Search: Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation
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...
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...
23 Jul Uncertain Commitments: The US-Ukraine Rare Minerals Agreement and the Limits of Treaty Law
consent, validity, and state responsibility. At stake is not simply whether the treaty meets formal requirements under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, but whether international law should recognize as legitimate a resource agreement signed during a constitutional crisis and under military occupation, especially when the state in question may not survive the war in its current form. In October 2024, President Volodymyr Zelensky introduced a strategic ‘Victory Plan’ to the Verkhovna Rada, prioritizing the development of Ukraine’s mineral resources (uranium, titanium, and lithium) through partnerships with the...
05 May Symposium on the UNWCC: Ethiopia, Italy and the Archives of Selective Justice
[Megan Donaldson is a Lecturer in Public International Law at University College London.] [This post draws on a draft entry for the Max Planck Encyclopedia of International Procedural Law (Donaldson 2022), available on request .] Although Ethiopia had been deliberately excluded from membership of the UN War Crimes Commission (UNWCC), Ethiopia sought to submit cases against figures responsible for atrocities during the Italian invasion and occupation (1935–41). The UNWCC archive is thus an obvious source from which to probe Ethiopia’s attempts at post-WWII prosecutions. It proves rich in technical legal...
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...
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....01 Jun An Alternative Justification for Israel’s Attacks on Hezbollah in Syria
...out that Israel last engaged in protracted armed violence in Syria in 1974, asserts that “to suggest that an armed conflict [has been] ongoing ever since seems improbable, even under the most liberal interpretation of the way wars end and the termination of the application of international humanitarian law . . .” Tel Aviv University Professor Yoram Dinstein, a former Charles H. Stockton Professor of International Law at the U.S. Naval War College, notes in his book War, Aggression and Self-Defence that a war can end in one of five...
17 Oct A Visible College, 2.0: Israel, Hamas, and the International Legal Community
Debate and disagreement are also vital parts of international lawyering; one’s success as a lawyer often depends on their ability to construct a legal argument to justify the acts or omissions of their clients. Yet the international legal community’s responses to the events of the past week give rise to some important questions about our discipline. I pose three of these below. I. Is There any Law Beyond Politics? The past week has highlighted, first and foremost, the law’s susceptibility to politicisation. World leaders have unsurprisingly thrown international legal terminology...
26 Apr The ICJ and the ECtHR’s Provisional Measures in the “Lachin Corridor” in Azerbaijan: Can Armenia Use the Civilian Passage for Military Purposes?
provisional measures should be seen in a broader context of ongoing Azerbaijan-Armenia reciprocal claims before the ICJ and the ECtHR under the UN Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The parties allege various violations of international law and human rights law, including military occupation, ethnic cleansing, property rights, security of persons, etc., arising from Armenia’s occupation of Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region and adjacent districts from 1991-2020. Provisional Measures ECtHR On 21 December 2022, the ECtHR adopted its provisional measure...