In association with the International Commission of Jurists

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01 May

...is ultimately a modest one – a quite traditional (at least from the US government’s long-term perspective) approach to weapons regulation. Grand treaties seem to us unlikely to be suitable to incremental technological change, particularly as they might seek to imagine a technological end-state that might come about as anticipated, but might develop in some quite unexpected way. Sweeping and categorical pronouncements can re-state fundamental principles of the laws of war, but they are unlikely to be very useful in addressing the highly specific and contingent facts of particular systems...
01.05.12 | |

17 Feb

...Article 3 violations act in dereliction of the obligation to “ensure respect” for the Geneva Conventions. Potential for evolution It would be naïve to assume that permanent members would openly embrace these arguments. The promise that a more effective Council could reduce some of the cycles of recurring violence around the world, does not appear to lie within the short-term horizon of most of today’s decision makers. Apparently neither are advantages like slowing the need for ever increasing humanitarian assistance; reducing migratory pressures of people being forced to become refugees by...
17.02.21 | |

28 Mar

[Adriana Rudling (@adrianarudling) is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Chr Michelsen Institute, Bergen Norway and a Post-Doctoral Visiting Fellow at the Instituto Pensar, Bogota, Colombia working on issues relating to the interactions between victims and transitional justice mechanisms.] The practice of transitional justice (TJ), and particularly truth commissions, emerges as “the bureaucratic response to bureaucratic murder” (p. 78). Given the perils of human rights prosecutions in the immediate aftermath of negotiated, often fragile, transitions, truth commissions were initially adopted as a second-best option to dealing with the human rights abuses...
28.03.22 | |

11 Feb

...will signal to other global U.S. base hosts that they, too, can unilaterally abrogate and renegotiate access arrangements and use the interest of geopolitical rivals such as Russia and China for short-term economic leverage. The long-term damage to American interests worldwide would be great. Instead, U.S. officials in their last-minute discussions can offer to organize a multilateral conference for Kyrgyzdebt restructuring and forgiveness, and encourage EU member states active in the Afghanistan campaign to expand their economic engagement with the Central Asian country. They should emphasize that trans-Atlantic commitments are...
11.02.09 | |

24 Aug

...‘auxiliaries’ – and thus, its corresponding conduct would be attributable to the State [see for scholarly discussion, the Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the law applicable to cyberspace, p. 95 (“Tallinn Manual”)]. However, the test of “instructions” is evidently tailored to a very limited context and not frequently invoked. This is different from the test of “direction or control” mentioned in the same Article. While some consider “direction” and “control” to also be disjunctive tests (ARSIWA commentaries, p. 48), these terms have been used conjunctively and interchangeably by most international fora...
24.08.22 | |

09 Nov

[ Yilin Wang is a PhD candidate in International Law at the Graduate Institute and a research assistant of the China, Law and Development Project at the University of Oxford.] On 16 September 2021, Armenia instituted proceedings against Azerbaijan before the ICJ on the grounds of racial discrimination, hatred and ethnic cleansing against individuals of Armenian ethnic or national origin in light of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). A week later, Azerbaijan raised a counterclaim against Armenia before the Court for its...
09.11.21 | |

21 Mar

...true of treaties), it is federal statutory law. Hence congressional-executive agreements offer one-stop shopping. Second, David and Marty raise questions about withdrawal. I again note that David and Marty do not argue that treaties create more lasting commitments—just that congressional-executive agreements and treaties are essentially the same in terms of their durability. Hence they apparently agree with me that durability is not an argument in favor of Article II treaties. I go a step further, however. I argue that congressional-executive agreements can be more durable than treaties. David and Marty...
21.03.08 | |

25 Mar

...gender crimes seriously enough. Here are some excerpts from a 2003 letter sent by the Coalition for Women’s Human Rights in Conflict Situations, an NGO with international memberhship, to Carla Del Ponte, the chief ICTR prosecutor: As your term comes to an end, we believe that your four-year record as ICTR prosecutor shows no concrete commitment to effectively developing evidence to bring such charges, despite the longstanding and overwhelming proof of sexual violence during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. We believe that the failure to implement effective measures that would have...
25.03.06 | |

16 Jun

...offence under Peru’s current Constitution). Even more concerning, in a leaked 2019 audio, Peru Libre’s elected Congressman and high-ranking party member, Guillermo Bermejo described the plan as a “first step to stay in power” beyond their five year term, referring to term limitations and Peru’s constitutional ban on re-election as “democratic b******t”. It is because of all of this that Human Rights Watch called Peru’s runoff election a choice between “two candidates that do not believe in human rights and the rule of law” and why Amnesty International felt the...
16.06.21 | |

03 Apr

...in the high court. Should the Court have agreed to hear the case? The Court’s decision to hear the case is a bit surprising given that it had refused to hear at least two cases raising the same issue in the previous two terms. On the other hand, the Court’s decision to hear the case is also quite understandable given the fairly sharp split between lower circuit courts on the question. Such an enduring split among the opinions of lower courts is always an important factor for the Court in...
03.04.17 | |

10 Dec

...11:30 PM, the French presidency convened a smaller, closed meeting (known as an Indaba, a term that originated at the 2011 Durban COP), which reportedly ran until 7:30 AM. Apparently, the Indaba made little progress in bridging differences, so the French are now conducting bilateral consultations with a wide variety of countries, to try to reach agreement on “landing zones” for the various issues in the text. Interestingly, the issue that was probably raised most frequently last night in the public meeting of the Paris Committee was the need to...
10.12.15 | |

19 Jan

...have waged a war on terror by skirting the Torture Convention, upsetting constitutional checks and balances, opening loopholes in the Geneva Conventions, and creating extra-legal persons and extra-legal zones. While disregarding international obligations and norms can give you wider freedom of movement in the short run, the domestic and international backlash can narrow your options in the medium or long term. As Condoleezza Rice and the rest of the second term foreign policy team start their new jobs, I hope they remember Harold Koh’s wise counsel from the Gonzales hearings....
19.01.05 | |