently employed with the Malaysian Bar Council as a Law, Policy and Special Projects Officer. He is a Fellow at the Centre for International Law Research and Policy (CILRAP) as well as a volunteer at the Platform for Peace and Humanity.] Introduction With Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine...
A forthcoming symposium coordinated by Mohsen al Attar and Nciko wa Nciko African peoples and states have long stood in solidarity with the liberation struggle of Palestinians. Following each proclamation of independence across the continent, African leaders demanded the same for Palestine, a place that encapsulated anti-colonial resistance to Western (racial) imperialism. As Nelson Mandela powerfully declared: ‘our freedom is...
[Dr. Shea Elizabeth Esterling is a Senior Lecturer Above the Bar at the Faculty of Law at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. She is Co-Chair of the American Society of International Law Rights of Indigenous Peoples Interest Group (2021-24) and Chair of the Cultural Heritage and the Arts Interest Group (2024-27). She is the author of Indigenous Cultural Property and International...
[Nimer Sultany is a Reader in Public Law at SOAS University of London and the Editor-in-Chief of the Palestine Yearbook of International Law.] In a recent lecture at the Imperial War Museums, the prominent lawyer and author Philippe Sands makes several problematic and surprising claims concerning South Africa v. Israel, the genocide case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ)....
[Anvesh Jain is a third-year J.D. candidate at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law.] Last month, two events from different parts of the world signaled a worrisome erosion of one of the fundamental lineaments of international law. On April 5, after an escalating diplomatic feud, Ecuadorian police entered Mexico’s Quito embassy to apprehend former Vice President Jorge Glas. With...
[Ọláolúwa (Laolu) Òní is in the PhD program at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto and holds other law degrees from the University of Lagos and NYU School of Law.] [Disclaimer: This essay is excerpted from a longer research paper, still in progress, titled international Law, Language, and More, More, More Borders, which applies law and language methodology to comment...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. Calls for Papers Rosalyn Higgins Prize: The Law & Practice of International Courts and Tribunals now invites submissions for the 2024 Rosalyn Higgins Prize. The Rosalyn Higgins Prize is an annual prize which awards EUR 1.000 of Brill book vouchers and a...
[John Quigley is Professor Emeritus at the Moritz College of Law of The Ohio State University.] On April 18, the UN Security Council considered Palestine’s application for membership in the United Nations. When a vote was taken on a draft resolution to recommend Palestine’s admission, twelve states voted in favor, while two abstained. Only one state, the United States, a...
[Wouter Vandenhole is full professor of human rights and children’s rights at the Law and Development Research Group of the University of Antwerp’s law faculty.] What if we could get back to the drawing board in human rights law? What would be the most decisive game changer? For some, it may be adding new rights or reframing existing rights. For...
[Caroline Omari Lichuma is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg, where she researches in the broad area of BHR. She received her PhD (summa cum laude) from the Georg-August University of Göttingen.] Striding Towards Responsible Business Conduct in The Age of Due Diligence Laws Mandatory human rights due diligence (mHRDD) laws are in vogue. After the completion of...
[Gamze Erdem Türkelli is an assistant research professor in international law, human rights and sustainable development at the Law and Development Research Group, University of Antwerp, the principal investigator of the ERC Starting Grant 2023 funded GENESIS project and a member of the Academic Circle on the Right to Development of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Development.]...
[Sara L. Seck is the Yogis & Keddy Chair in Human Rights Law at the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University, where she is also the Director of the Marine & Environmental Law Institute.] The intertwined global ecological and social crises of today have implications for the framing of human rights obligations that cross borders. We are living in a...
[Ademola Oluborode Jegede is full professor of law, and the Interim Director of the Ismail Mahomed Centre for Human and Peoples’ Rights in the School of Law, University of Venda, South Africa. He is the initiator and Convening Editor of the African Journal of Climate Law & Justice, and an External Expert to the Working Group of Children Rights and...
[Charlotte E. Blattner is senior researcher and lecturer at the Institute for Public Law, University of Berne. She specializes in public international law and climate law, and is the author of Protecting Animals Within and Across Jurisdiction (OUP).] Introduction For some time now, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has been widely accused of its “erratic and unprincipled” case...
[Angela Müller is Executive Director at AlgorithmWatch CH and heads AlgorithmWatch’s international policy team. She holds a PhD in law and an MA in Political and Economic Philosophy.] Today, opportunities for states to affect human rights abroad abound: global phenomena like organized crime, global warming, or terrorism multiply the scope of individuals a state can and does affect—at home as...
[Elif Durmuş is postdoctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp in the Flemish inter-University (iBOF) project “Future-Proofing Human Rights: Developing Thicker Accountability” [grant number 42367], focusing on an inclusive reconceptualisation of duty and duty bearers in international human rights law through inspiration from other legal fields.] Why Would States and Others Have (Extraterritorial) Human Rights Obligations? The extraterritorial application of...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. Calls for Papers Cambridge International Law Journal: The Cambridge International Law Journal is now accepting submissions for its Volume 13(2), on the theme ‘The intersection of peace and sustainability in international law’. The deadline for submissions for this volume...
[Christopher Elliott is a war crimes researcher based in Canada. He has a Master of Anthropology from the Australian National University and a Doctor of Philosophy from King’s College London.] As the Israel-Hamas war drags through its sixth month, one topic of immense and continuing controversy is the use of AI tools by the IDF as part of its military...
[Rohit Gupta is a Fellow at the Centre for International Law Research and Policy and the Case Matrix Network. He is currently pursuing the LL.M. (International Law) at the Geneva Graduate Institute. The author would like to thank Prof. Djacoba Liva Tehindrazanarivelo whose lectures on ‘Participants in International Legal Processes’ greatly benefitted this piece.] 1. Introduction Debate as to the...
[Kudakwashe Zvikomborero Mapako is a Research Officer at the African Center for Science and International Security (AFRICSIS) in the Arms Control and Nonproliferation program.] Introduction Although nuclear weapons have only been used in warfare twice, approximately 13,080 are said to remain in our world today, and over 2,000 nuclear tests have been conducted to date. Disarmament is the best defense...
[Captain Peter S. Konchak is a Judge Advocate in the United States Army who is currently assigned to the Office of the Staff Judge Advocate for III Armored Corps and Fort Cavazos, and whose academic work is focused on matters of national security law and policy.] [The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not...
[Captain Peter S. Konchak is a Judge Advocate in the United States Army who is currently assigned to the Office of the Staff Judge Advocate for III Armored Corps and Fort Cavazos, and whose academic work is focused on matters of national security law and policy.] [The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not...
[Eduardo Cavalcanti de Mello Filho is a Research Associate (Ocean Law and Policy) at the Centre for International Law, National University of Singapore] The Context Between 22 November and 4 December 2023, Greenpeace launched high seas protests against the Danish-flagged MV Coco, involved in deep seabed exploration and operated by Nauru Ocean Resources Inc (NORI). Sponsored by Nauru, NORI was...
[Britta Redwood is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Howard University School of Law, where she serves as the Interim Director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center and lead a legal clinic focused on reparatory justice. She is also the founder of the Historical Redress Network.] Recently, a poll conducted in Britain revealed that six in ten people believe that the...
[The interview was conducted by Klaudia Klonowska, a Ph.D. Candidate in International Law at the Asser Institute and the University of Amsterdam. Klaudia is a member of the research project Designing International Law and Ethics into Military Artificial Intelligence (DILEMA) led by Dr. Berenice Boutin.] The Annual Lecture held at the Peace Palace is a long-standing tradition of the Asser Institute in The...
[Shadi Sadr was a member of the panel at the International People’s Tribunals on Indonesia, Myanmar, and China. She is also a co-founder and director of Justice for Iran, and a PhD candidate at Leiden University.] It is inconceivable, in the post-Nuremberg world, for those affected by atrocities to find no avenue for justice. Yet, many atrocities have been neglected...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. Calls for Papers Canadian Yearbook of International Law Special Issue: The Canadian Yearbook of International is seeking article abstracts for an upcoming special issue on “Canada before International Courts and Tribunals”. Prospective authors are invited to submit an abstract...
Dr. Tal Mimran is an associate professor at the Zefat Academic College, and the Academic Coordinator of the International Law Forum of the Hebrew University. He is also a fellow at the Federmann Cyber Security Research Center in the Law Faculty of the Hebrew University, and the head of a research program on digital human rights at Tachlith Institute. Gal...
[Andrew Forde is an Adjunct Lecturer at the Irish Centre for Human Rights.] On 16 April 2024, Kosovo passed a major decision gate in its path towards membership of the Council of Europe (CoE) when the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) recommended that it be invited to become a member state with a very strong majority of...
[Chief Charles A. Taku is great grandson of Asunganyi, King of the Bangwa, Counsel before International Courts and Tribunals, and Former President of the International Criminal Court Bar Association] ‘To validate one’s heritage, to explore one’s culture, to examine thoroughly those institutions which have persisted through centuries, is perhaps the first step in a peoples’ search for independence and in...
[Sasha Merigot is a Master’s Student in Political Science at Sciences Po Paris and a graduate from Leiden University College The Hague, winning the Thesis of Merit award with the thesis on Reproducing and Re-Constructing National Identity at the Musée du Quai Branly Jacques Chirac] A key theme of Confronting Colonial Objects is the complicity of collectors, museums and racial...
[Dr Emery Patrick Effiboley is Museologist and Art Historian, and Head of the Department of History and Archaeology at the University of Abomey-Calavi (Republic of Benin). He was Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for the Creative Arts of Africa at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa.] Confronting Colonial Objects argues that ‘distancing, discursive silencing and erasure are...
In recent days, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva has generated much controversy by declaring that, should Russian President, Vladimir Putin, visit the G20 Meeting in Brazil in 2024, he would not be arrested, in defiance of the existing International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrant against him. Eventually, Lula backtracked, stating the arrest was not up to him, but...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com! Calls for Papers Current Research on the Human Right to Science: The Chair for Public International and European Law at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) is organizing a doctoral colloquium on “Current Research on the Human Right to Science”,...
[Shamik Datta is an undergraduate student at NALSAR University of Law (India). He is particularly interested in investment treaty arbitration, commercial law and public international law.] In recent years, the importance of the investor’s corporate social responsibility (‘CSR’) and environmental obligations has gained wide prominence in international investment law. This has resulted in several states explicitly including provisions mandating compliance...
[Fan Huang is an LLM candidate in Public International Law at Leiden University, the Netherlands.] 1. Introduction On 8 June, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously approved the “Ending China’s Developing Nation Status Act”. Likewise, the US House of Representatives has recently passed an act “cancelling” China’s status as a developing country, with a stunning 415-0 vote. In response,...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com! Calls for Papers Symposium on International Law and Maldives Navigating Geopolitics, Trade and Sovereignty: The Faculty of Shariah and Law, Villa College, Maldives is delighted to announce the “Symposium on International Law and Maldives: Navigating Geopolitics, Trade and Sovereignty,” scheduled...
[Martin Baumgartner is a PhD candidate and a Teaching and Research Assistant at the University of Vienna] As an early career researcher, a considerable amount of my time in the last few years has been spent creating and going over references. While this is sometimes a strenuous task, what most puzzled me was the difficulty to find the correct references...
[Kiran Mohandas Menon (@KiranMMenon) is Senior Officer at the International Nuremberg Principles Academy and a Hardiman Doctoral Researcher at the Irish Centre for Human Rights. Views reflected are his own.] The author would like to thank Professor Shane Darcy and Professor Dirk Moses for their very helpful reviews of an earlier draft of this article. International criminal justice is often...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com! Calls for Papers Tangible and Intangible Cultural Heritage through Past, Present and Future: 18-19 January 2024, Bologna, Italy. The third edition of the International Symposium on Heritage in War and Peace will be held under the following theme: “Tangible...
[Nick Leddy is Head of Litigation at Legal Action Worldwide, and a former Trial Lawyer for the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, where he worked, inter alia, on the situation in Myanmar/Bangladesh] Six years ago, in August 2017, the Myanmar military began a deadly operation in Rakhine State targeting the Rohingya group. This “Clearance Operation” caused...
[Gerry Simpson is Chair in Public International Law at the LSE and is currently co-writing (with Matt Craven and Sundhya Pahuja) Rival World-Makers: The International Laws of the Cold War, and a short memoirish book entitled The Atomics: My Nuclear Family at the End of the Earth] I’ve been speaking to audiences recently about writing a book. How do you end? How bad...
[Ruth Buchanan is Professor of Law at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University] “Words in the right order make us feel differently about the world.” (p. 19) I will begin this review with a confession—that is it late. Very late. There are reasons for its lateness of course—some mundane (family caregiving obligations, etc), others perhaps more telling. As a long- time supervisor...
[Ankit Malhotra is reading his LLM at SOAS as the Felix Scholar and is the co-editor of the recently published book “Reimagining the International Legal Order.”] It is always a pleasure and honour to read the work of Professor Gerry Simpson. His new magnum opus, “The Sentimental Life of International Law” is no exception. That is because his vivid portrait...
[Simon Stern teaches law and English at the University of Toronto. He is a co-editor of The New Rambler Review and Critical Analysis of Law. With Robert Spoo, he is editor of the Law and Literature series published by OUP. His current research focuses on the history and theory of legal fictions, and the history of cross-examination.] No sooner has...
