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[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. An earlier version of this post was presented at Gikii in Utrecht, 8 September 2023.] When Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace was released in 1999, viewers...

[Keri van Douwen is a PhD Candidate in Public International Law at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam.] Introduction  In February 2014, the exhibition The Crimea – Gold and Secrets of the Black Sea opened at the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam. Not long after, the Russian Federation illegally annexed the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. The events prompted archeologist and curator Valentina Mordvinseva to...

[Ruth Houghton is a Senior Lecturer at Newcastle Law School (UK). Aoife O’Donoghue is a Professor in the School of Law at Queen’s University Belfast.] Given the disdain with which international legal scholarship holds utopian thinking, it is perhaps surprising that international law has its own utopian literature, its own genre of utopias. And we’re not just talking about Philip Allott’s...

[Carla Ferstman is a Professor of Law at Essex Law School, United Kingdom.] The Wizard of Oz, a bestselling American children’s novel released in 1900 which spawned several movie and theatre adaptations, is a classic allegorical tale about overcoming adversity and the search for the idylls of home.  The Stuff of Fairy Tales Young Dorothy and her pet terrier, Toto, are on the...

[Alonso Gurmendi is a Lecturer in International Relations at King’s College London Department of War Studies and a Contributing Editor at Opinio Juris.]  [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 was also a...

[Eoin Jackson (LLM Harvard, LLB Trinity College Dublin)] All views are entirely the author's own and do not necessarily represent any organization that the author may be associated with. In recent years there has been increased recognition that the climate emergency will have a disproportionate impact on minorities. We have seen an acknowledgement that climate change will have a gendered impact, a focus on the...

The UN Team of Experts on the Rule of Law and Sexual Violence in Conflict is looking to hire four interns: In the context of an ongoing project, the UN Team of Experts is currently seeking assistance to prepare and publish seven research papers on international criminal law and sexual violence in conflict. The research topics include: Understanding CRSV casebuilding: examining prosecution...

Introduction Of all the questions I've been asked concerning the latest round of violence in the Israel/Palestine situation, the most common is whether Israel's actions in Gaza amount to the war crime of collective punishment. Because of my role as a Special Advisor to the ICC Prosecutor, it would be inappropriate for me to address that question; there is, of course,...

[Chuka Arinze-Onyia is a practicing criminal defense lawyer with an avid interest in international justice issues. He authored this article during a recent stint as an International Justice in Africa Fellow with Amnesty International.] On 16 December 2022, the ICC Prosecutor announced that his office had concluded the investigation phase of its work in Central African Republic (CAR) and would not pursue new...

[Dr Saeed Bagheri is Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in International Law at the University of Reading School of Law. He conducts research in the law on the use of force and international humanitarian law.] After three decades of being occupied by Armenia, the territories in and around Nagorno-Karabakh (NK), which make up more than 20 per cent of Azerbaijan’s territory were recaptured...

[Stefano Angeleri (X/Twitter: @StefAngeleri) is a EU’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at Queen's University Belfast and visiting scientist at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University] Funding: This research was supported by funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 101032116—HEAVEN. During the last 8 years, 7.7 million people have fled Venezuela...

[Victor S. Mariottini de Oliveira is a PhD candidate in International Law at the Geneva Graduate Institute, Switzerland] Introduction On September 19th 2023, Azerbaijan launched a military operation targeting separatist positions in the contested region of Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway territory of Armenian majority located within Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized borders. The “anti-terror” operation orchestrated as a response to alleged infrastructure sabotage activities carried...