In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Middle East

08 Sep

[Dr Mais Qandeel is an Associate Professor of International Law at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, University of Galway, Ireland, and Örebro University, Sweden. She holds a Ph.D. in international humanitarian law from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.] Introduction  In addition to the genocide in Gaza perpetrated by Israel since October 2023, Israeli settlers and military have been escalating their deadly...

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08 Sep

[Lara Torbay is a PhD candidate at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.] Recent developments in Gaza reveal the ways in which development cooperation – a putative expression of solidarity – can function as a neocolonial tool. Of course, the weaponization of development cooperation is not new: post-development scholars have highlighted and criticized it arguing that, against colonized peoples, development cooperation cannot...

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07 Sep

[Mehmet Sercan Ercan is an independent researcher with a PhD in Public Law, working in the fields of general public law and constitutional law.] International legal norms already exist. What is missing is the institutional capacity to enforce them in situations of mass atrocity. The post-Cold War era nurtured the ambition to transform humanitarian intervention into a universal standard, later conceptualized...

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03 Sep

[Bashar AlHadla is a human rights researcher and educator specializing in international human rights law, refugee protection, and nationality law. He holds graduate degrees from Union University in Belgrade, the University of Toronto, and the University of London.] In February 2026, the United States Central Command announced the completion of transferring 5,700 ISIS terrorist fighters from detention camps in north-eastern Syria...

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21 Aug

[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....

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21 Aug

[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...

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21 Aug

[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...

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17 Aug

[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...

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17 Aug

[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...

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17 Jul

[Taylor Kate Woodcock is a researcher in public international law at the T.M.C. Asser Instituut and Jessica Dorsey is an Assistant Professor of International Law at Utrecht University School of Law and Managing Editor of Opinio Juris.]  Four and a half months have passed since the Minab school bombing by United States forces in Iran on 28 February 2026, killing at least 157 people – including 120...

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18 May

[Gerhard Kemp is professor of criminal law at UWE Bristol and serves on the board of directors and executive committee of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town] The recently adopted “Death Penalty for Terrorists Law” (unofficial translation, here) was met with widespread condemnation by governments (e.g., here, here), civil society and human rights groups (e.g., here), the UN High...

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