[Isobel Roele is a Reader in the Department of Law at Queen Mary University of London, and the author of Articulating Security: The United Nations and Its Infra-Law (CUP, 2022)] The Sentimental Life of International Law makes a radical proposal: that we think of ourselves as living our lives when we do international law. The book invites readers to imagine a world...
Evropeyska Pravda is reporting that, although clearly not its first choice, Ukraine would be willing to accept an internationalized tribunal for the crime of aggression as long as it is based in another state’s judicial system. Here are the relevant paragraphs, quoting the Deputy Head of the Office of the President: Ukraine decided on these concessions, Andriy Smirnov admitted for...
[Zinaida Miller is Professor of Law & International Affairs at Northeastern University.] In his wide-ranging exploration, Gerry Simpson demonstrates the fundamental tensions experienced within international law and by international lawyers as they simultaneously embrace and distance themselves from the individuals, sites, histories, modes of violence, and narratives at the center of their work. To approach international law through the sentimental, Simpson...
[Carl Landauer taught history at Yale, Stanford, and McGill Universities and international legal theory at UC Berkeley School of Law.] Gerry Simpson, in the final chapter of The Sentimental Life of International Law, urges international lawyers to follow the Voltairean advice, “Il faut cultiver notre jardin,” which Simpson means both figuratively and literally. Among the various garden images that Simpson...
[Ruth Buchanan is Professor of Law at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University.] I was thrilled to be invited to this symposium on Gerry Simpson’s The Sentimental Life of International Law (2022). My thrill soon turned to Angst. How to engage with a book like this, to live up to its dazzlingly fluid and distinctive style, its ‘mixology-of-several-disciplines-on-ice’ methodology, and...
I am delighted to announce that this week Opinio Juris will be hosting a symposium on Gerry Simpson‘s wonderful new book “The Sentimental Life of International Law.” Here is Oxford University Press’s description: The Sentimental Life of International Law is about our age-old longing for a decent international society and the ways of seeing, being, and speaking that might help us...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com! Calls for Papers Symposium on Pop Culture & International Law: Opinio Juris will be holding its third annual Symposium on Pop Culture & International Law during the week of 30 October 2023. Pitches are due via email by this...
[Keshav Somani is as an Associate with the Dispute Resolution team of S&R Associates, New Delhi] Introduction The International Court of Justice on July 13, 2023, delivered its judgment in the case concerning Question of the Delimitation of the Continental Shelf between Nicaragua and Colombia beyond 200 Nautical Miles from the Nicaraguan Coast (Nicaragua v. Colombia). The Court concluded by...
[Stephen Lamony is an international lawyer] This essay benefited from comments by the Coordinator of the African States Parties to the ICC in New York, Mr Marvin Ikondere. Introduction In July 2010, International Criminal Court (ICC) President Judge Sang-Hyun Song and African Union (AU) Commission Chairperson Jean Ping met and agreed to establish a Liaison Office to promote dialogue, information...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com! Calls for Papers Young Scholar’s Workshop – Canadian Yearbook of International Law & International Law Group, University of Ottawa: The Canadian Yearbook of International Law, Canada’s leading peer-reviewed international legal journal, will host a Young Scholar’s Workshop on November...
[Barrie Sander (@Barrie_Sander) is Assistant Professor of International Justice at Leiden University – Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs] Reflecting on the narrative nature of law, James Boyd White famously observed how ‘[t]he text does not conclude the difficulties of the real world, but begins a process, a process of its own interpretation. This is the process by which the law...
[Marina Veličković is a Lecturer at the University of Kent, UK. In her research she explores the role of international law in (re)producing structures of violence in post-conflict settings.] Everyone has a moment of sheer panic during their PhD journey (or a few moments if your anxiety levels are that of an average academic) when they come across the thesis/article/book...
[Michelle Burgis-Kasthala is a Senior Lecturer in Public International Law, University of Edinburgh] It seems that history is repeating itself. Yet again Jenin refugee camp is under attack by Israel’s occupying forces. As in 2002 when the International Criminal Court (ICC) began sitting, the justification for this recent resort to lethal force centres on alleged Palestinian militant activity and the...
It’s back! The editorial team at Opinio Juris is pleased to announce the call for papers for our Third Annual Symposium on Pop Culture and International Law. We welcome pitches of up to 300 words on any topic relating to international law and popular culture (film, tv, books, video games, or more–get creative!). To be considered, please submit your pitch...
[Alonso Gurmendi Dunkelberg is a Departmental Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Oxford, in association with Somerville College, as well as Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.] Doing Justice to History is an amazing book and a fascinating read, particularly for those of us who, like me, enjoy studying the connections between international law and...
[Dr. Cheah W.L. is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore.] In his excellent and compelling monograph, Barrie Sander argues that the historical narratives captured in international criminal judgments amount to “forms of legitimation” by “recognizing and foregrounding particular aspects and perspectives of mass atrocity situations” while “marginalising and excluding others from view”. His book...
[Kirsten J. Fisher is Associate Professor of Political Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada.] Barrie Sander’s Doing Justice to History: Confronting the Past in International Criminal Courts is a significant piece of work on the way history is constructed through contestation in courtrooms and the judgements rendered from those proceedings. While there is much to say about this work,...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com! Featured Announcement BIICL Short Courses – Autumn 2023: The British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) is delighted to launch its programme of training courses for 2023. In autumn 2023, we will be offering a number a range...
[Mariana Gkliati is an Assistant Professor at Tilburg University. Danai Angeli is an Assistant Professor at Biklent University. Elizabeth Mavropoulou is a Lecturer at the University of Westminster. Niovi Vavoula is an Associate Professor at the Queen Mary University of London.] This blogpost was released on 11 July as an open letter to Greek and EU authorities, undersigned by 350...
[Dr Lena Holzer (she/her) is a Lecturer in Law at Goldsmiths, University of London, and focuses in her research on gender justice, human rights and sports] The Caster Semenya case is undoubtedly the most famous international sports law case. It has attracted the attention of human rights lawyers, gender studies experts, activists and lay persons, next to sport lawyers. The...
[Priya Pillai is an international lawyer, heads the Asia Justice Coalition secretariat and is a contributing editor at Opinio Juris.] She participated in the MLAT negotiations in Ljubljana, Slovenia on behalf of the Asia Justice Coalition. All views are personal. The negotiations over two weeks in Ljubljana, Slovenia in May this year for the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) were...
[Jennifer Keene-McCann is Senior Law and Policy Advisor with the Asia Justice Coalition secretariat. She attended the MLA Diplomatic Conference in Ljubljana.] Throughout the diplomatic negotiations on the newly adopted Ljubljana – The Hague Convention, delegates supported their arguments either for or against changes to the draft by stating they hoped for the ‘widest adoption possible’. As the final version...
[Frederika Schweighoferova is the Director of Parliamentarians for Global Action’s (PGA) International Law and Human Rights Program] The author participated in the negotiations of the Ljubljana-The Hague Convention in May 2023 on behalf of PGA. Introduction The long-awaited adoption of the Mutual Legal Assistance Convention (The Ljubljana – The Hague Convention on International Cooperation in the Investigation and Prosecution of Genocide,...
[Danaé van der Straten Ponthoz is the Head of Advocacy and Policy at the Global Survivors Fund. The views in this post are expressed in the author’s personal capacity. Leanna Burnard was a Legal Advisor at REDRESS during the MLA negotiations. She is now a lawyer with the Global Legal Action Network.] Introduction 26 May 2023 was a historical day...
[Julie Bardèche is a French lawyer and a legal advisor at REDRESS, an NGO that pursues legal claims on behalf of survivors of torture in the UK and around the world to obtain justice and reparation for the violation of their human rights.] The author represented REDRESS at the Diplomatic Conference that led to the adoption of the Ljubljana-The Hague...
[Ezéchiel Amani Cirimwami is a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for Procedural Law. He holds a joint PhD in International Criminal Law from the Catholic University of Louvain (UCLouvain) and the Free University of Brussels (VUB).] The author attended the Ljubljana Diplomatic Conference as a DRC delegate and was elected by the Conference as a member of...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com! Calls for Papers Current Issues in Armed Conflicts Conference: The Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights and the Conflict and Crisis Hub at the University of Essex are pleased to announce a new format for their...
[Tomas Hamilton is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Amsterdam] In parallel proceedings in Paris and New York, the French corporation Lafarge SA (‘Lafarge’) has recently faced allegations surrounding its dealings with terrorist groups Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (‘ISIL’) and Al-Nusra Front (‘ANF’). In the context of Lafarge’s cement operations during...
[Bruno Biazatti is a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law and a PhD candidate at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil.] The author attended the Ljubljana Diplomatic Conference and the observations contained here reflect his personal notes taken during the negotiations. The Ljubljana – The Hague Convention on International Cooperation in...
[Pamela Capizzi is the Head of Pool of Legal Expertise at TRIAL International. Hugo Relva is Legal Adviser for Amnesty International (International Secretariat) at the International Justice Team.] Pamela and Hugo participated in the negotiations of the Ljubljana-The Hague Convention in May 2023 on behalf of TRIAL International and Amnesty International, respectively. On 26 May 2023, the Ljubljana-The Hague Convention on International Cooperation...
[Raquel Saavedra is an international human rights attorney specializing in accountability for atrocity crimes and currently serves as an International Legal Adviser for the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) in the Asia-Pacific region. Lina Baddour is an attorney specializing in international criminal and human rights law and policy. She represents clients in international proceedings and serves as a Senior Legal Advisor...
[Juana Acosta-López is an Associate Professor at Universidad de La Sabana (Colombia).] This post has been previously published in Spanish on the Agenda Estado de Derecho blog Recently, a press release titled “IACHR warns against regressive measures in the field of health that impact trans and intersex youth in the United States of America” was issued. This statement is published...
[Vaios Koutroulis is a Professor of Public International Law at the Faculty of Law and Criminology, Université libre de Bruxelles] Vaios Koutroulis was a member of the Belgian delegation participating in the negotiations of the Convention and acted as the coordinator of working group 1 at the Ljubljana conference, where the Convention was negotiated and adopted. The views in this...
[Priya Pillai is an international lawyer, heads the Asia Justice Coalition secretariat and is a contributing editor at Opinio Juris.] On 26 May 2023, the Ljubljana – The Hague Convention on International Cooperation in the Investigation and Prosecution of the Crime of Genocide, Crimes against Humanity, War Crimes, and other International Crimes (MLA Treaty) was adopted. Led by a ‘Core Group’ of...
[Viola Santini is an MA student in International Law at the Geneva Graduate Institute. She has actively participated in multiple Human Rights Council sessions, working alongside the Permanent Mission of Afghanistan to UNOG and the Advocacy team of Human Rights Watch. Currently, she is interning with the Rule of Law, Human Rights, and Security team at UNDP, and working as a research...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com! Calls for Papers Misappropriation and Human Rights Implosion Symposium: The Academy for European Human Rights Protection of the University of Cologne, Germany, in collaboration with the Volkswagen Foundation, organises the symposium ‘Misappropriation and Human Rights Implosion’, which will take...
[Waleed Mahmoud Elfarrs, PhD Candidate in international law at Ghent University, is a legal expert consulting on armed conflict in the context of the MENA region.] [Mona Ghyoot is a Master in Laws student at Ghent University, specializing in public international law and writing a master’s thesis on universal jurisdiction.] 1. Introduction On 12 May 2023, the French Court of...
[Yaroslav Halieiev is a second-year Master’s student at the University of Tartu and a legal researcher on the Platform for Peace and Humanity.] The Regulation of Same-Sex Marriages in Ukraine: General Remarks The Case of Maymulakhin and Markiv v. Ukraine has extreme significance for Ukranian legislature and most likely will spark more fruitful (hopefully) discussion in the nearest future. Meanwhile,...
Photograph: Karla Marshall, ‘Helmand River with the Boghra Irrigation Canal (Nahr-e Bughra) in the middle distance and the town of Gereshk (Grishk) in the far distance, Helmand Province.’ (2011) [Laurence Teillet is a PhD Candidate at Nottingham Law School, focusing on environmental activists prosecutions and convictions for piracy. With LLMs in International and Comparative Environmental Law, and Natural Resources Law,...
[Veronica Bellintani is an international law expert and Senior Legal Officer at the Syrian Legal Development Programme.] [Mouhanad Sharabati is a Syrian lawyer and Legal Officer at the Syrian Legal Development Programme.] On June 8, 2023, Canada and the Netherlands (the applicants) jointly filed an application at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to initiate proceedings in their names against...
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com! Calls for Papers SLADI Conference 2023 – “Latin American International Law”: SLADI invites you to submit proposals for papers or panels addressing the theme of their biennial conference on “Latin American International Law”, which will take place between 29 November...
We regret to inform our readers that we have had to remove a post entitled “Legality of Extraterritorial Coercive Economic Measures Taken Against Russia from the Lens of International Trade Law” and published on our site in September 2022. It has recently come to our attention (and has been conceded by the author submitting that piece) that the post was...
[Dr. Luigi Daniele is a Senior Lecturer at Nottingham Law School, NTU.] This interview is being cross-posted by Opinio Juris, the Nottingham Law School Climate Justice Hub, and the Queen Mary School of Law Centre for Climate Crime and Justice. I had the great honor and special pleasure of discussing ecocide and climate justice with Professor Richard Falk, Albert G....
