In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Foreign Relations Law

21 Aug

[Larry D. Johnson is an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Law School and the Former UN Assistant Secretary-General for Legal Affairs.] The US suffered a humiliating defeat on 14 August 2020 when the UN Security Council failed to adopt a US proposal to extend certain arms restrictions on Iran that are scheduled to be lifted soon pursuant to the “nuclear deal” (JCPOA) concluded in 2015 by China,...

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21 Aug

[Mona Ali Khalil is the Director of MAK LAW INTERNATIONAL; an Affiliate of the Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict; and a former Senior Legal Officer of the United Nations. She holds a B.A. and M.A. in international relations from Harvard University as well as a M.S. in Foreign Service and a Juris Doctorate from Georgetown...

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12 Aug

Our friends at West Point have just launched an ambitious new blog, Articles of War.  The "Authors" page lists seven contributors, all of whom are well-known in IHL, military law, and cognate-discipline circles: Col. Joshua F. Berry, Prof. Geoff Corn, Prof. Ashley Deeks, Lt. Gen. Charles N. Pede, Col. Shane Reeves, Prof. Michael N. Schmitt, and Prof. Sean Watts. The...

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13 Jul

[Bruno Stagno-Ugarte is the Deputy Executive Director (Advocacy) at Human Rights Watch.] Human rights violations committed by the United Kingdom on a remote 53 square kilometer archipelago in the middle of the Indian Ocean may be hampering its ability to take credible action to protect the Rohingya from ethnic cleansing in Myanmar and the fundamental freedoms of Hong Kong from encroaching China. In 1965,...

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10 Jul

Unbeknownst to most Britons, UK-Peru relations are experiencing an unprecedented boon. Only last month, Boris Johnson addressed the Peruvian people through a video statement on Twitter – the first ever such message by a sitting British Prime Minister in Peru’s near-200-year history – highlighting the execution of a so-called “Government to Government (G2G) Agreement” to have British firms rebuild key Peruvian infrastructure destroyed by the El Niño...

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03 Jul

[Danilo Ruggero Di Bella is a lawyer at Bottega Di Bella.] Upon overthrowing a dictatorship, the swift recovery of stolen assets hidden abroad by a dictator is a key concern for every newly established government. At times, a newly constituted government may rely on the voluntary cooperation of foreign state authorities in which stolen assets are located. In other instances, the newly established government may face difficulties...

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30 Jun

[John B. Quigley is Emeritus Professor of Law at Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State University.] The annexation, now under consideration by Israel, of land in occupied Palestine is aimed, in part, at bringing many of Israel’s settlements into the territory of Israel. Annexation, however, may bring the unintended consequence of the loss of those very settlements. Much of the land on which the...

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30 Jun

Along with 187 other American lawyers and legal scholars, I have signed a statement condemning the Trump administration's Executive Order permitting the US to sanction individuals involved with the ICC's investigation into the situation in Afghanistan. It's quite a list of signatories, including three former US war-crimes ambassadors and a number of former judges and prosecutors at various international criminal...

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29 Jun

[Srinivas Burra is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Legal Studies at South Asian University, New Delhi; Haris Jamil is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law at University of Delhi, New Delhi.] On 15 June 2020, there was a violent face-off in the Galwan valley, in the western sector of the China-India border. Soldiers from China and India scuffled at the border, which led to...

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19 Jun

The first part of this two-part post reviewed the law that President Trump invoked in his executive order announcing a sanctions program regarding the International Criminal Court, and went through the different provisions of the order. This part will discuss some relevant issues not directly addressed in the order, and provide some views on what to expect going forward. A Modicum...

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04 Jun

[Dr. Jelena Aparac is lecturer and legal advisor in international law, with a research focused on Business and Human Rights in Armed Conflicts; and a Member of the UN Working Group on mercenaries. This is the first part of a two-part post. This is part of a series of blog posts examining International Criminal Law and the Protection of the...

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