[Francisco Javier Rozas Porras is a Spanish lawyer and PhD researcher in international law of the sea at the DEHUKAM Institute / Ankara University. He holds an LL.M. in Maritime Law from ICADE University in Madrid, Spain.] Introduction In 2026, Spain’s migration policy features a striking paradox. The Government has launched one of the most ambitious regularization processes in Europe on land,...
[Natia Navrouzov is a lawyer and the Executive Director of Yazda, a global Yazidi organisation that has documented ISIL’s crimes since 2014 and supports survivors of the Yazidi genocide through legal, psychosocial, and advocacy work] On 20 March 2026, the Paris Assize Court convicted Sabri Essid of genocide and crimes against humanity for atrocities committed against the Yazidi community in Iraq....
[Fadel Abdulghany is executive director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights and author of The Use of Chemical Weapons in Syria and the Failure of the International Community and Undermining the Independence of the Judiciary in Syria and Pathways to Its Reform.] For six years, Al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria was the world's largest and most troubled detention site linked to the Islamic State and the...
[Arez Rizgari is an Iranian scholar. The author is writing under a pseudonym because they are concerned that this post will subject them to political retaliation or restrictions on their academic freedom by Iranian authorities.] On the morning of 17 July 2026, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) struck the offices of the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan in the Kurdistan...
[Aldo Zammit Borda is a Professor at The City Law School, City St George's, University of London. Stefan Mandelbaum is a Lecturer at Leicester Law School, University of Leicester. Andrea Maria Pelliconi is a Lecturer in Human Rights Law at the University of Southampton.] The ICJ’s 2012 judgment in Jurisdictional Immunities of the State (Germany v. Italy: Greece intervening) has been read from...
[Efrén Ismael Sifontes Torres is an Ayudante de Segunda in international law courses, and the academic co-coordinator of the Observatory of International Humanitarian Law, for the University of Buenos Aires School of Law] On 24 July, the Venezuelan's interim authorities announced through their Minister of Foreign Affairs' X account, the “firm and unwavering” decision to withdraw from the Rome Statute and therefore, leave the International...
[Tomás Cristóbal Alonso Sandoval Tomás has a PhD in Advanced Studies in Human Rights (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid), and is a lawyer, international litigator, university professor, and researcher] The Forgotten Dictatorship: An Authoritarianism Operating in Silence The expression “forgotten dictatorship” accurately describes the Nicaraguan situation because, although international organizations have documented serious, systematic, and ongoing human rights violations, the country’s crisis...
[Clara Sandoval is an international human rights lawyer, Honorary Professor at Essex University, and founding member of the Essex Transitional Justice Network. She is also a visiting professor at the Geneva Academy, and Director of Programmes at the Global Survivors Fund where she works on reparation.] The author served as expert in this case, providing analysis on Peru’s reparations framework, including...
[Timothy William Waters is the Richard S. Melvin Professor at Indiana University Maurer School of Law, and author of Boxing Pandora: Rethinking Borders, States, and Secession in a Democratic World (Yale University Press, 2020). His new book on secession in the United States is tentatively titled Unmapping America: The Case for A New Declaration of Independence (The New Press, forthcoming...
[Davit Khachatryan is a lecturer at American University of Armenia and Russian-Armenian University] There is something almost ritualistic about restating the law of self-defense. Article 51 has been parsed, contested, stretched, and invoked in nearly every major armed conflict since 1945. Few provisions of international law are at once so settled in principle and so contested in application. Yet the war between Iran...
[Sarah Shoker is a Senior Non-Resident Fellow in artificial intelligence at U.C. Berkeley Risk and Security Lab and former Geopolitics Team Lead at OpenAI. Jessica Dorsey is an Assistant Professor of International Law at Utrecht University School of Law and Managing Editor of Opinio Juris.] What began as a quiet contract dispute between the U.S. Department of Defense and the AI...
[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 Tarajal...