To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com! Calls for Papers Call for Contributions ICCA 2024 Hong Kong Congress: ICCA is inviting expressions of interest from potential speakers for its next Congress taking place in Hong Kong (5 – 8 May 2024). The theme of the Congress is “International Arbitration: A...
[León Castellanos-Jankiewicz and Carl Emilio Lewis are Researchers at the Asser Institute. Melanie Schneider is a Research Intern at the Asser Institute.] Michael Fakhri, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food since 2020, is a professor at the University of Oregon School of Law where he teaches courses on human rights, food law, development, and commercial law. He...
[León Castellanos-Jankiewicz and Carl Emilio Lewis are Researchers at the Asser Institute. Melanie Schneider is a Research Intern at the Asser Institute.] Michael Fakhri, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food since 2020, is a professor at the University of Oregon School of Law where he teaches courses on human rights, food law, development, and commercial law. He...
On June 24, 2023, members of the Wagner mercenary group staged an armed revolt against Russian President Vladimir Putin and began an advance on Moscow that ended suddenly, after intervention and mediation by Belarusian President Lukashenko, on the same day. In this post, I present, analyse and systematise the statements and reactions of fifty-nine states. Before we start, let me...
Calls for Papers The African Renaissance in the Age of Globalization: What Role for International Investment Law?: The Department of Political Science of the University of Padua is organizing the international conference: The African Renaissance in the Age of Globalization: What Role for International Investment Law? The conference will be held on November 10-11, 2023. The deadline for submitting abstracts is July 14,...
[Pallavi Arora is a Legal Consultant (at the level of Assistant Professor) at the Centre for WTO Studies, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade in New Delhi. She advises India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry on matters related to international trade and investment law.] Recently, the European Commission (hereinafter “Commission”) tabled its new pharmaceutical strategy aimed at balancing access and innovation...
[Emilia Truluck is a Legal Fellow at REDRESS, focusing on justice and accountability mechanisms in North Africa.] Earlier this month the victims’ legal representative presented her opening statements in the ground-breaking trial at the International Criminal Court against former Janjaweed commander Ali Muhammad Ali Abd Al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb. Ali Kushayb is charged with crimes against humanity and...
[Kurt Mundorff is author of A Cultural Interpretation of the Genocide Convention and is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the University of Tennessee Knoxville Department of Political Science.] As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine moved westward, so too did Russian officials who began removing Ukrainian children and transferring them to Russia, often parading the children on television as proof of their success...
Calls for Papers 100 Years of Research in Comparative Public Law and International Law – Call for Focus Sections and Papers: In 2024, the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg (MPIL), will celebrate its 100th anniversary. Over the years, the Institute’s research has tackled foundational issues of public international law, European Union law as well...
[Moritz Koenig obtained his PhD in law from SOAS, University of London and is currently working on a research project on the history of Dutch colonial law schools.] It has often been argued that international law and international legal scholarship are incapable of reforming themselves. David Kennedy has argued that supposed renewal in legal argument is usually simply a recycling...
[Sara (Meg) Davis is Professor of Digital Health and Rights at University of Warwick and an Associated Researcher at the Geneva Graduate Institute.] In drafting her report to the UN Human Rights Council, the Special Rapporteur drew in part on research conducted by a consultant, Patty Skuster, who the author supervised at the Geneva Graduate institute. At a critical moment...
[The Sex Worker Inclusive Feminist Alliance (SWIFA) was formed as part of a long-term strategy of building alliances across the sex workers’ rights and women’s rights movements to advance the acceptance of sex workers’ rights within the women’s movement and the core group of organisations in the alliance include: Amnesty International – International Secretariat, CREA, FEMNET, Global Alliance Against Traffic...
On the morning of June 6th, 2023, Ukraine accused Russia of destroying the Kakhovka Dam in the Dnieper River. A few hours later, during the afternoon on the same day, Russia blamed Ukraine for the destruction. Since then, I searched and collected statements by forty-nine other states addressing the destruction. This post analyses and systematises these forty-nine reactions in order...
[Matthew Gillett is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at the University of Essex Law School and a United Nations Special Mandate holder (Vice-Chair of Working Group on Arbitrary Detention), who previously prosecuted cases before the international courts. The views herein are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect those of any other person or organization. The author...
[Matthew Gillett is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at the University of Essex Law School and a United Nations Special Mandate holder (Vice-Chair of Working Group on Arbitrary Detention), who previously prosecuted cases before the international courts. The views herein are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect those of any other person or organization. The author...
[Dylan Jesse Andrian studies law at Universitas Gadjah Mada and Maastricht University and has drafted legal opinions for Amnesty International and the Indonesian National Human Rights Commission (KOMNAS HAM). He is an associate editor at Maastricht University’s student law journal and has contributed to the Annotated Leading Cases of International Criminal Tribunals.] The International Court of Justice’s (“ICJ”) 2023 Preliminary...
Calls for Papers ICCA 2024 Hong Kong Congress: ICCA is inviting expressions of interest from potential speakers for its next Congress taking place in Hong Kong (5 – 8 May 2024). The theme of the Congress is “International Arbitration: A Human Endeavour”. The Programme Committee for is seeking expressions of interest on the following sub-themes: (i) The Human Impact and Influence on Arbitration (e.g. the...
[Dr Claire Lougarre is a Lecturer in Law at Ulster University, School of Law. Her primary research expertise lies at the intersection of human rights law and health, with a particular interest in the right to health, as well as in sexual and reproductive health & rights.] Introduction According to Article 3(5) of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), the...
[Stephen A. Lamony is an international lawyer.] Last March, the Pre-Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin. The arrest warrant has sparked a worldwide discussion on international cooperation with the ICC; mainly whether South Africa will arrest Putin if he visits the country for the 15th BRICS Summit....
If you have any events or announcements you would like included with next week’s post, please submit a brief paragraph and link to the call/event to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com! Calls for Papers Groningen Journal of International Law: The Groningen Journal of International Law is now calling for open papers on any topic within the field of international law. The Editorial Board will...
Few emotions rival the existential horror a PhD candidate experiences when asked to justify their topic’s relevance to the discipline. Having adopted “Mass Media and International Law” as my banner, I’ve received a fair share of queries about “where’s the law”. Though the frequency of these challenges has decreased with our discipline’s recent gestures towards multi-disciplinarity, their persistence reflects the...
[Aryan Tulsyan is a student of Jindal Global Law School and is passionate about Public International Law, International Trade Law and International Investment Law.] The International Court of Justice (“ICJ”), in its recent decision of Certain Iranian Assets (Merits) 2023 has resurrected the Clean Hands doctrine, muddying the grounds for its applicability at the merits stages of disputes presented before...
Calls for Papers ASCOMARE Yearbook on the Law of the Sea – Volume 3 (Maritime Security, New Technology and Ethics): The ‘Associazione di Consulenza in Diritto del Mare’ (ASCOMARE) is pleased to launch the call for papers for the Third Volume of its Yearbook series on the Law of the Sea. This Volume will focus on the regulatory, legal, and ethical...
[Melanie O’Brien is Associate Professor of International Law at the University of Western Australia and President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.] This post is about one of the most talked about trials in Australian legal history: a former soldier suing the media for defamation, for publishing allegations that he committed war crimes. During the trial a plethora of evidence...
[Sami Jaber is a Public International Law LLM student at Leiden University whose thesis explores the forgotten right to the continuous improvement of living standards and its potential as a signal of human rights violations.] Attempts to enshrine the right to development have been ongoing for over 40 years. While a lack of sufficient political will from developed nations is...
[Nina Bries Silva is a former human rights lawyer and PhD candidate in law at the European University Institute (EUI) focusing on the Colombian transitional justice process and indigenous ontologies.] On March 8, 2023, in Bogotá, the Colombian Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) held a press conference unveiling its indictment in the macro-case 05. It charged 10 former commanders of...
[Alexander Talel is an American attorney. He previously served as law clerk to Judge Jon O. Newman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and to Judge Sidney H. Stein of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.] Hoda Muthana of Hackensack, New Jersey joined ISIS when she was 19. She wants to come...
[Dr. Pouria Askary is an Associate Professor of International Law at Allameh Tabataba’i University (ATU).] This post is based on a presentation delivered in a webinar organized by AALCO on 6 April 2023. Since the very beginning, the work of the International Law Commission (ILC) on the topic of general principles of law has surprised many States as well as...
Featured Announcement: Geneva Human Rights Platform’s Training Courses at the Geneva Academy The Geneva Human Rights Platform (GHRP) Training Hub, a project of the Geneva Academy, organizes training courses – in Geneva and online – on the work of United Nations (UN) human rights mechanisms and on specific human rights issues like the protection of human rights and the environment...
[Dr Koldo Casla (Twitter: @koldo_casla) is a Lecturer in International Human Rights Law at Essex Law School and Director of Essex Human Rights Centre Clinic, UK.] In the context of the current food and energy crisis, and the rising cost of living, it is essential to tackle the right to property directly, defining its content and shape in line with...
[Wubeshet Tiruneh holds a Ph.D. in International Law from the Geneva Graduate Institute, Geneva, Switzerland.] It has been six months since the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF) – the two main parties to the armed conflict in Ethiopia – signed an agreement on permanent cessation of hostilities.The parties, among others, agreed on permanent cessation of hostilities,...
[Carlos Lusverti is the Latin America Legal advisor with the International Commission of Jurists] The principle of presumption of innocence in criminal cases is core to the rule of law. It is also a universally recognized general principle of law, incorporated into general international human rights treaties, the Venezuelan Constitution and domestic law as part of the Criminal Proceedings Code....
[Panagiota Kotzamani is a post-doctoral researcher on corporate obligations and liability for international crimes and human rights violations at the Centre for Law, Sustainability and Justice (CLS&J), at the Department of Law, University of Southern Denmark (SDU).] The adoption of a Directive on the expected human rights due diligence (HRDD) standards for EU and EU-active corporations has been in the...
Calls for Papers Countering terrorism and violent extremism in the public interest: The Asser Institute is hosting this hybrid workshop on 31 October and 1 November 2023 in The Hague and online. The deadline for 500 word abstract submissions is 16 June 2023. For more information, click here. Events Russian Aggression, the War in Ukraine and the Future of International...
[Oscar Genaro Macias Betancourt is the Former Director of Restitutions at the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a Specialist in International Law on Cultural Property.] Introduction There are multiple angles to approach the complex debate around the restitution of cultural property to their countries of origin. From the legal perspective, the branches of civil, criminal, and international law offer...
[Dr. Paul R. Williams is the Founder of the Public International Law & Policy Group (PILPG), the Rebecca I. Grazier Professor in Law and International Relations at American University, and a world-renowned peace negotiation lawyer who has assisted over two dozen parties in major international peace negotiations.] [Alexandra Koch is Co-Chair of the Policy Planning Initiative at the Public International...
Ambassador Rein Tammsaar, Estonia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, has a new post at Just Security arguing in favour of a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression. He says many things I agree with, others that I don’t. In this post, I want to address what the Ambassador says about the prospect of the General Assembly endorsing a...
[Dr Christine Schwöbel-Patel is Reader at Warwick Law School and Co-Director of the Centre for Critical Legal Studies; she is currently based at the Humboldt University in Berlin as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow.] Dear Asad, Filip, and Mark, I’ll begin this letter, as so many letters begin, by apologising for its tardiness. Since you Mark and Asad sent your...
[Filip Strandberg Hassellind is a doctoral candidate in International Law at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.] In Marketing Global Justice: The Political Economy of International Criminal Law, Christine Schwöbel-Patel argues that “a global elite benefit from marketized global justice whilst those who tend to be the ‘faces’ of global injustice – particularly victims of conflict – are instrumentalized and ultimately...
[Dr Asad Kiyani is an Assistant Professor at the University of Victoria Faculty of Law (Canada), and a recipient of the Antonio Cassese Prize for International Criminal Law Studies, as well as the Hessel Yntema Prize for Comparative Law.] Introduction In her intriguing analysis of the marketization of global justice, Christine Schwöbel-Patel offers an expansive examination of how international criminal...
[Mark A. Drumbl is Class of 1975 Alumni Professor of Law and Director, Transnational Law Institute, Washington and Lee University.] Dear Christine, I really liked engaging with your fabulous book, Marketing Global Justice. It’s cleverly edgy and full of insights. You unwind international criminal justice as a transnational business venture. As with all commodity trading and product hawking, well, advertising...
Calls for Papers DILEMA 2023 Conference: On 12–13 October 2023, the DILEMA Project is organising a conference around the complex and interdisciplinary issues raised by military applications of artificial intelligence (AI). The DILEMA conference will offer a broad platform to engage in an interdisciplinary dialogue around both theoretical and practical questions related to military AI, and feature some of the latest research...
[Ikramuddin Kamil holds an LL.M and MPhil in International Law from South Asian University. He currently serves as an Assistant Professor at Bakhtar University.] Uzbekistan has recently requested to hold talks with Afghanistan about managing the use of the Amu Darya and, in particular, it proposed technical assistance for the construction of the Qosh Tepeh Canal. Uzbekistan, though, did not...
[Alison Smith is the International Justice Director for No Peace Without Justice. She has worked and published on the rights of the child in accountability processes for twenty years, and participated in the consultations leading to the adoption of the OTP Children’s Policy.] It has been 20 years since the launch of “International Criminal Justice and Children” by UNICEF’s Innocenti...
