In association with the International Commission of Jurists

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29 Jul

[Rebecca Bakos Blumenthal is Starvation and Humanitarian Crisis Lead at Global Rights Compliance. Elise Lauriot Prevost is a legal advisor with Global Rights Compliance.] Siege Tactics in Syria This article traces Russia’s use of siege warfare and the deliberate starvation of civilians, field-tested across the Syrian conflict and then deployed against Mariupol. Part II examines the siege of Yarmouk camp, now the subject of pending criminal proceedings...

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29 Jul

[Rebecca Bakos Blumenthal is Starvation and Humanitarian Crisis Lead at Global Rights Compliance. Elise Lauriot Prevost is a legal advisor with Global Rights Compliance.] I. Introduction In February 2022, as Russian forces encircled Mariupol and began systematically severing its electricity, water, and food supply, many observers described what was unfolding as unprecedented: a European city of nearly half a million people, deliberately starved into submission. It was...

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28 Jul

[Moisés A. Montiel is a Venezuelan-Mexican international lawyer, focusing on the law of sources and teaching international law at Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas at Mexico City] For nearly sixty years, the parties to the Guyana-Venezuela controversy have disagreed not only about who owns the Esequibo, but about what the dispute between them actually entails. The submission of this controversy to the International Court...

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28 Jul

[Lena Raxter is an Adjunct Professor at American University, Washington College of Law] Introduction The International Law Commission (ILC), during its seventy-sixth session in May 2025, provisionally adopted the first-reading draft conclusions on subsidiary means for the determination of rules of international law. Among them, Draft Conclusion 6 [7] addresses the absence of legally binding precedent in international law, providing that: Decisions of international courts or tribunals...

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27 Jul

[Yiokasti Mouratidi is a Doctoral Candidate at the Swedish Defence University, jointly with Utrecht University] IBM is widely recognised as bringing computers to the masses. But less known is its collaboration with the US military during the Vietnam War, providing computing power to advance data-driven military targeting. This collaboration reportedly included posting 250 IBM employees on overseas assignments to Southeast Asia, tasked with installing and maintaining data...

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27 Jul

[John B. Quigley is Professor Emeritus at the Moritz College of Law of The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio USA] On October 3, 1923, a telegram marked “urgent” was sent to the Secretary-General of the League of Nations, Eric Drummond, in Geneva. It read: “may h[is] m[ajesty’s] g[overnment] assume officially that mandate for Palestine entered into force as from September...

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23 Jul

[Fahimeh Heydari Torkabad is a Ph.D. Candidate in International Law at Allameh Tabataba'i University and a Lecturer at Kharazmi University] On March 1, 2026, blast waves from a missile strike targeting the Arg Square judicial complex in Tehran reached the Golestan Palace, shattering nineteenth-century stained glass and fracturing its iconic Mirror Hall. UNESCO countered the geopolitical rhetoric by declaring that Golestan Palace represents the irreplaceable story of...

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23 Jul

[Dr Çiğdem İleri Köksal is a lawyer based in Hamburg and received her PhD from Bucerius Law School in Germany. Dr. Işıl Kurnaz is a scholar in international human rights law based in Pisa and holds a PhD from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Italy.] Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention by Presidential Decision published in the Official Gazette on 20 March 2021 generated an...

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22 Jul

[Alireza Dadkhah Aseman is an Independent Researcher in International Law at the University of Tehran. Rezvan Bagherzadeh is an Assistant Professor of International Law at Bu-Ali Sina University.] Introduction International law has long sought to preserve an equilibrium between sovereign equality and collective security. Yet that balance becomes increasingly fragile when doctrines developed in response to contemporary security threats begin operating beyond clearly defined legal limits. The...

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22 Jul

[Astrid Le Jeanne holds an LLM by Research in International Law from the University of Edinburgh. Her work explores the evolving responses of international law to gender inequality and gender oppression] In the first week of February 2026, the Taliban promulgated a new Criminal Procedure Code: a 119-article document that permanently consolidates a legal architecture designed to erase women and girls from Afghan public...

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22 Jul

[Yu-Chen Cheng is a Research Assistant at the Center for International Legal Research, National Chengchi University] Introduction The Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress (official Mandarin text here; unofficial English translation here), adopted by the National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C., hereinafter China) in March 2026, entered into force on 1 July 2026. The Law raises two dimensions of legal questions, depending...

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21 Jul

[Catherine Maia is a professor of International Law at Lusófona University (Portugal), and Sciences Po Paris (France)] On 9 June 2026, ICC Pre-Trial Chamber II issued a significant decision in the Situation in Ukraine concerning the interpretation of Article 97 of the Rome Statute. Although the judgment remains heavily redacted, it provides the Court’s most comprehensive guidance to date on the consultation procedure available...

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