While much of the world is aghast and transfixed by the migrant detention camps in the U.S., there is another dire human rights and humanitarian crisis brewing and about to reach its zenith in the Indian state of Assam on 31 July 2019. A legal process is underway – updating the "National Register of Citizens" – that threatens to dispossess...
The situation in Libya is deteriorating, with each day bringing news even more dire than the previous, regarding the state of the conflict and the plight of civilians. Caught up in this complex situation are significant numbers of individuals fleeing from their countries and seeking refuge, who have been forcibly relocated to Libya and are now languishing in multiple detention...
The UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Agnes Callamard, released her report into the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi last Wednesday. The report traces with careful detail the run up to, and the eventual extrajudicial execution of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey, analyzing the available evidence and applicable international law. The release of the...
[This post appeared in The Interpreter published by the Lowy Institute in Sydney earlier today] On 17 July 2014, Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine, and 298 people were killed. The majority of the fatalities were Dutch citizens, followed by those of Malaysian and Australian nationality. A Joint Investigative Team (“JIT”) was established with members of five countries to conduct a...
[Joseph Rikhof is an adjunct professor at the Faculty of Common Law of the University of Ottawa where he teaches the course International Criminal Law. Until his retirement in early 2017 he was also a senior counsel at the Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes Section of the federal Department of Justice. This post is cross-posted on the Philippe Kirsch...
Six United Nations Special Rapporteurs released a statement last week, urging the dropping of charges against an American aid worker for aiding migrants in the Arizona desert. A day later, I read an op-ed on the increased criminalization of humanitarian aid in the European context. While this issue seems to be the subject of increased scrutiny lately, there have been multiple...
Mohamed Helal kicked off the week with a two-part jus ad bellum analysis (here and here) of the United States' possible legal justifications for going to war with Iran, in light of the Trump administration's recent saber-rattling towards the regime. In particular, Mohamed addressed three possibilities: (1) preempting a nuclear Iran, (2) resisting Iranian regional policies and responding to "indirect"...
[Mohamed S. Helal is an Assistant Professor of Law at the Mortiz College of Law and an Affiliated Faculty with the Mershon Center for International Security Studies. This is the second part of a two-part post; the first can be found here.] Second: Resisting Iranian Regional Policies and Responding to Indirect Iranian Aggression The U.S. National Defense Strategy states that “Iran is competing with its...
[Mohamed S. Helal is an Assistant Professor of Law at the Mortiz College of Law and an Affiliated Faculty with the Mershon Center for International Security Studies. This is the first part of a two-part post.] Over the past weeks, tensions have escalated in the Persian Gulf. On May 5, 2019, U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton announced that “in response to a number of troubling and...
At the end May, Opinio Juris hosted a weeklong symposium on Jonathan Hafetz's new book, Punishing Atrocities through a Fair Trial: International Criminal Law from Nuremberg to the Age of Global Terrorism (Cambridge University Press). In addition to Jonathan's own comments, we had the great privilege of posting reactions from such luminaries as Gabor Rona, Mark Kersten, Alexander Greenawalt, and...
Cases from across the globe have epitomised the crime of enforced disappearance, the most high-profile recently being the disappearance and killing of journalist Jamal Kashoggi. The abduction of the head of Interpol in China is another dramatic instance. Recently, families of individuals from Kuwait who were disappeared by the Iraqi army have been in the news, and there have been mass...
This summer we will host our fifth Emerging Voices symposium, where we invite doctoral students, early-career academics and practicing lawyers to tell Opinio Juris readers about a research project or other international law topic of interest. If you are a doctoral student or in the early stages of your career (e.g., post-docs, junior academics or early-career practitioners within the first five...