It's only a matter of time before we start seeing proposals to take away the citizenship of Americans fighting for ISIS/ISIL forces in Syria and Iraq. They have drawn renewed attention in the wake of James Foley's beheading (apparently by a British citizen) and the death, reported at length today in the NYT, of American Douglas McCain in Syria. Several...
The New York Times is running a big report today on the U.S. plan to sign a "sweeping" climate change agreement without having to go to Congress for approval or ratification. Instead of a typical treaty requiring ratification by the Senate, the U.S. has a different more creative strategy. American negotiators are instead homing in on a hybrid agreement — a proposal...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa Families hiding infected loved ones and the existence of "shadow zones" where medics cannot go mean the West African Ebola epidemic is even bigger than thought, the World Health Organisation has said. Mozambique's former rebel group Renamo and the Frelimo-led government have signed a ceasefire deal, ending two years of armed...
This week on Opinio Juris, we had the final instalments of our Emerging Voices symposium, with a post by Tamar Meshel on awakening the "Sleeping Beauty of the Peace Palace" and one by Mélanie Vianney-Liaud on the controversy surrounding the definition of the Cambodian genocide at the ECCC. More definitional issues arose in Kevin's post discussing Britain's expanded definition on terrorism, which now includes watching the video...
Just keeping up with the news on international terrorism/counterterrorism this summer could be a full time job. Among many other potentially significant reports, I wanted to highlight this statement recently released by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), often described by U.S. officials as the branch of Al Qaeda that currently poses the greatest threat to the United States....
[caption id="attachment_31019" align="alignnone" width="300"] Map credit: Wikimedia Commons via Radiolab[/caption] Radiolab has posted an informative and entertaining essay entitled "How to Cross 5 International Borders in 1 Minute without Sweating." It describes the intertwined municipalities of the Dutch town Baarle-Nassau and the Belgian town Baarle-Hertog. Here's the evocative description by Robert Krulwich of Radiolab: The hunky yellow bit labeled "H1" (for Hartog)...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa Kenya is closing its borders to travellers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three countries worst hit by the Ebola outbreak, the government has announced. Two U.N. peacekeepers were killed and nine others injured in a suicide attack on a patrol base in northern Mali, the U.N....
This week on Opinio Juris, we started with follow-up on last week, with Julian raising more issues with the emerging Article II humanitarian intervention power and Kevin sharing his final thoughts on the Bar Human Rights Committee's letter to the OTP in relation to the situation in Gaza. More on the Gaza situation in a post by Kristin Hausler and Robert McCorquodale, who asked whether attacks on schools,...
Peacekeeping missions such as the UN’s intervention brigade in the DRC (established within MONUSCO by Security Council resolution 2098) have important legal implications. In particular, if the Brigade is considered a party to the conflict in the Congo, do peacekeepers become combattants? Can they be captured and detained? For an overview of the main issues see the ASIL analysis by...
Dan Geer, the chief of information security for In-Q-Tel (essentially, the venture capital fund that supports tech innovation for the CIA) gave a wide-ranging keynote speech at Black Hat, a convention of cybersecurity experts. A video of the speech is available here. I want to focus on one specific issue among the many he discussed: his call for the US government...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa Rwanda has placed a German student with Ebola-like symptoms in isolation, and is waiting for test results checking for the deadly tropical disease, the health ministry says. Guinea has announced the closure of its borders with Sierra Leone and Liberia because of the virus and the World Health Organization...
This week on Opinio Juris, the main point of discussion was the ICC's jurisdiction over the situation in Gaza. Eugene Kontorovich put the spotlight on a recent development at the ICC in relation to Egypt that reduces the chances of the Palestinians' ICC accession bid being accepted, to which Kevin responded here and Eugene followed up here. In related posts, Kevin pointed out the Bar...
