Use of Force

This week, we have the honor of hosting a symposium on Yasmine Nahlawi's recent book, The Responsibility to Protect in Libya and Syria: Mass Atrocities, Human Protection, and International Law. From the publisher: This book offers a novel and contemporary examination of the ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P) doctrine from an international legal perspective and analyses how the doctrine was applied within...

[Beth Van Schaack is the Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor in Human Rights at the Law School and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for International Security & Cooperation at Stanford University. Please don’t miss Patryk I. Labuda’s symposium post at Justice in Conflict.] The relationship between the United States and the ICC has been characterized by change more than continuity....

[Elizabeth Evenson is an associate International Justice director at Human Rights Watch.] Widespread international crimes and the failure of governments to prosecute them make the International Criminal Court necessary. But translating the court’s mandate into action has been fraught with challenges. Significant setbacks in prosecution cases, gaps in communication between the court and affected communities, outstanding arrest warrants, and limited resources, among other factors, have constrained...

[Luis Moreno Ocampo is the Founding Chief Prosecutor of the ICC (2003-2012)]. In late 2020, the third International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor will be appointed. One thing is certain: she/he will face new challenges. Should the new Prosecutor open an investigation in Venezuela? Or against British personnel in Iraq? Burundi, Philippines or Georgia? What should be the focus of the Afghanistan and Palestine investigations? At the beginning of...

[Kevin Jon Heller is Associate Professor of Public International Law at the University of Amsterdam and Professor of Law at the Australian National University; Mark Kersten is a Senior Consultant at the Wayamo Foundation and creator of the blog Justice in Conflict; Patryk I. Labuda is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy; and Priya Pillai...

[Fabricio Guariglia is Director of Prosecutions, Office of the Prosecutor, International Criminal Court. The opinions in this article are solely the author’s and should not be attributed to the Office of the Prosecutor or the International Criminal Court.] As we move further into the uncertain, our offices turned virtual, our children at home, our social habits transformed, our concerns for ourselves and others guiding our daily routines,...

[Jennifer Trahan is a Professor at the NYU Center for Global Affairs.] On March 5, 2020, the International Criminal Court’s Appeals Chamber issued an extremely significant ruling authorizing the opening of the Afghanistan investigation.  The decision is important in that it confirms the Prosecutor’s discretion in evaluating whether or not to proceed “in the interests of justice” under Article 53(1)(c) of the Rome Statute, thereby allowing the Afghanistan...

[Dr. Leonie Steinl, LL.M. is a post-doctoral researcher at Hamburg University, where she works in a DFG-project on "Strategic Litigation Networks and Accountability for Gross Violations of Human Rights". Dr. Wenke Brückner currently works as a lawyer in Berlin, specializing in German and international criminal law. Both authors have previously worked on different aspects of the case of Hanan v. Germany for...

Most readers will be familiar with the Caroline Affair. A group of Canadian rebels seized an American vessel and used it to transport ammunitions from the US to Canada. British forces raided the ship, burned it, killed two men, and sent its wreckage over the Niagara Falls. The incident gave rise to perhaps one of the most frequently quoted maxims in the law of use...

[ Luigi Daniele is Lecturer in Law at Nottingham Trent University, where he leads the undergraduate and postgraduate modules in International Humanitarian Law.] For more than a decade international lawyers have been debating Israel’s claim against the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the situation in Palestine, notoriously based on the argument that no Palestine State exists since ‘the Palestinian Authority lacks effective control over the...

[Katherine Gallagher is a Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, where she focuses on holding individuals and corporations accountable for egregious human rights and international law violations. @katherga1. The views expressed in this post are made in my personal capacity and do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization I am currently or formerly associated with, nor the views...