Calls for Papers Workshop – ‘Frames of European Human Rights’: The Hertie School Centre for Fundamental Rights invites abstract submissions on “Frames of European Human Rights: How are climate change, migration, and authoritarianism framed within the Council of Europe?”. Papers will be presented at a research workshop on 16-17 November 2023 at the Hertie School in Berlin. The workshop will reflect critically on frames,...
[Dr Richard Mackenzie-Gray Scott is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights and St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. He is the author of State Responsibility for Non-State Actors: Past, Present and Prospects for the Future (2022).] Whatever the motivations for doing so, such as providing authority for further sanctions, there may come a point where the relationship...
[Nandini Shinde is a Catalyst for Change Fellow at Migration and Asylum Project, an initiative of the Ara Trust, where she works as a legal representative for refugees in their refugee status determination. She has a background in international criminal and humanitarian law. Radhika Goyal is a Policy Associate with Accountability Counsel where she advocates for international financial institutions to...
[Nurlan Mustafayev is a legal counsel on international law and an instructor on public international law.] One of the hot points of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict in 2022-2023 is the ongoing crisis in the “Lachin Corridor” in Azerbaijan that redrew the international community’s attention to the conflict. As part of the Trilateral Statement signed in November 2020, an armistice agreement that ended...
[Andrew Clapham is Professor of International Law at the Geneva Graduate Institute and the author of “Human Rights: A Very Short Introduction and War“.] The arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova have generated a lot of talk about the absence of any obligation on Russia to comply due to...
[Dr. Elisabeth Hoffberger-Pippanis associate at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) with a research focus on biological and chemical weapons within the CBWNet Project as well as AI-enabled technology in the military domain. Prior to joining PRIF, she was researcher and head of project of “iPRAW”, the International Panel on the Regulation of Autonomous Weapons, a project funded by the...
[Ms Frances Anggadi (Twitter: @francesanggadi) is a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney Law School, co-chair of the Oceans and International Environmental Law Interest Group of the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law, and researcher at the University of Sydney Marine Studies Institute. Frances’ research interests include maritime zones and sea-level rise and the importance of State...
Calls for Papers Utrecht University Workshop – How to Find the Brakes on A Slippery Slope?: When a country enters a phase of rule of law backsliding, it often finds itself on a slippery slope that seems to lead inexorably to a full-blown rule of law crisis. The Montaigne Centre for Rule of Law and Administration of Justice and the...
[Sergey Sayapin is Professor at KIMEP University´s School of Law (Almaty, Kazakhstan). Rustam Atadjanov is Associate Professor and Associate Dean at KIMEP University´s School of Law (Almaty, Kazakhstan). Nicolás Zambrana-Tevar is Associate Professor at KIMEP University´s School of Law (Almaty, Kazakhstan). Noëlle Quénivet is Professor at Bristol Law School, University of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom. Gerhard Kemp...
[Dr. Karen Hulme is Professor at Essex Law School.] As conceptualised by the editors and authors, threats to international peace and security are numerous and not necessarily military in nature. In relation to the environment, there is a clear cycle of conflict demonstrated by the exploitation of, and damage to, the natural environment caused in conflict. The environmental peacebuilding agenda,...
[Jennifer Trahan is a Clinical Professor at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs and Director of their Concentration in International Law and Human Rights. She serves as Convenor of the Global Institute for the Prevention of Aggression where Annegret Hartig is Program Manager, and Sergey Sayapin is on the Council of Advisors.] The editors, Sergey Sayapin, Rustam Atadjanov, Umesh Kadam, Gerhard...
[Lindsay Freeman is the Director of the Technology, Law and Policy Program at the Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley School of Law. Amanda Ghahremani is a lawyer specializing in international criminal law and a Research Fellow at the Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley School of Law. Sophie Lombardo is a second year law student at UC Berkeley School of Law...
[Prof. Dr. Manoj Kumar Sinha is Director at the Indian Law Institute, New Delhi, India.] The present piece undertakes a review of the contribution by Anicée Van Engeland in the recently published research handbook on International Conflict and Security Law. The research handbook is a comprehensive compilation of articles pertaining to diverse themes around international security. As has been noted...
[Kristin Henrard is Professor of International Law at the Brussels School of Governance, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where she co-directs the Fundamental Rights Centre. The views expressed in this paper are the author’s alone.] A. Introduction When identifying minority issues of most relevance to the war and peace negotiations between Russia and the Ukraine, a first step is the identification of...
[Emiliano J. Buis is Professor of Public International Law at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and at the Central University of the Province of Buenos Aires (UNICEN). He is also a Researcher at the National Research Council for Science and Technology (CONICET).] Introduction The monumental volumes entitled International Conflict and Security Law: A Research Handbook, edited by Sergey Sayapin,...
[Vesselin Popovski is Professor and Vice Dean at Jindal Global Law School.] International Conflict and Security Law, edited by Sergey Sayapin, Rustam, Atadjanov, Umesh Kadam, Gerhard Kemp, Nicolás Zambrana-Tevar, and Noelle Quenivét, is one of the most comprehensive volumes addressing the complex relationship between international law and peace and security, that I have ever read. It should be on everyone’s...
Jennifer Trahan is back with another post at Just Security trying to justify a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression (STCoA) instead of the internationalized (hybrid) tribunal favoured by (at least) the the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and most recently the US. It will take a couple of responses to cover all of the ways in which her post...
[Dr. Sergey Sayapin is Professor at KIMEP University´s School of Law (Almaty, Kazakhstan).] On behalf of the editors, let me thank Opinio Juris for kindly hosting this book review symposium on International Conflict and Security Law: A Research Handbook. Our sincere thanks are due to Professor Kevin Jon Heller, Ms Ameera Ismail, Ms Aphiwan Natasha King, and the entire Editorial...
[Melissa Hendrickse (Twitter: @melhendrickse) is a legal adviser at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International, focusing on the intersection between racial and international justice. She has a background in critical race theory, third world approaches to international law and international human rights law. She is based in South Africa.] This April, UN member state delegates are gathering in New York...
Calls for Papers Call for Abstracts – AJIL Unbound: AJIL Unbound is accepting submissions of no more than 300 words until 6 June 2023 focused on logics and practices of private international law. The symposium will also honor the life and work of Karen Knop. For more information, click here. Call for Papers – Grotian law and Modernity at the...
[Kate Mackintosh is the Executive Director of the Promise Institute for Human Rights at the UCLA School of Law, and was deputy co-chair of the Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide.] In an exciting development for proponents of a new international crime of ecocide, the European Parliament on Tuesday agreed a text for the new Environmental Crimes Directive...
[Prof. Em. Dr. J. Vande Lanotte had a long career as professor in human rights and constitution law. He was Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium for 13 years and is now a lawyer. He introduced the communication on the situation concerning Turkey to the ICC.] In her posts “The Turkey Tribunal’s Long Shot: Stretching Territorial Jurisdiction and Disregarding Positive Complementarity...
A remarkable amount of ink has been spilled concerning the ability of various types of aggression tribunals to set aside Vladimir Putin’s personal immunity. I have contributed to the blot, most recently arguing that there would be no legal difference in that regard between a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression (STCoA) and an internationalized tribunal, as the hybrid...
Happy Easter, Passover, and Ramadan from OJ Events and Announcements! Events International Law, The Ocean-Climate Nexus and Human Rights: On Monday 10 April at 12:45pm Pacific Time/8:45pm UK Time, the Human Rights Center and the Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law will host this webinar in conversation with Dr Mitchell...
[Mutondi Mulaudzi is a Judicial Fellow at the International Court of Justice and Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Witwatersrand, with research specializing in human rights law. Danielle Flanagan is a Judicial Fellow at the International Court of Justice, holding a J.D. and Certificate in Refugees and Humanitarian Emergencies from Georgetown University Law Center.] The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest...
Dr Mohsen al Attar and (Dr) Omar Kamel Academics are professional thinkers. We might be charitable and describe ourselves as specialised communicators as well. We engage in a variety of roles, ranging from the advancement of knowledge to the teaching and mentoring of students, from guiding policymakers to supporting social movements. Some of these tasks are mundane—setting assessment questions—just as...
[David Matyas is a PhD Candidate and Gates Cambridge Scholar at the University of Cambridge, Lauterpacht Centre for International Law.] On March 7, 2023, the United Kingdom Home Secretary Suella Braverman introduced legislation before the British House of Commons entitled the “Illegal Migration Bill”. The purpose of the Bill is to prevent and deter unlawful migration, with a particular focus on arrivals...
[Ashira Vantrees is currently a practicing attorney in the United States and holds a JD from Florida International University College of Law.] Since the International Criminal Court’s (“ICC”) inception in 2002, it has been forced to continually evolve to address the complex nature of armed conflicts. This evolution has forced the Court to address how it includes crimes against and...
Hello Opinio Juris readers! Please note that there will be no Events and Announcements post next week on Sunday 9 April. Any submissions sent to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com in the next week will be posted the following week when E&A resumes (on Sunday 16 April). Calls for Papers Call for papers – Human Rights and Sustainable Development: The Center for Global Economic...
This post is based on the regulation subpanel of the Realities of Algorithmic Warfare breakout session, held at the REAIM Summit 2023. Watch the full breakout session here. This contribution also appears on the AutoNorms website. The global debate on military applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomy is gradually expanding beyond autonomous weapon systems (AWS) towards the concept of ‘Responsible...
[Dr Alexandr Svetlicinii is an Associate Professor of Global Legal Studies at the University of Macau, Faculty of Law. Dr Xueji Su is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the City University of Hong Kong, School of Law.] The delivery of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) panel reports in United States – Certain Measures on Steel and Aluminium Products (DS544 brought by...
On March 17, 2023, the Pre-Trial Chamber II of the International Court of Justice issued two arrest warrants against Russian President, Vladimir Putin, and his Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, for their alleged involvement in the “unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation”....
[Christian De Vos, JD, PhD, is the Director of Research and Investigations at Physicians for Human Rights; Anna Gallina, LL.M, Advanced LL.M, and Julianne Romy, LL.M, LL.M, LL.M, are respectively the Associate Legal Advisor and the Legal Advisor at eyeWitness to Atrocities, initiated by the International Bar Association.] Introduction It has been a busy period for justice and accountability in...
[Kushtrim Istrefi is assistant professor of international law and human rights at Utrecht University, substitute member of the Venice Commission, and senior peace fellow with the Public International Law and Policy Group (PILPG).] Philip Allot once said that an international agreement “is a disagreement reduced to writing… Parties to an international agreement enter into negotiation with different ideas of what...
[Chidi Anselm Odinkalu (Twitter: @ChidiOdinkalu) is a Professor of Practice in International Human Rights Law at the Fletcher School. Sharon Nakandha (Twitter: @SherryKyama) is a Program Manager, Accountability and Justice with Open Society-Africa.] At the establishment of the International Criminal Court, (ICC) 25 years ago, then Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, Robin Cook, famously said of it that it “is not...
Calls for Papers Call for Abstracts – Reforms at United Nations: This book attempts to address much-needed reforms at the United Nations, more particularly Security Council in a global hegemonic world. In 2022, the United Nations completed 75 years and the permanent membership remains the same as it was in 1945. The book seeks to answer questions such as veto powers,...
Dr Mohsen al Attar and Dr Rafael Quintero Godínez** Modern legal education has been criticised for trying to make itself harmless. Law professors provide students with a sanitised view of the field that camouflages the cracks and contradictions on offer. This approach leads to the circulation of parochial knowledge that overlooks the nuances of the societies we inhabit and the...
[Ana Luquerna is a lawyer whose professional and academic background focuses on international human rights law and refugee law. She holds a Juris Doctor from The University of Chicago Law School and a Master’s degree in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies from the University of Oxford. Christy Crouse is a U.S. lawyer and researcher at Dejusticia: Center of Studies on...
[Dr. Ligeia Quackelbeen is an Assistant Professor in International and European Criminal Law (Tilburg University) currently researching problems of interpretation arising from inter alia the concurrence of legal regimes and examining these issues in light of the legality principle and fair labelling.] The Connection Between the Jurisdictional Assessment and Admissibility Test A second, more tentative, point that I want to raise is...
[Dr. Ligeia Quackelbeen is an Assistant Professor in International and European Criminal Law (Tilburg University) currently researching problems of interpretation arising from inter alia the concurrence of legal regimes and examining these issues in light of the legality principle and fair labelling.] On 9 February 2023, a communication was submitted to the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the ICC by the...
[“Abhijeet Shrivastava and Rudraksh Lakra are fifth-year law students at Jindal Global Law School, India.] Introduction There is now little controversy in asserting that existing international law applies in cyberspace. The more important question is how existing norms can adapt to this new terrain and effectively regulate cyber operations. Importantly, there are also tremendous difficulties in establishing the attribution of harmful cyber operations...
To have your event or announcement featured with Opinio Juris, please send a brief description of the event along with a link to more information to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com! Calls for Papers Fairness and Selectivity in International Criminal Justice: The European Society of International Law’s (ESIL) Interest Group on International Criminal Justice is organizing a Workshop on Fairness and Selectivity in International...
I have uploaded a revised version of my article “The Concept of ‘The Human’ in the Critique of Autonomous Weapons” to SSRN. It is not substantially different than the previous version, but I’ve made a number of changes in response to excellent feedback from Robert Sparrow, Nathan Gabriel Wood, my colleague Neil Renic, and my sometimes co-author Lena Trabucco. My...
