Search: Syria Insta-Symposium
23 May New Trends in International Justice
...of the ICJ. Driven by the same Security Council-spawned frustration, for the first time ever a majority of UN member states worked outside the council to establish unprecedented investigative mechanisms to advance individual criminal accountability in Syria and Myanmar. In December 2016, just a few weeks after Russia’s veto of a Security Council resolution that could have relieved the dreadful conditions in the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo, the UN General Assembly voted to create the International, Impartial, and Independent Mechanism for Syria (IIIM). The mechanism was mandated to...26 Jun Is Now a Good Time to Go Back to that U.S. War Power Debate?
Cross-posted at Balkinization Because it’s too easy for our growing war in Syria to get lost amidst other also-pressing news, I want to be sure to note that last week ended with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee formally requesting the Trump Administration’s legal justification for a growing set of clashes between the U.S. military and armed forces allied with Syrian President Bashar Assad. The U.S. military has of course been engaged in anti-ISIL operations in Syria since 2014. But this recent violence – including the incident last week in which...22 Feb Symposium: Koh, Trump, Obama – and Jean Baudrillard (Part 2)
that such intervention would actually work. (Hence the scare quotes around “solution” above.) There is evident reason to question the value of external military force in Syria, for reasons explored here and here and here and here and here and here. Those analyses focus on UHI, not humanitarian intervention authorised by the General Assembly. But similar considerations apply as long as Russia remains devoted to Assad’s murderous regime. Indeed, Harold himself clearly recognizes that no durable solution is possible in Syria without Russia’s support (p. 460): To solve Syria, the...
02 Aug The Biden Administration and the Golan Heights
...over whether Israel has claimed sovereignty, this response reflected confusion between belligerent occupation and sovereignty. If the US concern is instability in Syria, Israel can protect itself while occupying Golan as a belligerent, a status that obtains until Syria and Israel make peace. To continue as occupant, Israel does not need sovereignty. So the security issue has nothing to do with sovereignty. From the practical standpoint, Blinken’s answer is troubling, because Syria is likely to be unstable for some time. So his answer raises the prospect that the Administration may...
30 Nov UNSC Veto Power Symposium: Are there Jus Cogens Limits to UN Security Council Vetoes in Atrocity Crime Contexts?
States that do not have the veto, including those with rotational seats on the UNSC, have often urged the permanent members to refrain from vetoes in circumstances where grave international crimes are being committed. In addition, the General Assembly, the most representative UN organ, has sought more robust UNSC action when gross human rights violations are taking place. Probably the best example of this is the repeated efforts to secure referral of the Syria Situation to the ICC. Those measures, and other Syria-related resolutions, have been voted down on at...
04 Apr COVID-19 Symposium: COVID-19 in Conflict-Affected Areas–Armed Groups as Part of a Global Solution
...current scenario, it has already been reported that the Kurdish administration in Syria contacted the WHO and is awaiting the delivery of testing kits. Moreover, after a recent visit to Gaza, the head of the WHO office for the occupied Palestinian territories identified the need to strengthen the capacities of the health system in order to address its shortages. In Syria, in Gaza, and beyond, multi-party coordination will be essential to produce reliable information and to adopt timely measures that can help to slow down the spread of COVID-19. For...
14 Jan Symposium: Internationalized Armed Conflicts–The Wars of Our Age
[ Dr. Kubo Mačák is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.] Donald Trump’s recent decision to withdraw all US troops from Syria, announced characteristically through a Twitter post, has once again brought the ongoing hostilities in the Middle Eastern country into international spotlight. More than seven years into the conflict, its origins in a series of peaceful protests during the so-called Arab Spring of 2011 seem now part of a distant past. Since then, the situation in Syria has undergone a number...
17 May A Pandemic of Hunger Symposium: Implementing UN Security Council Resolution 2417
...and hunger and condemning the use of starvation as a method of warfare. On the occasion of this important anniversary, Global Rights Compliance (GRC) is privileged to host with Opinio Juris a digital symposium on the implementation of UNSC 2417. This will coincide with an expert webinar on 19 May 2021. Following an unprecedented year, conflict and hunger have been gravely exacerbated by COVID-19. There are more than 34 million people globally in IPC Phase 4 (Integrated Food Insecurity Phase Classification) who currently require urgent life-saving action and a further...