The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran (IIFFM), created by the Human Rights Council, has released a new report. It's a depressing read, painstakingly cataloging Iran's human-rights violations and analysing two airstrikes carried out by the United States on 28 February 2026 -- the notorious attack on the the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab, which...
[Jessica Dorsey is an Assistant Professor of International Law at Utrecht University School of Law and Managing Editor of Opinio Juris.]The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran (FFMI) released its 18-page report to the Human Rights Council on 17 September 2026. In the report, among other findings, the Mission outlines reasonable grounds to believe that the United...
[Veronika Vozniuk is a Ukrainian legal and policy professional working on issues related to international humanitarian law, human rights, and the legal consequences of armed conflict.] Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine has made significant efforts to investigate and prosecute individuals responsible for war crimes committed on its territory. The scale of the alleged crimes is immense and continues...
Like most academics these days, I am very concerned about students misusing large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and ClaudeAI when they write papers for me. I don't teach very often in my current position, but I do supervise masters theses. And there have been a number over the past few years that I suspected were written, in whole or...
[Ezequiel Jimenez Martinez is an Adjunct Professor at the Pompeu Fabra Law Faculty, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Law Research and Policy. He is the author of Governing the International Criminal Court: the History and Practice of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute (Brill, 2025). Sergey Vasiliev is a Professor of International Law at...
[Ezequiel Jimenez Martinez is an Adjunct Professor at the Pompeu Fabra Law Faculty, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Law Research and Policy. He is the author of Governing the International Criminal Court: the History and Practice of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute (Brill, 2025). Sergey Vasiliev is a Professor of International Law at...
[Rashmi Raman is a Research Fellow at the Centre for International Law, National University of Singapore.] In January this year, on this blog, Christine Ryan, Richard Dicker and Akshaya Kumar urged supportive States to resist what they called premature minimalism, warning that limiting proposals to what nearly all member States might accept “risks pointless concessions and irreparably weakening the text”. The...
This is not a rhetorical question. The arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant were issued on 21 November 2024, 21 months ago. The next step is to confirm the charges contained in the arrest warrants, yet there is no indication that the Deputy Prosecutors, who have been in charge of the OTP since May 2025, have any intention of doing...
[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....
[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...
[Kenaw Akililu is currently a MAS candidate in the Master of Advanced Studies in Transitional Justice, Human Rights and Rule of Law at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, and a former law lecturer at Bahir Dar University] Introduction Cyber operations and targeting of cyber infrastructure, including data centres, are increasingly employed during armed conflict and can cause...
[Darryl Robinson is a Professor at Queen’s University, Faculty of Law (Canada)] Matthew Gillett and Rohit Gupta make several excellent points in their two-part response (here and here) to my two newest articles about ecocide, Humans Matter Too and a Challenge for Ecocide Scholarship. I would urge readers, before drawing conclusions about my articles based on the portrayal in those posts,...