[Alejandra Ibarra Chaoul is a journalist and executive director of Defensores de la Democracia, a Mexican nonprofit focused on preventing violence against journalists via memory-building and new narratives for social change.] With 14 journalists killed in Mexico in 2022, the country sustained its place as the world’s deadliest for media workers, even surpassing countries at war, like Ukraine or Yemen,...
[Sheila Paylan is an international human rights lawyer and former legal advisor to the United Nations for more than 15 years. She is currently a Senior Fellow in International Law at the Applied Policy Research Institute of Armenia, an independent think tank based in Yerevan.] Sheila Paylan has previously served as a pro bono advisor to the Republic of Armenia in the...
[Relja Radović is an attorney at law based and qualified in Belgrade, Serbia, with an academic background in international adjudication and investment treaty arbitration.] Another episode in the saga on Kosovo’s status in the international community took place on 27 February 2023, when the EU announced that the President of Serbia and the Prime Minister of Kosovo have agreed on...
Calls for Papers ‘Professionals and Professionalism(s) in International Criminal Justice’: On Friday 14 July 2023 the School of Law and the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Leeds is hosting an International Workshop ‘Professionals and Professionalism(s) in International Criminal Justice’. The workshop will be looking at three main themes: (1) The International Criminal Justice professional (How do diverse practitioners view their...
[Judge Zak (Zakeria M.) Yacoob is a Retired Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa.] The Court of the Citizens of the World – a peoples tribunal – was organized by the Cinema for Peace Foundation, relating to the crime of aggression in Ukraine. The tribunal considered charges brought against Vladimir Putin for the crime of aggression presented by...
The Court of the Citizens of the World’ – a peoples tribunal – was organized by the Cinema for Peace Foundation, relating to the crime of aggression in Ukraine. The tribunal considered charges brought against Vladimir Putin for the crime of aggression presented by a Prosecution team, and heard witness testimony from 20 – 23 February 2023 in public hearings...
[Stephen Rapp is a former US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice and former international prosecutor at Rwanda and Sierra Leone tribunals.] The Court of the Citizens of the World’ – a peoples tribunal – was organized by the Cinema for Peace Foundation, relating to the crime of aggression in Ukraine. The tribunal considered charges brought against Vladimir Putin for the...
[Vito Todeschini is a legal expert focusing on human rights and accountability in the context of Palestine/Israel and the wider MENA region.] Introduction In September 2022, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel (COI), and the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied...
Where is knowledge headed? AI gate-crashed our thinking, leaving this question on everyone’s mind. The answer is probably not surprising: wherever the thinker wants it to go, more Rorschach test than prediction, as assumptions about desirable scientific trajectories dictate our response. I have been thinking about knowledge a lot these days. Along with the rise of AI, two of my...
Events Frontier Clash: New Developments in the Application of International Human Rights Law to Armed Conflicts: On 13 March at 5:30pm GMT, the International Law at Westminster (ILaW) research cluster will host a panel on Frontier Clash: New Developments in the Application of International Human Rights Law to Armed Conflicts, with Prof. Yuval Shany (Hebrew University of Jerusalem and former member...
Growing up in Lima, I heard the mythologized story of Columbus “discovering” America (the continent, sorry US) a million times: In a leap of faith, Queen Isabel of Spain sold her Crown jewels to finance a daring explorer’s expedition to unknown lands. Nobody believed in him, but Columbus persevered, proving everyone wrong and discovering a land no one else knew...
[Jaap Hoeksma focuses on the nature and functioning of the EU. He has recently published The Democratisation of the European Union.] Seventy years after the start of the experiment with pooling sovereignty, the European Union turns out to embody the most significant innovation of the modern state system so far. The hallmark of the EU in its present form is that...
[Michael McLaughlin is a cybersecurity attorney and policy advisor in the Washington, D.C. office of Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, P.C. He is the former senior counterintelligence advisor for United States Cyber Command and a research affiliate for the Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security. He holds a Bachelor of Science from the United States Naval Academy and...
[Nandini Gupta, am a final-year law student with a drive for sustainability and feminism.] “The Earth is my sister; I love her daily grace, her silent daring, and how loved I am. How we admire this strength in each other, all that we have lost, all that we have suffered, all that we know. We are stunned by this beauty,...
Brazil is back. After four years of retrenchment, the new Lula government seems ready to assume, once again, a key position in the international stage. This is a role that Lula knows how to play well. His previous government created the now defunct Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), meant as a counter-weight to a US-dominated OAS. By the time...
[Giulia Pinzauti is Assistant Professor of Public International Law at Leiden Law School’s Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies.] Advisory proceedings at the ICJ are witnessing a revival. Recent practice suggests that States increasingly use this route to bring before the Court contentious matters in the absence of consent to adjudication by interested States. This happened in three out of the...
[Dr Silvia Behrendt is currently director of the Global Health Responsibility Agency (GHRA), Salzburg, Austria. She holds a PhD on the International Health Regulations from the University of St. Gallen/Georgetown University Law Center, Washington D.C. and was formerly legal consultant to the IHR Secretariat at WHO. Dr Amrei Müller is an Assistant Professor/Lecturer (Ad Astra Fellow) at University College Dublin, Sutherland School of Law. She holds...
[Dr Cristiano d’Orsi is a Lecturer and Senior Research Fellow at the South African Research Chair in International Law (SARCIL), Faculty of Law, University of Johannesburg. He holds a Ph.D. in International Law from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. His research interests focus mainly on the development of Public International Law in Africa.] In its most...
Announcements Hello Opinio Juris readers! This is a reminder that any submissions for events or announcements may be sent to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. When submitting, please include a brief (one to two paragraph) description in text format (no flyers) of the event along with a link to more information–this policy can also be found on our submissions page. Thank you and we...
[Ríán Derrig is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the WMU-Sasakawa Global Ocean Institute of the World Maritime University.Arnulf Becker Lorca is Research Professor at Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso and Visiting Researcher at Harvard Law School.] This two-part post is the text of a memorandum prepared for delegates in advance of the resumption of the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Conference on...
[Ríán Derrig is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the WMU-Sasakawa Global Ocean Institute of the World Maritime University.Arnulf Becker Lorca is Research Professor at Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso and Visiting Researcher at Harvard Law School.] This two-part post is the text of a memorandum prepared for delegates in advance of the resumption of the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Conference on...
[Tania Ixchel Atilano, born in Mexico City, has a Juris Doctor from the Humboldt University of Berlin. Her research interests lie in the fields of history of international humanitarian law, international criminal law and criminal law. The author kindly thanks Professor Vivianne Weng for her invaluable feedback and comments.] Due to copyright issues, the images discussed have not been reproduced here. A...
A few days ago, the European Law Institute published its final report on ecocide. The report not only provides a definition of ecocide, it also contains Model Rules for an EU Directive and a Council Decision that ELI hopes will both “contribute to the inter-institutional negotiations in the EU on the Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and...
[Saparya Sood is a doctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods (Bonn, Germany). She is a lawyer qualified in India and received her postgraduate degree in law and economics as a recipient of an Erasmus Mundus scholarship. Views expressed are personal.] A New Dawn in BHR Discourse Business and Human Rights (BHR) discourse has...
[Jacob Bogart (Twitter: @BogartJacob) is a lawyer and Business and Human Rights Associate at The Remedy Project (as of March 2023) and author of the forthcoming report “Supplying SLAPPS: Corporate Accountability for Retaliatory Lawsuits in Thailand”, published by the Global Labor Justice-International Labor Rights Forum, which examines a series of SLAPP suits against human rights defenders in Thailand’s poultry industry.]...
1 Experimentation is the lifeblood of a pedagogue. Without this, our craft is at risk of going stale: the materials will become anachronistic, just as the methods will falter. Law schools, however, are not ideal sites for experimentation. Staunchly grounded in professional practice—we might say jealously guarded by the guild—the curriculum constricts space for pedagogical adventure, bounded by the demands...
[Nurlan Mustafayev is a legal counsel on international law and an instructor on public international law.] Azerbaijan’s liberation of its territories from Armenia’s three-decade-long occupation in late 2020 created a new legal situation on the ground. First, according to the trilateral Armistice Agreement, Armenia had to withdraw its army and hand over the previously occupied territories to Azerbaijan; second, together with...
[Ahan Gadkari is a final year BA LLB candidate at Jindal Global Law School. He serves as a Research Assistant under Dr. Aniruddha Rajput, Member, UN International Law Commission.] Introduction The ecosystem in the Mediterranean is in grave danger of deterioration. Marine species quickly decline as their habitats are damaged daily due to persistent tourism, plastic and chemical pollution, unsustainable...
Featured Announcement BIICL Short Courses – Spring 2023: The British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) is delighted to launch its programme of training courses for 2023. In Spring 2023, we will be offering a wide range of courses including Foundations of Public International Law, Public International Law in Practice, Law of the Sea, Climate Change Law, Artificial Intelligence,...
[Agatha Verdebout is a Senior Researcher at Groupe de recherche et d’information sur la paix et la sécurité (GRIP).] I would like to start by thanking all the contributors for taking the time to read and review the book, as well as Alexandra Hofer and Opinio Juris for their interest in my work and the effort they have put into...
[Mary Ellen O’Connell is the Robert and Marion Short Professor of Law and Professor of International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame. O’Connell’s research is in the areas of international law on the use of force and international legal theory.] Agatha Verdebout’s Rewriting Histories of the Use of Force belongs with Philip Allott’s Health of Nations, Martti Koskenniemi’s Gentle Civilizer of...
[Ingo Venzke is a Professor at the University of Amsterdam.] ‘This workshop where ideals are fabricated—it seems to me just to stink of lies.’ Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality (2007 [1887]), §I.14 It is a common belief that international law had little to say on the legality of the use of force before the First World War. A...
[Miriam Bak McKenna is Associate Professor of Law and Global Governance at Roskilde University, School of Social Science and Business. Her book Reckoning with Empire: Self-Determination in International Law (Brill) was released in December 2022.] By now it is perhaps axiomatic to assert that the historical narratives surrounding international law are rather murky at best. As the canon of texts...
[Siddharth Mallavarapu is Professor and Head of the Department of International Relations and Governance Studies at the Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence in India.] Close to a year after the commencement of the Russia-Ukraine war, there is barely anything that can be more topical and worthwhile than a closer look at the histories of international law relating to the use...
[Isa Blumi is Associate Professor at the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Stockholm University.] Dr. Agatha Verdebout’s Rewriting Histories of the Use of Force (2021) charts how International Law’s founding generations of scholars sought relevance during times when the powerful adopted “the law” only when it suited their interests. By reading beyond the ‘emotional’, ‘cynical’, or ‘idealistic’ discourse...
[Alonso Gurmendi Dunkelberg is a Departmental Lecturer of International Relations at Oxford University.] Rewriting Histories of the Use of Force: The Narrative of Indifference, by Dr. Agatha Verdebout, is an impressive volume covering a vast time period with an ambitious goal: to, as the title suggests, “rewrite” the history of use of force in international law in the 19th century....
[Mohamed S. Helal is Associate Professor of Law at the Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University; and member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration as well as of the African Union Commission on International Law.] Agatha Verdebout’s Rewriting Histories of the Use of Force: The Narrative of Indifference is an exhaustively researched and lucidly written volume that makes important contributions...
[Alexandra Hofer (a.s.hofer@uu.nl) is Assistant Professor in Public International Law at Utrecht University.] I should probably start by admitting that I am not indifferent to Dr Agatha Verdebout’s Rewriting the Histories of the Use of Force: The Narrative of ‘Indifference’ (apologies for the poor wordplay). I first heard Agatha present her research in December 2015, during one of the seminars...
[Dr Tibisay Morgandi is Assistant Professor of International Energy Law at Queen Mary University of London and the author of State Energy Agreements (CUP, forthcoming 2023). The views expressed in this paper are the author’s alone.] Introduction Energy – in the form of gas, nuclear and electricity – has in several different ways played a significant role in the Russia-Ukraine...
[Natasa Mavronicola is Professor of Human Rights Law at Birmingham Law School.] ‘it is the position of the State Party that, the acts complained of have neither the required level of intensity or cruelty nor the impermissible purpose to permit them to be defined as torture. Further, the acts complained of do not meet the standard so as to fall...
[Máiréad Enright is Professor of Feminist Legal Studies at Birmingham Law School.] On October 31 2022, the UN Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) published its decision in Elizabeth Coppin v. Ireland. Mrs. Coppin is 73 years old and spent her early life in State-funded, religious-run carceral institutions. She was born in a county home to a teenage single mother. Aged two,...
Calls for Papers 3rd NLIU – India Foundation Constitutional Law Symposium | Volume XII, Issue II (Special Issue): The NLIU Law Review is the flagship journal of National Law Institute University, Bhopal, published bi-annually by the students of the University. It is a peer-reviewed academic law journal which aims to inculcate a culture of academic research and writing among students,...
[Joris van de Riet is a PhD candidate in jurisprudence at Leiden Law School. He holds LLM degrees in Public International Law and in Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law from Leiden University.] In my previous post for this blog on the question of Russia’s membership of the UN Security Council, I explained why the decision in 1991 to regard the...
[Joris van de Riet is a PhD candidate in jurisprudence at Leiden Law School. He holds LLM degrees in Public International Law and in Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law from Leiden University.] In a two-part post for this blog, Thomas Grant has argued that it is both possible and desirable to remove the Russian Federation from the UN Security Council...
