Peru's Justice and Human Rights Commission of the Congress has just published a unified bill that would add the crime of ecocide to the Peruvian penal code. The next step is for Congress to approve the bill and the President to promulgate it. Here is Art. 1 of the unified bill, as translated by ClaudeAI: Article 305-A. Ecocide 305-A.1. Anyone who, knowingly, provokes,...
On June 25, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe (CoE) and the President of Ukraine signed an agreement to create a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression Against Ukraine (STCoA). The tribunal, which will be based on Ukraine's territorial jurisdiction but will have a number of international elements -- and is thus properly categorised as a hybrid...
Much has already been written about the legality of Israel and the US's attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities -- Operation Rising Lion and Operation Midnight Hammer -- including excellent critiques by Marko Milanovic (here and here) and Adil Haque (here). I don't want to rehash their arguments, with which I entirely agree. Instead, I want to explain in this post...
[Image by Freepik.] Introduction It is widely acknowledged that, without regulation, Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) can contribute to violations of international law and benefit from impunity. Both corporate actors and States increasingly rely on PMSCs to secure their operations in high-risk areas—whether through direct contracts, in-house security arrangements, or outsourcing military and law enforcement functions. Numerous UN reports have documented...
Introduction On 27 November 2024, Israel appealed two decisions of the Pre-Trial Chamber that were issued simultaneously with the arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant. The first decision rejected Israel's claim that it was entitled to a new Art. 18 notification because the OTP's s investigation after October 7 was substantially different than the investigation the OTP opened...
On April 4, a group of five states -- Costa Rica, Germany, Sierra Leone, Slovenia and Vanuatu -- formally submitted to the UN Secretary-General the text of a proposed amendment to the Rome Statute. The amendment seeks to harmonise the ICC's jurisdiction over the crime of aggression with the jurisdictional regime that applies to the other crimes. It would do...
The Centre for Military Studies (CMS), which is part of the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen (KU), is advertising two positions at either the Associate Professor or Assistant Professor level. Associate Professor positions are immediately permanent, while Assistant Professor positions are for three years but can become permanent. The flexibility with level is designed to ensure...
The inimitable Sam Moyn and I have a chapter on the Vietnam War and international law in the Cambridge History of the Vietnam War: Volume 3, Endings and Aftermaths, which was just published by Cambridge University Press. Here are the opening paragraphs: There have been thousands of histories of the Vietnam War, but none assigns a pivotal role to international law....
I know Colombia kinda, sorta backed down in the end, but its President's response to Trump's mindless sabre-rattling over deportation flights deserves to be read in full by everyone. Here it is in Spanish: Trump, a mi no me gusta mucho viajar a los EEUU, es un poco aburridor, pero confieso que hay cosas meritorias, me gusta ir a los barrios...
The Chinese Journal of International Law has just published a new article of mine, entitled "The 'Great Powers' and The Formation of International Law. Here is the abstract: The US, Russia, and China – the current “Great Powers” – often disagree over primary rules of international law, such as the scope of self-defence in response to an armed attack. Disagreements over...
In my capacity as Special Adviser on War Crimes, I have been assisting the Prosecutor with the development of the OTP's forthcoming policy on Environmental Crimes Under the Rome Statute (ECP) -- a policy he announced in Paris last February. “Damage to the environment poses an existential threat to all life on the planet,” the Prosecutor said. “For that reason,...
As pretty much everyone in the world knows by now, the ICC's Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) has issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the Palestine situation. (It issued one for Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri -- Deif -- as well.) Like the Office of the Prosecutor's applications, the PTC's decision...