In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Humanitarian Law

27 Jan

[Milena Sterio is the Charles R. Emrick Jr. - Calfee Halter & Griswold Professor of Law at Cleveland State University’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and Managing Director at the Public International Law & Policy Group.] On January 26, 2024, the International Court of Justice issued five provisional measures in the South Africa v. Israel case, brought by South Africa under the...

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04 Jan

[I serve as Special Adviser to the ICC Prosecutor on War Crimes. This post is written solely in my academic capacity.] Introduction A few weeks ago, I wrote a long response to an Open Letter calling on the Assembly of States Parties to interfere in the Prosecutor's investigation into the situation in Palestine. Opinio Juris has now published a new attack on...

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27 Dec

[Dr Mara Tignino is Lead Legal Specialist at the Geneva Water Hub and Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law and the Institute for Environmental Sciences at the University of Geneva. Dr Tadesse Kebebew is post-doctoral researcher at the Geneva Water Hub.] Introduction  On 7 October 2023, Hamas launched an unprecedented ‘‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’’ against Israel from Gaza. Following the attack, Israel declared...

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21 Dec

[Dr. Mais Qandeel is a Senior Lecturer of International Law at Örebro University, Sweden. She holds a Ph.D. in international humanitarian law from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.] Introduction On 7 October 2023, in the wake of Hamas’ attack, Israel declared a ‘state of war’ and invoked its ‘right to self-defence’. Israel launched heavy retaliatory military attacks on the besieged Gaza Strip,...

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19 Dec

[Neil Renic is a Researcher at the Centre for Military Studies at the University of Copenhagen, focusing on the changing character and regulation of armed conflict, and emerging military technologies such as armed drones and autonomous weapons. Elke Schwarz is Reader in Political Theory at Queen Mary University London, specialising in ethics of war and ethics of technology with an emphasis on unmanned and autonomous...

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08 Dec

[As stated on the Contributors page and in my full profile, I serve as Special Adviser to the ICC Prosecutor on War Crimes. This post is written in my personal academic capacity.] Introduction A group of scholars and practitioners have published an open letter to the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) expressing their "grave concern over the integrity of the Office of...

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05 Dec

[Ezequiel Heffes is the Director of Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict. Samantha Holmes is a Researcher for Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict and the Coordinator of the Generating Respect Hub at the University of York's Center for Applied Human Rights.] Children’s insecurity worldwide is proliferated despite the existing international legal framework aimed at protecting them. More than one in...

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15 Nov

[Francesco Paolo Levantino is a PhD Candidate in International and European Human Rights Law at Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies (Pisa, Italy).] Introducing “Emotion Recognition” Among many other innovations, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has paved the way for “inferring” human emotions by the automated analysis of physical, physiological or behavioural characteristics. The purported capabilities and potential applications of emotion recognition technology (ERT)...

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14 Nov

[Esti Tambay is a Strategic Litigation Officer at the Open Society Justice initiative, working primarily on accountability for international crimes. Anna Khalfaoui is an Associate Lawyer at Open Society Justice Initiative, working primarily on accountability for international crimes and climate justice.] The Wagner Group has been associated with international crimes and serious human rights violations in Ukraine since the launch of Russia’s full-scale...

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24 Oct

Introduction Of all the questions I've been asked concerning the latest round of violence in the Israel/Palestine situation, the most common is whether Israel's actions in Gaza amount to the war crime of collective punishment. Because of my role as a Special Advisor to the ICC Prosecutor, it would be inappropriate for me to address that question; there is, of course,...

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20 Oct

[Alonso Gurmendi is a Lecturer in International Relations at Kings College London’s Department of War Studies and a contributing editor at Opinio Juris. I wish to thank Dr. Helen M. Kinsella, Prof. Adil Haque, and Ms. Sarah Zarmsky for their comments on previous versions of this post] On October 7th, Hamas militants broke down the security fences around Gaza, took over...

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