International Humanitarian Law

[Nathaniel Berman is the Rahel Varnhagen Professor of International Affairs, Law, and Modern Culture at Brown University. This is the second part of a two-part post.] [In Part One of this essay, I argued for the importance of the reaffirmation of the illegality of annexation of occupied territory. I outlined, and partly responded to, the criticism of this position “from the...

[Nathaniel Berman is the Rahel Varnhagen Professor of International Affairs, Law, and Modern Culture at Brown University. This is the first part of a two-part post.] Israel may be on the brink of formally annexing large swaths of the West Bank. Ever since Trump’s victory in 2016, the pro-settler Israeli right has sensed a historic opportunity to secure its cherished goal:...

[Nicola Palmer is a Senior Lecturer in criminal law at King’s and the author of Courts in Conflict: Interpreting the Layers of Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda.] On Saturday, 16 May 2020 Félicien Kabuga, a former businessman accused of being a major financial backer of Hutu extremism in the build-up to, and during, the Rwandan genocide was arrested in a flat in Asnieres-sur-Seine...

[Jennifer Trahan is Clinical Professor, NYU Center for Global Affairs and Megan Fairlie is Professor of Law, Florida International University College of Law.] This past week, certain members of the US House and Senate released two letters (here and (here) that demonstrate, at best, a woeful lack of comprehension of the International Criminal Court.  The letters suggest that the ICC’s preliminary...

[Jonathan Turner is a barrister in London and Chief Executive of UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI)] Practising advocates know that what is not included in reply submissions is usually more interesting than what is there. One of the omissions in the ICC Prosecutor’s recent Response on the issue of the Court’s territorial jurisdiction in respect of Palestine is that it does not address the argument made by...

[Mathias Holvoet works as a Legal Officer at the Federal Prosecutor’s Office of Belgium.] This post is a follow-up post on Kevin Jon Heller’s post ‘the OTP Lets Australia off the Hook’, in which he vehemently criticized the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor’s decision not to open a preliminary examination over the situation in Nauru and Manus Island, after denying to qualify...

[Kate Vigneswaran is a Senior Legal Advisor with the International Commission of Jurists.] As other countries across North Africa entered lockdown in March 2020 to prevent and contain the spread of COVID-19, warring parties in Libya ramped up their hostilities. On 24 March 2020, the day after the UN Secretary-General called for a global ceasefire to combat the pandemic, the first diagnosed case of COVID 19 was...

[Eve Massingham, Simon McKenzie and Rain Liivoja are members of the Law and the Future of War Research Group at the University of Queensland Law School. The Research Group receives funding from the Australian Government through the Defence Cooperative Research Centre for Trusted Autonomous Systems. The views and opinions expressed in the article are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australian Government...

[Elke Schwarz is a Lecturer in Political Theory at Queen Mary University London and Researcher in ethics and technology. This post is part of our symposium on legal, operational, and ethical questions on the use of AI and machine learning in armed conflict.] Artificial Intelligence (AI) in armed conflict is often considered under the cluster of ‘emerging technologies’, but the concept and field of study has its origins...

[Dustin A. Lewis is the Research Director at Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict. This post is part of our symposium on legal, operational, and ethical questions on the use of AI and machine learning in armed conflict.] I am grateful for the invitation to contribute to this online symposium. The preservation of international legal responsibility and agency concerning the employment of artificial-intelligence techniques...

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are computer programs that carry out tasks – often associated with human intelligence – that require cognition, planning, reasoning or learning. Machine learning systems are AI systems that are “trained” on and “learn” from data, which ultimately define the way they function. Both are complex software tools, or algorithms, that can be applied to many different tasks. However, AI and machine learning...