Search: Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation
08 Oct Rethinking International Law After Gaza Symposium: The Palestinian Genocide and the Colonial Core of International Law
[José Manuel Barreto works on decolonizing human rights and international law based on TWAIL and Decolonial Theory. He teaches law at the Javeriana University in Bogotá and will publish ‘Decolonial Theory and the History of Human Rights’ in 2025.] The Palestinian genocide has unveiled the deep colonial structure of the international legal order. The so-called Westphalian system has been inveterately depicted and legally defined in the UN Charter as one of ‘equal’ ‘sovereign’ ‘states.’ Against the black letter of positive international law, the Palestinian Genocide has made evident the material...27 Feb Progress on Defining the Crime of Aggression — But at What Price?
The ICC’s Special Working Group on the Crime of Aggression (SWG) met again last month in New York. According to the Financial Times, the SWG is close to achieving consensus on a definition of the crime: Sixty years after the Nuremberg trials made legal history by finding individuals responsible for the second world war, a select group of diplomats, lawyers and activists are close to another breakthrough: the universal criminalisation of aggression between states. Last week, about 150 experts met in the basement of the United Nations to discuss how...05 Apr The Situation in Palestine
[Michael Kearney is an LSE Fellow in the Law Department of the London School of Economics] Michael Kearney guest blogs with us to share his knowledge of the Palestinian situation as an external consultant for the Palestinian human rights NGO Al-Haq “I heard from the Americans,” Abbas reports. “They said, ‘If you will have your state, you will go to the ICC. We don’t want you to go the ICC.'” In a striking decision, issued shortly before he is due to step down in June 2012, Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo of the...
02 Oct Amending the Kampala Amendments: A Proposal to Harmonize the ICC’s Jurisdiction
[Jennifer Trahan is a Clinical Professor at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs and Director of their Concentration in International Law and Human Rights.] It is time for States Parties to amend the Kampala crime of aggression amendments and remove the jurisdictional gaps. At the Rome Conference, many states, particularly those from the Non-Aligned Movement, Germany, and Italy advocated for the inclusion of the crime of aggression in the Rome Statute. Other states, however, including important military powers, were not supportive of preserving the Nuremberg and Tokyo legacy on crimes against...
09 Aug Symposium on Unbroken Bond: Tracing the Ties Between African and Palestinian Anti-Colonial Struggles – When Nelson Mandela was (Considered) a Terrorist and the “Natural Alliance” between South Africa and Palestine
[Dr Cristiano d’Orsi is a Lecturer and Senior Research Fellow at the Faculty of Law, University of Johannesburg and Senior Consultant in AFRICAN Refugee Law at Witness Experts in London] Mandela and his First Struggles with the ANC Nelson Mandela’s birth coincided with the beginning of British rule in Palestine (1918) and what has been called the Third Aliyah, another wave of organised Jewish immigration to the region. He had close friendships with several South African-Jewish people (for example with Arthur Goldreich who provided refuge at his home in Rivonia...16 Dec A Bolivian Secession?
...Moldova, where Transnistria is seeking state recognition (thus bringing international law into play) and the Russians have refused to remove their troops from Moldovan soil (implicating the now-denounced Conventional Forces Europe treaty as well as various norms of international law). This leads me to think that the situation in Bolivia as described by the CNN report is, for the time being at least, basically a domestic matter that has not transformed into an issue of international law. As the International Commission of Jurists recognized in the Aaland Islands Case, international...
12 Feb Legal Uncertainty Regarding the Applicability of the ECHR in International Armed Conflict in the Active Phase of the Hostilities
the fact that such situations are predominantly regulated by legal norms other than those of the Convention (specifically, international humanitarian law or the law of armed conflict), the Court considers that it is not in a position to develop its case-law beyond the understanding of the notion of ‘jurisdiction’ as established to date” (para. 141). This position seems even more problematic, because it discards the applicability of the ECHR in favour of international humanitarian law in the active phase of the international armed conflict. Does this mean that the Court...05 Dec A Response to Milanovic
for purposes of the geographic scope of human rights treaties, in other words, refers to the state’s exercise of authority, whether lawful or unlawful, not whether the state could have lawfully acted or legislated consistent with international law rules of jurisdiction. (Indeed, it is precisely unlawful conduct that human rights law may be most interested in controlling). Marko is to be applauded for lending needed clarity to this oft-misunderstood area of law. The second potentially transformative contribution is Marko’s third, “respect/ensure” model for analyzing when a state’s activities trigger jurisdiction...
17 Nov “Friendly Fire: On!” – Some Thoughts on the Jersey Incident
...force in the context of maritime law enforcement (MLE) and the possible application of the law of naval warfare (LONW) in similar incidents, with a specific focus on the Jersey Incident on 6 May. Thus, the current fisheries dispute between France and the UK is not included in this paper. The first part will present the conditions of the lawful use of armed force during MLE operations, with examples from the case law. Next, the second part will look for an answer to the question of whether LONW would be...