[Sarah Zarmsky is an Assistant Lecturer and PhD Candidate at the University of Essex Human Rights Centre with a focus on the intersections between new and emerging technologies, human rights, and international criminal law. She is also a Visiting Scholar at the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley. (Twitter: @SZarmsky) Judy Mionki is an International Criminal and...
[Ruwadzano Patience Makumbe is a human rights lawyer. Edward Kahuthia Murimi is a Kenyan lawyer. They are both currently undertaking PhD research as part of the ‘DISSECT: Evidence in International Human Rights Adjudication’ Project (funded by ERC) at the Human Rights Centre, Ghent University (Belgium).] Introduction In November 2020, a conflict broke out in the Tigray region of Ethiopia pitting...
[Isabella Regan is a PhD candidate in criminology at Erasmus School of Law (Rotterdam, NL), researching public-private power dynamics within online open-source investigations of international crimes.] This blog arises from her thesis on public-private power dynamics within online open-source investigations of international crimes. All comments and feedback are welcome at regan@law.eur.nl. Over the past decade, online open-source information –...
[Vidhya Ramalingam is the Founder and CEO of Moonshot. Raquel Vazquez Llorente is the Head of Law and Policy, Technology Threats & Opportunities, at WITNESS. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.] This piece is a conversation between two professional communities that use open source information in overlapping contexts, yet are rarely in...
[Kate Pundyk is the former Open Source Investigation Lead at the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab and previously worked at the Berkeley Human Rights Center. She is currently studying at the Oxford Internet Institute on a Rhodes Scholarship.] Author’s note: I am grateful to Adriano Belisario and Jorge Ruiz Reyes for their conversations conceptualizing this article, as well as those who...
[Cris van Eijk is an international lawyer researching what it means to make space ‘common’, and how international law works to effect that. He holds a BA and LLM in International Law from Leiden University, and a BA in Law from the University of Cambridge.] Introduction Satellite imagery is one of the most important sources of data in open-source intelligence,...
[Raquel Vazquez Llorente is the Head of Law and Policy, Technology Threats & Opportunities at WITNESS. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.] Information available on the internet can open a window into international crimes and human rights violations occurring in countries otherwise closed to investigators. Social media platforms have become unforeseen repositories...
[Raja Althaibani is a Senior Program Manager at WITNESS, who manages the organisation’s MENA program and projects in Syria and Yemen, and specialises in community-based documentation in conflict zones.] [Libby McAvoy is a Legal Advisor for Mnemonic where she specialises in digital evidence archives, litigation support, and open source investigations into international crimes and human rights violations.] [Dalila Mujagic is...
Jennifer Trahan has a new post at Just Security entitled “Why a ‘Hybrid’ Ukrainian Tribunal on the Crime of Aggression Is Not the Answer.” There are many problems with Trahan’s post, but in this response I want to focus specifically on the most glaring one: namely, her claim that a hybrid tribunal would need to apply Ukraine’s domestic crime of...
[Michael Elsanadi is a trainer and researcher with Mnemonic and is currently pursuing an MA in Data in Culture and Society at King’s College London.] In the past ten years, the open source investigations space has exponentially grown. The increasing presence of OSINT bios, dedicated accounts, and general discussion demonstrates the familiarity and presence of open source investigative reporting and...
[Sylvanna M. Falcón is an associate professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is also the director of the Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas and the Human Rights Investigations Lab.] [Alexa Koenig is an adjunct professor at UC Berkeley School of Law, a lecturer at the School of Journalism, and...
Support has been growing in recent weeks for creating a hybrid tribunal to address Russia’s criminal act of aggression against Ukraine instead of an ad hoc Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression (STCoA). The German Minister of Foreign Affairs has endorsed a hybrid tribunal over an STCoA, as has the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary. Even the US War Crimes...
[Eman El-Sherbiny is a freelance digital investigator who has worked on Ukraine, Sudan, Chad and the rest of the MENA region as well as East Africa. In the past, she has led investigations at Sudanese Archive and conducted investigations for the Centre for Information Resilience on Russian aggression in Ukraine.] Open source intelligence, often referred to as OSINT, has been...
[Billie Burton is the Executive Director of the Ukraine Digital Verification Lab at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and is a Co-Director of the Cameroon Database of Atrocities held at the University of Toronto. She is also a US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation Scholar.] [June Bove is a Wargaming Specialist with Harvard University’s Negotiation Task Force...
[Sarah Zarmsky is an Assistant Lecturer and PhD Candidate at the University of Essex Human Rights Centre with a focus on the intersections between new and emerging technologies, human rights, and international criminal law. She is also a Visiting Scholar at the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley.] Open source investigations, as defined in the Berkeley Protocol...
Calls for Papers Call for Papers – Corporate Human Rights Responsibility in OECD Case Law: Actors, Issues, Responsibilities and Remedies: The German Research Foundation (DFG) funded project “Corporate Human Rights Responsibility in the OECD NCP case law” at Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg invites papers for a workshop on “Corporate Human Rights Responsibility In OECD Case Law: Actors, Issues, Responsibilities and Remedy” in May 2023...
1 February marks the second anniversary of the coup d’état in Myanmar. In the past year, the situation for the population has only become more fraught and difficult. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights estimates that 2,890 individuals have been killed, likely an underestimation, 16,000 have been detained on spurious charges, scores have been tortured, many have been sentenced to death,...
To close this symposium on the life and work of Judge Cançado Trindade, the editors of Afronomicslaw, Opinio Juris and Agenda Estado de Derecho had the opportunity to interview the recently appointed and also Latin American Judge Leonardo Nemer Caldeira Brant in December 2022. The conversation focuses on the impact of Cançado Trindade’s scholarship, case law, individual opinions, and his...
Calls for Abstracts Call for Abstracts – International Conference (VIRTUAL) on Contemporary Trends in International Economic Law: The Indian Law Society (ILS) Centre for International Law is pleased to announce that a two-day International Conference (VIRTUAL) on Contemporary Trends in International Economic Law will be held on March 14 and 15, 2023. The deadline for abstracts is 31 January. The conference is open for...
[Maria Elena Vignoli is a senior international justice counsel at Human Rights Watch.] The events of 2022 brought renewed attention and support for accountability for serious international crimes. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine brought images of mass burial sites and bombed-out cities back on the front pages, and the far-reaching impact of the conflict triggered a strong response from the...
[Marnie Lloydd is Senior Lecturer and Associate-Director of the New Zealand Centre for Public Law at Te Herenga Waka–Victoria University of Wellington, with extensive experience in the international humanitarian sector. Alberto Costi is a Professor of Law at Te Herenga Waka–Victoria University of Wellington.] [Disclosure: Both authors acted as independent experts invited to provide feedback on an earlier version of...
[Jenna M Robinson has worked at a number of leading international law firms and is now a postgraduate candidate of Public International Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science.] Most of you reading this will likely have been to university. You will be a woman or you will have studied alongside women. You will be passionate about...
[Abhijeet Shrivastava and Aryaman Kapoor are students at Jindal Global Law School and members of the JFIEL Editorial team.] Introduction As students from the Global South who hope to participate in the international legal system and academy, it has been encouraging to see recent efforts by ‘Opinio Juris’ to help critique systemic biases in these spaces. For example, Radhika Kapoor reminds us of how unpaid...
Calls for Papers Call for Papers and Book Reviews for the Irish Yearbook of International Law: An annual, peer reviewed publication, the Irish Yearbook of International Law, is committed to the publication of articles of general interest in international law as well as articles that have a particular connection to, or relevance for, Ireland. The Yearbook is edited by Richard...
[Ata R. Hindi is Research Fellow in International Law, Institute of Law at Birzeit University.] In 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued its advisory opinion on the Wall and its associated regime. Nearly two decades later, Palestine is back at the ICJ, where the Court will have to address another paramount issue: the (il)legality of Israel’s occupation altogether...
An interview with Kathryn McNeilly and Ben Warwick, editors of The Times and Temporalities of International Human Rights Law (Hart 2022). Questions by Natasa Mavronicola. [Kathryn McNeilly is Professor of Law at Queen’s University Belfast School of Law. Natasa Mavronicola is Professor of Human Rights Law at Birmingham Law School. Dr Ben Warwick is a Reader in Human Rights Law...
[Eoin Jackson is an LLM student at Harvard Law School.] Introduction To reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it will be necessary for the world’s leading fossil fuel producers to decouple their economies from sources primarily responsible for the continued rise in global temperatures. Some of these economies include nations whose laws and society are dominated by Islamic jurisprudence, such as Saudi...
[Ezequiel Jimenez is a PhD candidate at Middlesex University (United Kingdom). This blog arises from his thesis on the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute. All comments and feedback welcome at ezejim@gmail.com.] From 5 to 10 December 2022, delegates from the 123 States Parties to the Rome Statute met at the World Forum in The Hague for its...
[Psymhe Wadud is a Lecturer in Law at the Bangladesh University of Professionals and currently pursuing her Bachelor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford.] Introduction The year 2022 has been marred by systemic discrimination, violence, and endemic oppression against women all across the world. The latter half of the year in particular witnessed outrageous manifestations and images of...
A few years ago, I was in a meeting with some Global North colleagues planning an international law conference. We were trying to make sure we had diverse panels and while gender-wise we were doing fine, I pointed out we still only had one person of colour. “Well, two”, said one of my co-convenors, “counting you”. I am sure my...
[Rana Moustafa Essawy is an Assistant Professor of Public International Law at Alexandria University (Egypt).] On the 14 November 2022, the UN General Assembly (GA) adopted draft resolution A/ES-11/L.6 on ‘Furtherance of Remedy and Reparation for Aggression against Ukraine’. This resolution Recognizes … the need for the establishment, in cooperation with Ukraine, of an international mechanism for reparation for damage,...
Calls for Papers Call for papers and panels – International Law and the Regulation of Resort to Force: Exhaustion, Destruction, Rebirth? (14-15 September 2023, Olomouc, Czech Republic): The Centre for International Humanitarian and Operational Law at the Faculty of Law of Palacký University Olomouc, in collaboration with the Institute for International Law and International Relations at the Faculty of Law...
[Tomas Hamilton is an Assistant Professor in International Criminal Law at the University of Amsterdam. Marina Aksenova is an Assistant Professor in International and Comparative Criminal Law at IE University in Madrid.] In the ongoing civil suits in Mexico v Smith & Wesson & others and Mexico v Diamondback Shooting Sports Inc. et al, the Mexican government has brought claims...
[Sara Elizabeth Dill is Partner at Anethum Global (London, England), a Certified Global Sanctions and Financial Crimes Specialist, and Officer with the International Bar Association’s War Crimes Committee.] “… we saw a mosque whose dome had been split in half when its minaret had come crashing down. … seeing the destruction in person profoundly shocked me. For as long as I could...
[Dr Siva Thambisetty is an Associate Professor of Law and the Law School, London School of Economics and Political Science. In 2022 she acted as Advisor to the G77+China group Chair’s Team at the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Negotiations in 2022.] Public international law interacts with intellectual property laws in numerous and varied negotiating fora and intergovernmental organisations. I have...
Happy New Year from Opinio Juris! Calls for Papers Call for Abstracts – South Asian Perspectives on Environmental Protection and Forest Rights: Emerging Trends and Practices: Mathura, Kathmandu, Cumilla, 24-25 March 2023. The conference is jointly organized by the Center for International Law and Global Governance (CILGG), Institute of Legal Studies and Research (ILSR), GLA University, Mathura; Faculty of Law,...
The international scholarly community lost a shining star with the untimely passing of Megan Fairlie, at age 52, a few days ago. Megan was a Professor of Law at Florida International University College of Law where she specialized in Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure & Litigation, International Human Rights, International Law, and Professional Responsibility. Megan joined FIU in 2007. She graduated...
Believe it or not, 2022 is ending. It has been a busy year for Opinio Juris. Our team has grown, incorporating Vivek Bhat and Sarah Zarmsky, as Contributing Editor and Deputy Managing Editor, respectively. We have also organised symposia on difficult subjects that make us think about our profession in often ignored ways; how classism, systemic racism, and the challenges...
[Dimitrios A. Kourtis (@DAKourtis) has a PhD from Aristotle University and is an Adjunct Lecturer at the Hellenic Police Academy] Introduction When Oscar Schachter wrote his iconic article on the ‘invisible college’ in 1977, the scholars and practitioners of international law were, more or less, a bunch of white male academics situated in what we now call the Global North,...
[Shahab Saqib (@sufi_shahab) is a Visiting Lecturer at the SOAS University of London and a PhD Scholar of law at King’s College London] Introduction In a bizarre conversation with an established colleague on international law, I was told, ‘you should run away from being a critic of international law as I did. It won’t earn you a dime’. The discussion...
[Sanam Amin (@cardboardsky) is a PhD student at Melbourne Law School and a member of several international feminist advocacy networks] To self-describe as an international lawyer (at a party, say) is to call up an image of a person who travels a lot doing law, someone perhaps involved in the mercantile world, a trans-nationalist. This person carries a briefcase and...
[Marie Badarne is Coordinator of the Critical Legal Training at the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR). Claire Tixeire is Senior Legal Advisor at ECCHR. Both have co-led ECCHR’s Critical Legal Training since its founding in 2012, now a part of ECCHR’s Institute for Legal Intervention.] Over the past decade, the co-authors have led the Critical...
