In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Use of Force

20 Jan

[Ralph Janik teaches international law at the University of Vienna, Webster University Vienna, and the University of Rostock. He specializes in the interplay of international law and international relations. Twitter: @RalphJanik. An earlier version of this article was published (in German) on Völkerrechtsblog.org.] The deadly drone strike against Qasem Soleimani has triggered countless extensive legal, political, and strategic debates. In addition to the...

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14 Jan

[Marina Aksenova is a Professor of Comparative Criminal and International Law, IE Law School Madrid and Linde Bryk is Legal Advisor - Bertha Justice Fellow, European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights.] On 11 December 2019, ECCHR together with a group of NGOs - Mwatana (Yemen), Rete Disarmo (Italy), Centre Delàs (Spain), the Campaign Against Arms Trade (UK) and Amnesty International Secretariat...

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13 Jan

My last post raised a few questions on how we should approach the issue of targeted killings as first strikes in international armed conflicts (IACs). The ensuing Twitter debate proved very enriching, generating some answers and many more questions. This time around, I would like to elaborate on some of these answers and what do I make of their implications...

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09 Jan

Yes. The American strike against Qassem Soleimani was illegal. This is the common conclusion of some of the world’s best experts on international law and jus ad bellum (see here and here for a couple of examples). And, lets be clear, the Iranian response was also illegal (see here and here). Let’s not dwell on these already explored and answered...

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08 Jan

[Beatrice Walton is a 2018 graduate of Yale Law School and served as Judicial Fellow at the International Court of Justice in The Hague in 2018-2019. Paul Strauch graduated from Yale Law School in 2018, where he was a Herbert J. Hansell student fellow at the Center for Global Legal Challenges and Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Journal of International Law....

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18 Dec

[Dearbhla Minogue is a Legal Officer for the Global Legal Action Network and Ruwadzano Patience Makumbe is a Zimbabwean lawyer and currently a Hillary Rodham Clinton Global Challenges Programme Scholar at Swansea University.] Digital technologies have empowered citizens to not only be consumers of information but also creators and distributors, making it possible for ordinary people to highlight human rights violations across the world. As has been the case...

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13 Dec

[Catalina Fernández Carter is a Chilean lawyer and holds and LLM from the University of Cambridge.] According to the latest report by the Chilean National Institute of Human Rights, 241 individuals have suffered eye injuries – several of them resulting in partial or total blindness – in the context of the social unrest the country has experienced since October. Images of people with eye patches have become a...

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07 Dec

On Friday, the Assembly of States Parties unanimously adopted a Swiss proposal to extend the war crime of starvation to non-international armed conflict (NIAC). Previously, for reasons that seem to be largely accidental, the war crime only applied in international armed conflict (IAC). The new war crime is, of course, a welcome development. There is no justification for ever using starvation...

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04 Dec

As readers are no doubt aware, the OTP has once again declined -- now for a third time -- to open an investigation into Israel's violent attack on the MV Mavi Marmara. That decision was wholly expected; the only question was how the OTP would deal with the Appeals Chamber's recent decision in the Comoros situation, in which the Chamber...

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26 Nov

I have posted the first draft on SSRN. The article is entitled, intending to be provocative, "Genuine" Unilateral Humanitarian Intervention -- Another Ticking Time-Bomb Scenario. Here is the abstract: The activation of the crime of aggression at the ICC has renewed interest in one of the oldest and most fraught questions of the jus ad bellum: whether a state is entitled...

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25 Nov

[Solon Solomon is a Lecturer in the Division of Public and International Law at Brunel University London School of Law.] The last few days have seen a renewed legal interest in both sides of the Atlantic concerning the legality of the Israeli settlements. On November 12, the European Union’s court, the ECJ, held that products coming from these settlements must be labelled accordingly....

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