In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

11 Sep

President Obama has offered conditional support to the another round of diplomacy on Syria and called off Congress' vote on the authorization of military action. Meanwhile, France will put a resolution under Chapter VII on the Security Council's agenda to force Syria to clean up its chemical weapons stock under international control for destruction. The trial of Kenya's deputy President, William Ruto,...

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11 Sep

I have been in Santiago, Chile for the past few days keynoting an international law conference at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. It's an impressive law school in one of the most beautiful cities in South America. I was fortunate to arrive on the eve of the fortieth anniversary of the defining moment in Chilean history: Augusto Pinochet's...

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10 Sep

With the focus now on the Russian proposal to bring Syrian chemical weapons under “international control,” questions that remain include how would this actually work? Who would take control? One likely participant in the implementation would be the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the implementing body for the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).  From the OPCW website: As of today...

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10 Sep

Normally, we post our conference announcements weekly, but we just got word of one tomorrow that's worth flagging.  The British Institute of International and Comparative law (BIICL) will be holding a Rapid Response Seminar tomorrow, September 11, from 4-6 pm to discuss 'Humanitarian Intervention, International Law and Syria'.  As the title suggests, the conversation will discuss whether humanitarian intervention falls...

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10 Sep

An inadvertent suggestion by John Kerry may have provided a solution to the international stalemate on Syria, as it led to a Russian proposal to bring chemical weapons under international control for destruction. The US is open but sceptical to the proposal, as are its allies. Syria's foreign minister has welcomed the proposal, tacitly admitting in the process that the...

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09 Sep

Residents in northeast Nigeria say at least 13 vigilantes and five Boko Haram members have been killed after the group launched attacks on the town of Benisheik. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad denied that he was behind a chemical weapons attack on the Syrian people, as the White House pressed ahead with the effort of persuading Congress to approve a military strike to punish...

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08 Sep

For a number of years now, I've enjoyed watching TED talks  and TEDx events on a variety of subjects in the realms of science, design, and society. TED may be an acronym for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, but TED talks already go well beyond those topics and tomorrow, September 9, there will be a TEDx event on issues of international justice. TEDxHagueAcademy...

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08 Sep

Calls for Papers A workshop on Sociological Inquiries into International Law will take place at the London School of Economics on May 16, 2014. The aim of this workshop is to help bring contemporary international law scholarship into a closer conversation with a number of inspiring and theoretically rich literatures on law and markets deriving from traditions of thinking within sociology and...

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