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[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...

[Triestino Mariniello is Professor of Law at Liverpool John Moores University (UK). He is also Member of the Legal Team representing Gaza Victims before the ICC. This post is written in his personal academic capacity.] On 3 December 2023, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) concluded his first mission to Israel and Palestine. In Israel, the Prosecutor met with survivors and...

[Sara Dal Monico is a PhD fellow in International Law at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice] Digital Sequence Information of Genetic Resources These days (almost) anything can be stored digitally, even the DNA of a plant or seed. One of the latest and emerging debates which has taken over at the Conference of the Parties of December 2022 (CoP) of the Convention...

[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...

[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,...

[Chris McQuade is a Senior Teaching Fellow in Law at the University of Portsmouth. He holds a PhD in International Law from the University of Sussex and researches in the fields of public international law, international humanitarian law and international and domestic human rights law.] In response to the October 7 attack by Hamas, the Israeli army has engaged in an...

[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...

[Hakan Kaplankaya is a former Turkish diplomat, lawyer and instituDE member.] The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered a historic judgment on September 26, 2023, in the case of Yalçınkaya v. Türkiye, which addressed the conviction of an ordinary teacher on charges of “membership in a terrorist organization” held for his connection to the Gülen Group. This landmark ruling, constituting the 60th violation of...

Events and Announcements will resume on 7 January 2024. Happy holidays from Opinio Juris! ⛄️ Calls for Papers National Law School of India Review: The National Law School of India Review (NLSIR) is the flagship student-edited law review of the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru. It is now in its 36th year and the oldest such law review in the Indian subcontinent. Volume 36(1)...

[Alonso Gurmendi Dunkelberg is a Lecturer in International Relations at King’s College London’s Department of War Studies. I wish to thank Ntina Tzouvala for her comments on previous versions of this post] For the past few months, in the context of the horrific attacks of October 7th and the subsequent Israeli military retaliation, it has become almost a ritualised incantation for...

[Fatima Mehmood is a lecturer of Public International Law at Universal College Lahore, Pakistan] Is the contemporary prohibition against genocide mere rhetoric considering what we see today in the Gaza strip and beyond or is there some tangible weight to this prohibition which can be translated into effective action for accountability against Israel? How is the prohibition against genocide actionable or...