Symposium: Further Thoughts on an IAC with Three Parties and the Capacity of Armed Groups to Adhere to International Norms

[Katharine Fortin is an Assistant Professor at the University of Utrecht's Netherlands Institute of Human Rights.] Kubo Mačák’s book starts with the observation that many conflicts today start as internal affairs in which a State confronts a domestic armed group, but often end up getting internationalized. Mačák sets out to unpack and analyse this phenomenon, by identifying at what point a...

[Tamás Hoffmann is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department for the Study of Domestic Implementation of International and European Law at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.] Kubo’s new monograph on internationalized armed conflicts is a truly remarkable book. It attempts to give a comprehensive yet concise analysis of the nagging legal issues inevitably arising during such conflicts when the line...

[Laurie R. Blank is a Clinical Professor of Law, Director of the Center for International and Comparative Law, and Director of the International Humanitarian Law Clinic at Emory University School of Law.] The classification of international armed conflict (IAC) and non-international armed conflict (NIAC) is the essential building block of any law of armed conflict analysis. Kubo Maçak’s new book, Internationalized...

[Anne Quintin is the Head of the Advisory Service for the International Committee of the Red Cross. Her contribution is written in her personal capacity and the views contained hierin do not necessarily reflect those of the ICRC.] Let me first thank Opinio Juris for the invitation and congratulate Kubo for his excellent, rigorous and well-researched book. The latter brings a...

[Bill Boothby is an Adjunct Professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia.] After establishing key trends in the evolution over centuries of the law relating to conflict, and having put forward a convincing methodology, the attempt to give meaning to the notion of the internationalisation of a conflict is the task of the first substantive chapter. Numerous ways in which...

[Susan Breau is a Professor of Law and the Dean of the Law Faculty at the University of Victoria.] Kubo Mačák’s book Internationalized Armed Conflicts in International Law represents an important contribution to international law scholarship. The comprehensive discussion of the conditions in which a non-international armed conflict (hereafter NIAC) may evolve into an international armed conflict (hereafter IAC) is particularly...

[Dr. Kubo Mačák is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.] Donald Trump’s recent decision to withdraw all US troops from Syria, announced characteristically through a Twitter post, has once again brought the ongoing hostilities in the Middle Eastern country into international spotlight. More than seven years into the conflict, its origins in a series...

Over the coming ten days, we are proudly kicking off the new year with our first book symposium of 2019 on Kubo Mačák's new book, Internationalized Armed Conflicts in International Law, published by Oxford University Press. In addition to comments from Kubo himself, we have the honor to hear from this list of renowned scholars and practitioners: Laurie Blank, Bill Boothby, Susan...

As I noted in a recent post, on January 4th, the Lima Group decided not to recognize “the legitimacy of the new presidential term of Nicolas Maduro” as President of Venezuela. On January 11th, Venezuela’s National Assembly declared itself the “sole Legitimate Power of Venezuela before the International Community” (all unofficial translations my own). Soon after, the Assembly’s Chairman, Juan...

Call for Papers LSE is pleased to announce a call for papers for a workshop on Gender, Peace and Nature to take place on 28 June 2019 at the Centre for Women, Peace and Security. The purpose of this workshop is to draw together the links between the nature, the Earth, our home, and gender discrimination and structural inequality in the context...

[Madaline George, JD, is the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute Fellow at Washington University School of Law.] During the 17th Assembly of States Parties (ASP) to the International Criminal Court (ICC), a side event was hosted on the Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA) Initiative. The side event – The Initiative for a New Multilateral Treaty on Mutual Legal Assistance and Extradition for Domestic Prosecution...