This week on Opinio Juris, we closely followed the situation in Ukraine. Julian argued that international law principles are unlikely to provide a solution for the crisis since it would require the US and Russia respectively to defend or reject principles they have rejected or defended in other crises. He also reassured Daily Mail readers that the Budapest Memorandum does not...
Lots of reports, including those from the new Ukrainian government at a meeting of the UN Security Council, suggest that Russian military forces have crossed into Ukraine. This has caused a mild panic on Wall Street and some typically overwrought press reporting from, just to give an example, Britain's Daily Mail. A treaty signed in 1994 by the US and Britain...
Here is a timely piece from Adam Chilton on how treaty obligations may be experienced by the American public. He devised an experiment (using Amazon's mTurk) to test the effect of a putative treaty violation on public support for reform of solitary confinement practices. The piece comes to us just as congressional hearings have focused policymakers on the issue as...
In December 2013, the UN Secretary General launched a new Human Rights initiative called “Rights Up Front”. Primarily a coordination tool for the UN Secretariat, the plan outlines six actions that can help the UN system meet its responsibilities regarding human rights: Action 1: Integrating human rights into the lifeblood of staff, so that they understand what the UN's mandates and...
The European Parliament has just overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning the use of armed drones. I'll leave it to others to do the hard work of analyzing the resolution, but I couldn't let this paragraph pass without a mention (emphasis mine): E. whereas drone strikes outside a declared war by a state on the territory of another state without the consent...
A lawsuit filed yesterday in California federal court seeks the removal of a statue in a Glendale, California public park honoring women victimized by the Japanese military during World War II. The placement of the statue was approved by the local city council with the strong support of Korean and Korean-Americans who want to recognize the suffering of the "comfort...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa Nigeria has closed its northern border with Cameroon to block the movement of Boko Haram members who use the area as a launch-pad for attacks. French troops may stay much longer than originally planned in the Central African Republic. Civilians in South Sudan have been the main target of...
Weekend again, time for a roundup of the blog! This week, Rogier Bartels provided a guest post in two parts on the temporal scope of application of IHL, asking when a non-international armed conflict ends. Chris followed the situation in Ukraine closely with a post on the background of the conflict and the country's long road to stability. He also wrote...
The recent altercation between members of Pussy Riot and Cossack militia that was caught on video is a red flag signalling a broader issue in the Russian Federation: the resurgent power of the Cossacks and their relation to the Russian state, especially to keep politically-disfavored groups in check. But who are the Cossacks? A paramilitary organization? A political party? An ethnic...
The BBC is reporting that dozens of people have died today in new fighting between police and protestors in Ukraine. For a background to what is underlying the protests, see these posts concerning the struggle over the norms that will define Ukraine, how Ukraine's domestic disputes interact with Russian and European regional strategies, and the significance of the eastward spread...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa At least 90 people have been killed in Nigeria's northeastern Borno state by suspected members of Boko Haram. The EU and West Africa have reached a compromise on an Economic Partnership Agreement, following over a decade of negotiations. Asia North and South Korea have agreed in a rare high-level meeting...
The heavy dumping of snow on the US East Coast made for a light dusting of posts this week. Kevin found the ICTR's recent acquittal of Augustin Ndindiliyimana after 11 years of pre-trial detention a stain on the tribunal's reputation. He also was not convinced by Eugene Kontorovich's use of Belgium's extension of the right to die to terminally ill minors as...
