Search: Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation
07 May Unbreakable Bond: Tracing the Ties Between African and Palestinian Anti-Colonial Struggles (Call for Submissions)
Israel The Palestinian-African solidarity movement The (paradoxical) role of international law in anti-colonial struggles The impact of international law on African domestic policies regarding Palestine How international law has shaped African countries’ responses to the Israeli occupation and the Palestinian struggle for liberation Legal and diplomatic measures taken by African countries at the AU, UN, and other regional and international fora Boycott, divestment, and sanctions as a strategy to challenge Israeli occupation The profound emotional, psychological, and phenomenological toll of the ongoing oppression faced by Palestinians and Africans The resistance...
23 Oct Research Services of German Bundestag Rejects Turkey’s Syria Invasion: Illegal, but Who Cares?
9 October onwards was rejected in academic circles (see here or here). A textbook example of a violation of Article 2/4 UN Charter. Yet, law does not necessarily translate into politics. While the Assad government spoke of “a flagrant violation of international law and a blatant violation of Security Council resolutions”, other states, even Assad’s closest allies Iran and Russia, have been less direct and focused less on the law than on strategic and humanitarian aspects. Realpolitik 101: Iran and Russia Iran’s foreign minister called to “end the incursion” while president Rouhani stated that “[t]he Turkish government is...
06 May Symposium on the UNWCC: The Exercise of Universal Jurisdiction by the Post-war Occupying Powers in Germany Under the UNWCC
national law that authorised localised prosecutions conducted by those powers in Germany, within their zones of occupation. The purpose of CCL was ‘…to establish a uniform legal basis in Germany for the prosecution of war criminals and other similar offenders, other than those dealt with by the International Military Tribunal…’ Article 2 (1) stated that four crimes were to be prosecuted by the member States: war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes against peace and membership of a hostile organisation. Importantly, it further declared that the occupying powers had the jurisdiction...
16 Feb On Being Disappointed at Judge Julia Sebutinde’s Dissent
...response following Hamas’ massacre on 7 October. The submission has also brought about reflections on active allyship against the decades-old Israeli occupation of Palestine—something not to take lightly in the face of the longstanding call to have decolonisation as a concrete act rather than a metaphor or a mere workshop title. From what follows, the position of the Court on 26 January was particularly under scrutiny. Beyond a mere ‘international lawyerly’ issue, it seemed to represent a significant opportunity for the Court to demonstrate an international institution’s capabilities (and possible...
21 Jun Unwilling or Unable? The International Community’s Failure to Hold Israel Accountable for the Ongoing Apartheid in Occupied Palestine
[ Ahmed Abofoul is a Research Assistant at Kalshoven-Gieskes Forum on International Humanitarian Law and a Guest lecturer of Public International Law at Al-Azhar University – Gaza. He worked as a Research Assistant to Dr. Robert Heinsch and Dr. Giulia Pinzauti in submitting their amicus curiae observations in the Situation in the State of Palestine to the Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court] Introduction: The Palestinian people have been facing injustices and denial of their basic human rights since the establishment of Israel in 1948 and the prolonged...13 Nov Small Sovereign Archipelago Seeks New, Elevated Homeland
recognized various ways for states to acquire territorial sovereignty: conquest, discovery, occupation, accretion, cession, or prescription. Of these, the Maldives’ adherence to the UN Charter (not to mention international law more generally) takes conquest off the table. Discovery alone or combined with occupation are still technically available options, but good luck finding terra nullius that you can claim as your own. And accretion–the expansion of existing land masses through geological changes–appears to be the opposite of what’s actually happening to the Maldives. That leaves prescription or cession as possibilities. Cession...
07 May On the Refusal to Call a Spade a Spade
[Nimer Sultany is a Reader in Public Law at SOAS University of London and the Editor-in-Chief of the Palestine Yearbook of International Law.] In a recent lecture at the Imperial War Museums, the prominent lawyer and author Philippe Sands makes several problematic and surprising claims concerning South Africa v. Israel, the genocide case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Sands, who represents Palestine in the ICJ case on the legality of the occupation, claims in this lecture that he no longer thinks that genocide is a useful concept anymore....
23 May Development as Domination: Settler Tourism in Western Sahara and the Commodification of Occupied Territories in Trumpist International Law
law, but its deliberate normalisation. This profit-oriented repurposing of land usurpation is embedded within broader strategies to entrench occupation, alter demographic realities, and establish “facts on the ground” aimed at securing acquiescence of illegal territorial claims, in direct defiance of peremptory norms of international law and the rights of Indigenous or occupied populations. As critical legal scholars have long argued, these are not anomalies but rather expressions of international law’s foundational complicity with empire, extraction, racialized dispossession and appropriation, a system of “civitas civitati lupus” (to paraphrase Hobbes’ celebre phrase...10 Mar Events and Announcements: 10 March 2024
in different fields of international law, including from Global South(s) and empirical perspectives. This symposium on 15-16 July 2024 will bring together scholars and practitioners, from various fields of international law and through divergent theoretical and geographical perspectives. For more information, click here. From Protection to Coercion: the Limits of Positive Obligations in Human Rights Law: 3-4 October, Lund, Sweden, organized by Dr Vladislava Stoyanova, Associate Professor, Lund University, Faculty of Law, and Dr David McGrogan, Associate Professor, Northumbria Law School. Positive obligations in human rights law appear to be relentlessly...03 Apr So How is China Reacting to the Philippines Arbitration Submission? Not Very Well
...latter’s illegal occupation of some of China’s islands and reefs in the South China Sea. At the heart of the matter are the disputes between the two sides on the sovereignty over islands and reefs, and delimitation of maritime boundaries. Yet disputes such as these have already been excluded from arbitration procedures through a declaration made by China in 2006 pursuant to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). In this context, China’s rejection of the Philippines’ submission for arbitration is solidly based on international law, and...