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09 Aug Setting the Right Precedent: Victim-Centred Justice in Afghanistan
...bottom-up approaches to address victims’ grievances. In the past few years, the Afghan civil society has adopted the language of “victim-centred justice” to avoid the negative connotations associated with the term “transitional justice” and move beyond the “peace v justice” narrative. The terms “victim-centred justice” allow for a broader interpretation of “justice” to include criminal justice and other mechanisms. Giving justice a broad definition is particularly important in a context such as Afghanistan where victimhood is highly complex. Afghans have been victimised under different regimes and suffered from a wide...
15 Oct The Global Risk in Trump’s AI Action Plan and the Need for Governance
...research, development, and deployment of frontier AI models, including the establishment of protocols governing the conditions under which such research is undertaken. The question, then, is what form such global governance structures should take. Global Governance Models “Global governance” is a term that has a range of meanings, with very different theoretical understandings across different disciplines. Even in practical application, efforts to regulate other serious threats to humanity, from nuclear weapons testing and proliferation to biological and chemical weapons, cyber-operations, holes in the Ozone layer, and the causes of climate...
26 Jan International Law’s Invisible Frames Symposium: The Dispositional Formations of International Lawyers – A Commentary on Akbar Rasulov’s ‘The Discipline as a Field of Struggle: The Politics and the Economy of Knowledge Production in International Law’ Part II
‘break’ from all social determinations – which would simply be ‘scholasticism’ for Bourdieu – but rather to reach an awareness of the partiality of any break (and of the fallacy of any assumed complete rupture), that capacitates the ‘critical scholar’ to “get a grip on” (p. 253) those prior determinations. What is sought is a ‘turning away’ (a conversio) from a habit sedimented perception of naiveite that is simply unaware of how its perception is determined, and towards a perception of self-knowledge. As Bourdieu puts it (p. 251): The task...09 Mar Two remarks on queer law and queer politics: Thomas Spijkerboer Responds to Jenni Millbank & Guglielmo Verdirame
...constitutes persecution. It is in this context that tight jeans, Kylie concerts, cocktails, and boy talk are relevant. Being forced to conceal my sexuality by the continual threat of violence constitutes persecution (although I find the term “endogenous” an unfortunate term; the threat of violence is crucial in finding this situation rising to the level of persecution, and being beaten up is not endogenous). If I merely cannot wear tight jeans during a Kylie concert while drinking my favourite cocktail and discussing boys, this does show my surroundings are narrow...24 Apr In Reluctant Defense of the Law of Occupation
...help determine the standard that Israel observes in regulating movement – whether mathematical formulas are used to determine how much food will be permitted into the Gaza Strip, as was the case between June 2007 and June 2010, or whether, as is the case today, incoming goods are permitted but outgoing goods banned, and movement of people is restricted in seemingly arbitrary ways (the current rules allow football players to travel between Gaza and the West Bank but ban university students). The Israeli government claims that its detailed criteria outlining...
03 Feb Rule of Law or Law of Rule: UNSC Resolution 2803 as Anathema to International Law
...obligation to respect the right to self-determination is erga omnes (para 155), meaning that all States have a legal interest in the protection of the right. Turning to the right to self-determination as it pertains to Palestinians, UN General Assembly Resolutions have consistently recognised the right of Palestinians to self-determination, have condemned Israel’s continued occupation of Arab territories, and have expressed a determination to end Israeli occupation and fulfil the vision of a two-state solution. Indeed, as recently as 17 December 2024, the UN General Assembly reaffirmed the right of...06 Feb AJIL Symposium: Comment on “The Travaux of Travaux: Is the Vienna Convention Hostile to Drafting History?”
...in the process of interpretation, and “supplementary means of interpretation” to which recourse may be had when the interpretation according to article 31 leaves the meaning of the treaty or its terms ambiguous or obscure or leads to a result which is manifestly absurd or unreasonable. (ILC 2013 Report, Chapter IV, A/68/10, p 14, Commentary on Draft Conclusion 1, para (3), footnote omitted.) This seems to lose the careful distinction in the 1969 ILC/VCLT scheme between general use of preparatory work to confirm and its conditioned use to determine meaning....18 Jun China and Japan Agree (Sort of) to Jointly Develop Disputed East China Sea
...name suggests whose hegemony you are recognizing. Correct me if I am wrong on this. Best, Ben Akira Igata Ben, I'm a Japanese undergrad student living in Tokyo, which may give you a mixed message on the reliability of this information - I am familiar with this issue, but not an expert. Having that said, here's my opinion. I think that the use of the term "East China Sea" itself does not have any special symbolic meanings. I'm familiar with the direct Japanese translation of the term "East China Sea"...
11 Jul Space Resource Discussions in the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space
...a regime.” Stressing the early stage of space resource use, the US indicated that the time is right to establish a working group, “so long as we can reach consensus on a pragmatic work plan that reflects the early stage of these efforts.” Another example is Canada’s response to the Austria et al. proposal, indicating that “the scope is too ambitious for the 5-year mandate” and that “it would be more manageable to focus on achieving consensus on a set of principles within its 5-year term.” A second theme that...30 Aug Jus Cogens Norms and The Historical Accident of Influential States
...ed. Humanitarian Intervention: Moral and Philosophical Issues (Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Press, 2003). And I'm preparing myself for any future post on the moral justification of the war in Iraq based on an invocation of some such principles of humanitarian intervention. ;) Roger Alford The reason I used "non-defensive just war" instead of "humanitarian intervention" is I wanted to speak in more philosophical terms rather than legal terms. Humanitarian intervention is becoming a term of art for a particular kind of war. It is possible I suppose that some just...