June 2020

[Srinivas Burra is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Legal Studies at South Asian University, New Delhi; Haris Jamil is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law at University of Delhi, New Delhi.] On 15 June 2020, there was a violent face-off in the Galwan valley, in the western sector of the China-India border. Soldiers from China and India scuffled at the border, which led to...

Luca Ferro is a post-doctoral researcher at the Ghent Rolin-Jaequemyns International Law Institute (GRILI). He wrote his doctoral dissertation on International ‘Intervention’ in Theory and in Practice, assessing the legality of third-State involvement in the internal and external affairs of other States. Prematurely calling time of death on ‘negative equality’? On 5 and 6 December 2019, the Journal on the Use of Force and International Law (JUFIL) and the...

[Marie Steinbrecher is currently a teaching fellow at UCL’s Department of Political Science while completing her PhD at Royal Holloway’s School of Law.] The Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT) obliges State Parties to designate a National Preventive Mechanism (NPM). NPMs are mandated to visit all places of deprivation of liberty to prevent torture and ill-treatment. To date, 90 States have ratified OPCAT...

[Aparajitha Narayanan currently works as a Legal Intern for the UNIRMCT and for Global Rights Compliance, The Hague. She holds an Adv. LL.M. in Public International Law from Leiden University (2019).] Introduction As a planet we are currently going through an unfortunate phase where the global order has taken a disruptive hit. Many believe that it is perhaps impossible to recover from this pandemic-created sinkhole, since COVID-19 has...

[Dr. Alexander Heinze, LL.M. (TCD) is Assistant Professor at the Department of Foreign and International Criminal Law, Institute for Criminal Law and Justice, Georg-August-University of Göttingen.] There are two ways an International(ised) Criminal Tribunal (ICT) can regulate the transmission of information in the proceedings: by combining a case file approach with a restrictive disclosure regime or by introducing extensive disclosure rules with no case file or one that merely...

Miloon Kothari is President of UPR Info and the former UN Special Rapporteur on Housing. One of the defining features of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process have been the robust follow-up mechanisms that have emerged throughout the reporting cycles of the UPR. The reports prepared for the UPR, by governments, civil society, national human rights institutions and UN agencies, reveal a range of strategies...

[Arron N. Honniball is a Research Fellow at the Centre for International Law (CIL), National University of Singapore, Singapore. Funding was provided to CIL by a Singapore Maritime Institute Grant (SMI-2019-MA-03).] Introduction Part I of this two-part post reviewed the M/V Wise Honest’s final voyage against the UNSC framework that prohibits such illicit trafficking by sea, followed by the rights and practice...

[Arron N. Honniball is a Research Fellow at the Centre for International Law (CIL), National University of Singapore, Singapore. Funding was provided to CIL by a Singapore Maritime Institute Grant (SMI-2019-MA-03).] Introduction The M/V Wise Honest (IMO 8905490) was, since 17 November 2016, a North Korean owned and flagged cargo ship engaged in numerous violations of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolutions,...

[Gabriella Citroni is Senior Researcher in International Law and Lecturer in International Human Rights Law at the University of Milano-Bicocca. She is also senior legal advisor of the NGO TRIAL International. Aintzane Márquez is Senior Attorney at Women’s Link Worldwide. Both organizations work to ensure that crimes committed against women and girls during wartime, under dictatorships and in context of oppression...

[Dr. Michael Kearney is a legal researcher with Al-Haq.] A March 2020 Amicus Brief submitted by Palestinian human rights organisations, including Al-Haq, to the Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court suggested that the Court’s territorial jurisdiction extends to Palestine’s Exclusive Economic Zone. The Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), a jurisdictional space derived from the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, was proclaimed by Palestine in September 2019....

The first part of this two-part post reviewed the law that President Trump invoked in his executive order announcing a sanctions program regarding the International Criminal Court, and went through the different provisions of the order. This part will discuss some relevant issues not directly addressed in the order, and provide some views on what to expect going forward. A Modicum...

I want to call readers' attention to an upcoming Opinio Juris symposium that is being organized by two fantastic young critical international law scholars, Mohsen al Attar (Warwick) and Rohini Sen (O.P. Jindal). They are looking for a few more contributions, per the Call for Papers -- really a Call for Posts -- below. Note that they would like to...