[Anne-Marie Coleman is an assistant professor in UK higher education. She is writing under a pseudonym] This is not so much a working-class story as a broken class story, such were the social and personal consequences of my family implosion in a conservative, rural society in the late 1980s. We were pariahs to a community that doled out stigma and...
[Artur Simonyan is a PhD candidate at the University of Tartu, School of Law.] Introduction Laws that derive from Human Institution are different in different places. Visioned critically, international law likewise shares the same ontology. Both assertions sound equally logical and normatively valid within the dictum ‘all law is law in particular locations’. Nevertheless, supposing that laws’ differences ultimately relate...
[Dr Anna Dolidze (Twitter: @dolidze_anna) is Research Lead at Rabdan Academy, UAE] Introduction ‘My good friend Roosevelt I don’t know very English, but I know as much as write to you’, wrote a fourteen-year-old Fidel Castro to the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt. The note carries the degree of cute naiveté, simplicity, and directness that characterize...
[Elisabetta Baldassini, PhD is a researcher on international law and international relations, currently working as policy advisor for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)] Class and classism affect international legal scholarship in a number of manners, sometimes imperceptible ones, and create a wide array of inequalities entrenched in international legal professions....
[Tonny Raymond Kirabira is a Ugandan lawyer and PhD Candidate at the University of Portsmouth, UK. Ruwadzano Patience Makumbe is a Zimbabwean lawyer and PhD researcher at the Human Rights Centre, Ghent University, Belgium] Introduction On 1 July 2022, the International Criminal Court (ICC) celebrated its 20th anniversary, giving the institution and its partners an opportunity to take stock of...
[Radhika Kapoor (Twitter: @Radhikaaah) is a Fellow at the Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict.] This piece has been written in the author’s personal capacity and does not reflect the views of the author’s institution. The author thanks Professor Naz Modirzadeh, Sapan Parekh, and Ashrutha Rai for helpful comments, and Shashankaa Tewari for research assistance. The...
[Chris Carpenter is a lawyer practicing international arbitration and cross-border litigation. Dimitrios A. Kourtis has a PhD from Aristotle University and is an Adjunct Lecturer at the Hellenic Police Academy]. In his famous Preface to the Critique of Political Economy, Karl Marx described the basic premises of historical materialism by reference to the social production of human existence. Throughout their...
This will be our last Events and Announcements post of 2022! We will resume on 8 January 2023. Happy Holidays from Opinio Juris! Calls for Papers Call for Papers: 12th Annual Conference of the Cambridge International Law Journal: The Conference Convenors and Editors of the Cambridge International Law Journal (CILJ) welcome submissions for the 12th Annual Cambridge International Law Conference, which...
[Tamás Hoffmann is an Associate Professor at Corvinus University of Budapest and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Legal Studies, Budapest] Introduction – A Region without Agency Eastern Europe has a strange place in academic discourse. While the region has traditionally been rife with both internal and international conflicts, making it an ideal object of scientific enquiry, the countries...
Whether you are the most ardent football aficionado, or just an Arsenal fan, the controversies generated by the World Cup in Qatar will have reached your ears. Depending on political priorities, your interlocutor may have furnished a tapestry of accusations justifying the boycott of this tournament. Throughout the critique, three broad themes prevail: labour-related violations of human rights, gender-specific violations...
[David Matyas is a PhD Candidate and Gates Cambridge Scholar at the University of Cambridge, Lauterpacht Centre for International Law whose research focuses on the laws of humanitarian assistance. Before turning to law, he worked as an aid worker focusing on disaster risk, with placements in Niger and Senegal.] Each year, as the holidays roll around in winter and summer,...
On December 7th, then-President of Peru, Pedro Castillo, announced the start of a “government of exception”, the “dissolution of Congress” and the drafting of a new constitution. Less than two hours later, Congress declared the Presidency vacant, the Attorney General’s Office indicted Castillo for violating the Constitution and Castillo was detained by his own personal guard. In Peru, most sources...
[John D. Haskell is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester Law School and Junior Faculty at the Harvard Law School Institute for Global Law and Policy.] “I [find] myself in a spiral of uneasiness … [S]omething in the authors’ tone of voice, in their self-positioning [is] disturbing… I am troubled by the initial pairing of the notions of...
[Mikkel Jarle Christensen is professor WSR in iCourts, Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen. Here he is principal investigator for the JustSites project (ERC-StG 802053).] International criminal justice often operates across borders, mediating different degrees of distance and proximity. Sometimes, cross-border operations are folded directly into its institutions. This is visible, for instance, when international criminal courts deal with conflicts located...
Calls for Papers Call for Papers – Centra Journal of International Studies: Arising from a multinational editorial collaboration effort between scholars from all over Latin America, Centra Journal of International Studies is pleased to announce its first call for papers. Interested authors from all social sciences and humanities are invited to submit their perspectives on the diverse range of phenomena situated under the...
[Hazar Kaan Özkonak is currently doing his PhD at Utrecht University (Utrecht, the Netherlands). His doctoral thesis focuses on the limits on the use of unilateral sanctions pursuant to the international rule of law principles.] Introduction On September 3, Gazprom, a state-owned and state-run energy company of the Russian Federation (Russia), completely and indefinitely suspended its Nord Stream 1 gas...
[Jorge Contesse is Professor of Law & Director of the Center for Transnational Law at Rutgers Law School, United States.] The passing of Judge Antônio Augusto Cançado Trindade, on 29 May 2022, shocked the Latin American international law community—and even beyond the confines of Latin America. Cançado Trindade is among the few Latin American jurists who have held some of...
[Cecilia M. Bailliet is Professor in the Department of Public & International Law, Faculty of Law, University of Oslo, Norway.] Summary In this post, the author explores how Judge Cançado Trindade presented his views of universal juridical conscience of mankind and international law for humankind in his dissenting opinions as a judge of the International Court of Justice. For the...
[Benjamin Mason Meier, Jacquelyn Bedingham, Judith Bueno de Mesquita, Alessandro Figueroa, Roojin Habibi, Timothy Fish Hodgson, Ashley Lim, Alexandra Phelan, Sharifah Sekalala, and Adam Strobeyko on behalf of the Civil Society Alliance for Human Rights in the Pandemic Treaty] This is a pivotal moment in the global governance response to future pandemic threats, with crucial global health law reforms being undertaken through the World...
[Moisés A. Montiel Mogollón is a Professor at the Faculty of Law at the Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City Campus and Universidad Panamericana, Guadalajara campus (Mexico).] Summary The late judge Antonio Cançado Trindade is often criticized by legal formalism on account of his interpretive elasticity when positive law failed to meet the most “elementary dictates of public conscience”. This piece -a...
[Daniel Ó Cluanaigh is a researcher and consultant in international human rights law, non‑profit strategy, and protection of human rights defenders.] Notwithstanding the ubiquity of criminalisation and violence against sexual and gender minorities (SGM) across the world, international human rights law has been notoriously tardy in getting to grips with it. Indeed, to this day, international human rights fora are...
Judge Antônio Augusto Cançado Trindade was a towering figure of contemporary international and public law. An internationally renowned jurist, he was judge of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights between 1995 and 2008 and its President between 1999 and 2004. In February 2009, he was elected as judge of the International Court of Justice, a position he held until his...
Calls for Papers Call for Submissions – American Review of International Arbitration: The American Review of International Arbitration at Columbia Law School, a leading international dispute resolution journal, is soliciting manuscripts of Articles and Notes for possible publication in Volume 34, no. 2 (winter 2023) – Special Issue: The Russian-Ukraine War. We welcome Articles by scholars, practitioners, and other professionals,...
[Radhika Kapoor (Twitter: @Radhikaaah) is a Fellow at the Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict (HLS PILAC), where she researches and writes about contemporary legal issues concerning the international legal regulation of armed conflict.] [This blog post has been written in the author’s personal capacity and does not reflect the views of author’s institution. Any errors...
[Oscar Genaro Macias Betancourt is the Former Director of Restitutions at the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a Specialist in International Law on Cultural Property.] 1. Introduction There is a problem with museums, the art market and international law. A chapter in the colonial history of many peoples include instances were relics filled with cultural meaning were taken by...
[Kudakwashe Mapako holds an LLB Degree in International Law (Cum Laude) from Zhejiang Gongshang University and Prospective Masters Candidate at University of Cape town specializing in international law. He is a Research Officer at African Center for Science and International Security (AFRICSIS) in the Arms Control and Nonproliferation program.] Introduction Humanity’s wars have seen a slew of instances in which...
[Janhavi Pande is a Researcher at the South East Asia Research Programme, Institute of Peace & Conflict Studies, India.] INTRODUCTION In May this year, China imposed its annual three-month fishing ban in the South China Sea (SCS). The ban, introduced in 1999, extends to all coastal states whose fishermen tread China’s claimed Exclusive Economic Zone, lying above the 12 degrees...
[Dr. Marta Bo is an Associate Senior Researcher on emerging military technologies at Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Researcher in Public International Law at the University of Amsterdam- Asser Institute and Research Fellow at the Geneva Graduate Institute.] To hold an individual criminally responsible for committing an unlawful attack, it must be established that they launched the attack with...
[Fajri Matahati Muhammadin is an assistant professor at the Department of International Law, Faculty of Law, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia, and Director of Pusat Kajian Hukum Internasional Islam (Research Center for Islamic International Law).] Al-Mahdi: An Overlooked Question Before being brought to the ICC, Al-Mahdi made Islamic justifications for attacking shrines and a mosque (after actually previously being against it)....
Calls for Papers Call for Papers – Violent Turns: Sources, Interpretations, Responses: International Conference, The American University of Paris, 21-23 June 2023. The aim of this international conference is to provide researchers with an interdisciplinary platform to investigate and debate the question of contemporary irruptions of political violence and to inquire into the different responses intended to counteract violence. We welcome...
The Sixth Committee of the United Nations adopted resolution A/C.6/77/L.4 on the Draft Convention on Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Humanity on 18 November 2022. This draft convention was elaborated upon and adopted by the International Law Commission, and submitted by the ILC to the General Assembly for further consideration and action in 2019. The resolution at the Sixth Committee was...
[Lior Weinstein is a fourth-year student of Law and Hebrew literature (LLB and BA) and an LLM student in international law from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem and part of its international law forum.] In this blog post, I will present a new development in Israeli case law – the recognition of transitional justice (TJ) in the property law context. This exciting...
[Leslie Johns (Twitter: @PoliticsIntlLaw) is a Professor of Political Science and Law at UCLA and author of Politics and International Law: Making, Breaking, and Upholding Global Rules (Cambridge University Press). Margaret E. Peters (Twitter: @MigrationNerd) is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Global Studies at UCLA. Her research on bilateral labor agreements was published in International Studies Quarterly and Theoretical Inquires...
Calls for Papers African International Economic Law Network (AfIELN) 6th Biennial Conference: The African International Economic Law Network (AfIELN) invites the submission of abstracts for its 6th Biennial Conference taking place at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, Faculty of Law (GIMPA), Accra, Ghana, from 21 to 24 June 2023. Submissions for papers or panels are due by 5...
[Jaap Hoeksma focuses on the nature and functioning of the EU. His new book: The Democratisation of the European Union will be published in January 2023 by The Hague Eleven.] Seventy years after the start of the process of European integration, the EU is still being portrayed by politicians and academics alike as an ‘unsolvable conundrum’. Despite strenuous efforts, theorists...
[Somaly Kum is a research fellow at the Center for the Study of Humanitarian Law in Cambodia who, since 2010, has worked closely with survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime through outreach programs of the Stanford Center for Human Rights and International Justice (Cambodia program) and ADHOC. Boravin Tann is a researcher and lecturer at the Center for the Study of Humanitarian Law, Royal University of...
[Sandra Cossart is the Executive Director of the French NGO Sherpa which fights new forms of impunity linked to globalization. Anna Kiefer is Advocacy and Litigation Officer at Sherpa. Cannelle Lavite is Co-Director of the Business and Human Rights program at the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR). Claire Tixeire is a Senior Legal Advisor at the ECCHR.] “Knowingly paying several million dollars to...
[Dr Jonathan Kolieb is Senior Lecturer and Peace and Conflict Theme Lead, Business and Human Rights Centre, at RMIT University in Australia. Ann Letch is a PhD Candidate at RMIT University, Australia.] Another chapter in the pursuit of accountability for business people for committing heinous human rights abuses is (finally) unfolding in The Hague, Netherlands over the coming weeks. After...
Calls for Papers Call for Essays: International Law and the Popular Consciousness in South Asia: International Law and the Global South and the Research Society of International Law (Pakistan), in this unprecedented collaboration between Indian and Pakistani international law organizations, invite essays exploring popular attitudes towards international law in the South Asian region. Authors are encouraged to explore a variety of...
Astrid Coracini and Jennifer Trahan have a new post at Just Security that argues a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression created either by treaty or by a General Assembly-endorsed agreement between Ukraine and the UN would not have to recognise the personal immunity of Russian officials. I disagree, for reasons I have explained in a recent article in...
Via its Minister for the Environment, the Belgian government has announced that it intends to incorporate the crime of ecocide into its Penal Code: A concept now recognized in the national penal codes of 10 countries (Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Vietnam and France), the crime of ecocide refers to all illegal actions that lead to...
[Güneş Ünüvar is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law.] This post briefly explores the peculiar interaction between international and national legal frameworks in the field of outer space resource extraction. This interaction generally follows three steps: First, international law provides a series of guiding principles. Then, these international law...
[Professor Shane Darcy is the Deputy Director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights in the School of Law at the University of Galway and the author of ‘To Serve the Enemy: Informers, Collaborators and the Laws of Armed Conflict’ (Oxford University Press).] Every war has its collaborators. And every country at war must at some point not only come...
[Antarnihita Mishra is an Assistant Professor of Law at IFIM Law School, Bengaluru, India. She has an LL.M. in International Law from South Asian University, New Delhi.] Recent data released by the UN Refugee Agency suggests that the Mediterranean, the world’s deadliest sea crossing, has become even more fatal now. Despite a fall in the number of migrants and refugees...
Calls for Papers Call for Papers – International Law and the SAARC Region in Times of Crisis: Conference hosted by the Faculty of Legal Studies at South Asian University, New Delhi, 1 March 2023. The conference is announced in the midst of international law issues and challenges thrown up by the developments in the SAARC region and beyond. It aims...
[Stephen A. Lamony is an International Lawyer writing from Gulu City, northern Uganda.] Introduction On May 6, 2021, Trial Chamber IX of the International Criminal Court (ICC) sentenced Dominic Ongwen to 25 years of imprisonment for murder, rape, and sexual enslavement. On the same day, the Chamber issued an order for submissions on reparations stating that the “reparations phase of the...
[Karen C. Sokol is a professor of law at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law and Fellow in Law, Ethics, & Public Policy at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. She serves as a Member Scholar at the Center for Progressive Reform.] Throughout the summer and early fall, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres repeatedly urged wealthy, high-emitting nations...
[Dr Erica Moret is Policy Director at the Swiss Centre for Policy Engagement, Polisync; Senior Researcher at the Centre for Global Governance at the Graduate Institute, Geneva and Senior Fellow on Sanctions and Humanitarian Affairs at the United Nations University Centre for Policy Research (UNU-CPR). She provided input to the 2022 Kyiv Security Compact on the role sanctions could play in...
[Fiona Nelson is Acting Executive Director at the Australian Centre for International Justice. Kobra Moradi is a lawyer at the Australian Centre for International Justice.] November 2020 saw the publication of a redacted version of the Afghanistan Inquiry Report by the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force. The Inquiry was set up in 2016 to investigate potential war crimes and other...
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) was created by the Cambodian government in partnership with the United Nations. Its purpose was to prosecute crimes under international and Cambodian law committed between 1975 and 1979, when Cambodia was ruled by the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), better known as the ‘Khmer Rouge’. On 22 September 2022, the ECCC’s...
[Tania Atilano holds a Juris Doctor from the Humboldt University of Berlin. She is conducting research on the laws of war in nineteenth-century Mexico and on counter-guerrilla warfare in the state of Guerrero (Mexico) during the ’70s.] Since I published the article about the criminalization of the Laws of War in the 1871 Mexican Criminal Code (MCC), I have received...
[Patricio Barbirotto is a research fellow and adjunct professor of International Law at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy.] On 11 July 2022, the President of the Russian Federation V. V. Putin signed the Presidential Executive Order n. 440 “on Amending the Executive Order of the President of the Russian Federation No. 183 of April 24, 2019, ‘On the Definition...
[Nicole Barrett is the Clinic Director and Aishani Gupta is the Research Associate at Allard Law School’s International Justice and Human Rights Clinic, University of British Columbia, which provides legal support to the Canadian member of the Human Rights Committee. All information used for this blog post is publicly available and the views expressed in this blog are strictly our own.]...
[Beatrice Lau is a humanitarian professional from Hong Kong who has worked in Niger, Haiti, Tajikistan, Malaysia, Libya, Tunisia, and Belarus. She holds an LL.M in Advanced Studies in Public International Law from Leiden University.] Brittney Griner, the American Women National Basketball star and two-time Olympic gold medalist, was convicted in Russia on August 4 for drug possession and sentenced...
[Mateusz Piątkowski is an Assistant Professor at the University of Łódź, Poland (Faculty of Law and Administration, International Law Department), Attorney-at-law, and Member of the Polish Society of the Military Law and the Law of War.] On February 27, 2022, the EU foreign policy chief Joseph Borrel announced that the European Council decided to offer Ukraine a package of lethal...
Calls for Papers Call for Papers – Volume 12(1) of the Cambridge International Law Journal: The Cambridge International Law Journal (CILJ) is pleased to invite submissions for Volume 12(1), to be published in June 2023. The Board welcomes articles and case notes that engage with current themes in international law, as well as book reviews on recently published works. Volume 12(1) will...
[Brigitte Herremans is a Researcher at Justice Visions, Human Rights Centre, Ghent University. Habib Nassar is Director of Policy and Research at Impunity Watch.] The Syrian conflict has underscored some of the main deficiencies of the international justice system. The multifaceted and protracted conflict, paired with the political stalemate over its resolution have relegated the quest for justice to the...
We announced recently that we are lucky enough to have welcomed the brilliant Sarah Zarmsky to our OJ editorial team and that she would be working with a number of initiatives including the Events and Announcements postings. As part of that, we are also transitioning to a new e-mail address for you to send your events and announcements you’d like...
1- White Supremacy and the International Legal Order Writing in 1997, Charles Mills threw a grenade into political theory. With a touch of hyperbole, we might even say he collapsed the contours of the social sciences. Standard undergraduate philosophy courses, he tells us, cover two thousand years of political thought. Mainstream philosophers introduce students to liberalism and libertarianism, capitalism and...
[Adrienne Ringin holds a Bachelor of Arts (International Politics) and Juris Doctor from the University of Melbourne and currently works as a research assistant to Dr. Rosemary Grey at the University of Sydney with a focus on sexual and gender-based crimes at the International Criminal Court.] September 26 2022 saw the opening of the trial in the case of The...
[Ríán Derrig is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Sasakawa Global Ocean Institute of the United Nations World Maritime University, Malmö.] In late August 2022 delegates from around the world convened at UN Headquarters in New York to agree a treaty. The treaty could protect biodiversity in ocean areas beyond national jurisdiction – the ‘high seas’ – and redistribute ocean resources....
[Zsófia Baumann is a Junior Researcher at the T.M.C. Asser Instituut in The Hague, where she works on topics related to foreign terrorist fighters, counterterrorism and human rights and carries out research on the rehabilitation and reintegration of terrorist offenders.] Part I of this post outlined the main criticisms directed at the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF) from the human rights...
[Zsófia Baumann is a Junior Researcher at the T.M.C. Asser Instituut in The Hague, where she works on topics related to foreign terrorist fighters, counterterrorism and human rights and carries out research on the rehabilitation and reintegration of terrorist offenders.] Introduction The Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF) was set up in 2011 as a multilateral, informal platform of 30 Members working...
[Santiago Vargas Niño, LL.M. is an independent legal consultant and lecturer in international protection of human rights at Los Andes University in Bogotá D.C., Colombia. He previously worked as a legal officer of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace. He also served as an intern, legal assistant, assistant legal officer, and legal consultant of the Office of the Prosecutor of the...
[Archita Sharma and Chytanya S Agarwal are undergraduate students at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore.] The Ukraine-Russia conflict has shown that international armed conflicts are not a distant reality in the 21st Century. The war continues to cause immense suffering and devastation, raising several international law concerns. The alleged use of thermobaric weapons by the Russian forces against Ukraine...
[Ahan Gadkari is a final year BA LLB candidate at Jindal Global Law School. He serves as a Research Assistant under Dr. Aniruddha Rajput, Member, UN International Law Commission.] Introduction The conflict between the Russian Federation and Ukraine increases day by day in intensity and, with it, the already heavy toll in terms of victims, missing persons and displaced persons...
[Luke James, LLM. is a security analyst interested in peace processes. He has worked at the ICC, OSCE, British Red Cross, Platform for Peace Humanity, UNV and is an Army Reservist.] On 5 July, Ret. Colonel John Spencer spoke at NATO’s Urban Warfare Conference in London. He described how Ukrainian President Zelensky “turned his civilians into fighters”, telling the Ukrainians...
John Heieck has been putting together our weekly Events & Announcements post since we relaunched Opinio Juris — more than 160 posts. But all good things must come to an end, so it’s time to say goodbye to John. All of us at OJ want to express our profound gratitude for his efforts, and we wish him nothing but the...
[Kartikeya Garg obtained his LL.M. in International Law from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva (IHEID) and as a lawyer, has worked at the Trade and Environment Division of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).] [The views expressed in this article are personal. This article has been prepared for informational purposes only.] Introduction Climate change mitigation has been...
[Caroline Stover is a lawyer focusing on human rights and refugee law and is currently the acting Head of Asia Programme at ARTICLE 19. Michael Altman-Lupu is a human rights lawyer working with ARTICLE 19 to protect and defend freedom of expression in Southeast Asia.] The Argument for the Investigation of Those Ordering Internet and Telephonic Shutdowns Under Articles 25(3)(c)...
[Caroline Stover is a lawyer focusing on human rights and refugee law and is currently the acting Head of Asia Programme at ARTICLE 19. Michael Altman-Lupu is a human rights lawyer working with ARTICLE 19 to protect and defend freedom of expression in Southeast Asia.] Introduction Across the world, the rise of internet-based communications has facilitated the documentation of evidence...
[Raquel Saavedra is an International Legal Adviser, Myanmar, for the International Commission of Jurists. Kingsley Abbott is the Director of Global Accountability and International Justice, International Commission of Jurists.] In recent conversations with diplomats covering Myanmar, we continue to be asked: is it still worthwhile for states to support the work of Myanmar lawyers when the justice system is in...
[Jennifer Keene-McCann is a Senior Legal Fellow at the Asia Justice Coalition and is based in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. Aakash Chandran is a Fellow at the Asia Justice Coalition and is based in New Delhi, India.] This third Opinio Juris symposium relating to crimes against the Rohingya marks another difficult anniversary. Its theme, ‘Myanmar and International Indifference: Rethinking Accountability’, evokes a...
[Dr Melanie O’Brien is Associate Professor of International Law at the University of Western Australia and President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS). She is also a 2022 research fellow at the Sydney Jewish Museum.] Two years ago, in August 2020, thirteen blog posts were written in a Rohingya Symposium here on Opinio Juris. These posts covered, inter alia, the need...
[Marissa Kardon Weber is an international criminal and human rights lawyer. She works on strategic human rights litigation against Iran and its agents and instrumentalities in U.S. federal court on behalf of victims of hostage taking, torture, extrajudicial killing, and aircraft sabotage. The views expressed herein are entirely her own.] Double Standards in Extrajudicial Killings? The decades of treatment and recent...
[Matthew Smith is the co-founder and CEO of Fortify Rights.] August 25 marks the fifth anniversary of the Myanmar military’s most egregious attacks on the Rohingya people, but it’s not the anniversary of the Rohingya genocide per se. The ongoing genocide dates back decades, partly due to the repeated failure of the “international community”—U.N. member states and various institutions—to respond...
[Laetitia van den Assum is a former ambassador of The Netherlands. She is also a former member of the Rakhine Advisory Commission, chaired by Kofi Annan.] August 2017, Prelude to a Catastrophe Thinking back to Myanmar’s ferocious and indiscriminate military campaign against the Rohingya, my mind turns to 24 August. On that day, the Advisory Commission of Rakhine state, headed...
[Zaw Win is a Human Rights Specialist at Fortify Rights.] The Rohingya are one of the most ill-treated and systematically persecuted groups in the world, having lived in a realm of statelessness and perpetual abuse for over six generations. August 25, 2022, marks five years since genocidal attacks, led by the Myanmar military, forced more than 700,000 Rohingya to flee to...
[Antonia Mulvey is the Executive Director of Legal Action Worldwide (LAW).] As the world marks the 5th Rohingya Genocide Remembrance Day on the 25th of August, it is Rohingya women who are playing a leading role in the fight for international justice. They are ‘Champions of Justice’ – a remarkable group of women who are tearing up the gender norms...
[Savita Pawnday is the Executive Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect]
There are a few anniversaries of note in 2022, which should prompt us to deeper conversations and more concerted action. It is the 10th anniversary of the forced Rohingya exodus from Myanmar, with 25 August marking the 5th Rohingya Genocide Remembrance Day. This year also marks the 20th anniversary of the entry into force of the Rome Statute, which established...
[Abhijeet Shrivastava is a fifth-year law student at Jindal Global Law School, India.] Introduction The emergence of cyberspace has invited countless international legal complications. Debates loom over novel questions concerning the interaction of the new technological terrain with existing thresholds for breaches of international legal commitments. Yet in addition, to prove a State’s “responsibility” for allegedly wrongful acts, a sine...
[Ronit Levine-Schnur is a Senior Lecturer at the Harry Radzyner Law School, Reichman University. She prepared an expert opinion on behalf of the appellants in Saliha v. Minister of Defense (Israel Supreme Court, 27 August 2020).] This post was first published in Hebrew by the Human Rights Blog of the Minerva Center for Human Rights at the Hebrew University of...
[Dr. Emma Irving, M.A., LL.M., is a consultant in the fields of international criminal law, human rights, and technology and was formerly the senior researcher in the Leiden IHL Clinic’s Digitally Derived Evidence Project. Dr. Robert Heinsch, LL.M. is an Associate Professor of Public International Law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies of Leiden University, and is the Director of its Kalshoven-Gieskes Forum...