Search: Syria Insta-Symposium
21 Jan CfP — 2nd Annual Nordic IHL/LOAC Symposium
their respective Red Cross National Societies adopted a joint pledge towards Organizing and hosting a Rotating Nordic IHL/LOAC Symposium on an annual basis. The Symposium series is aimed at strengthening collaboration, facilitating expertise and knowledge transfer, and enhancing the dissemination of IHL/LOAC principles among different stakeholders within the participating states and across the Nordic and potentially neighbouring regions by harnessing the collective convening power and resources of Nordic states in a sustainable manner. The 1st Symposium was held in Stockholm, Sweden in 2025. ELIGIBILITY The early career professional panel is...
29 Apr Symposium on Soldier Self-Defense and International Law: Highlighting and Framing the Issue
...on the theory one follows, if any. This week, Opinio Juris hosts a symposium dedicated to the relationship between soldier self-defense and international law, in the hope of capturing what soldier self-defense means for State armed forces and to encourage an accurate framing of this notion against the background of international law. *** In its most recent military operations, the U.S. has publicly relied on the notion of self-defense of its own forces or partner forces to justify the use of lethal force abroad. For instance, self-defense is regularly invoked...14 Jan A Few Thoughts on a Syria Referral
issue can be stressed strongly enough. As Jennifer notes, the letter explicitly calls for the UN to provide the Court with the funds it would need to investigate the Syria situation and to prosecute those it finds the most responsible for serious international crimes — something it failed to do with the Darfur and Libya referrals. (Mark Kersten has written endlessly and well about this.) I’d go farther than the letter: the Prosecutor should refuse to act on any Syria referral unless it is accompanied by the necessary funding. Although...
25 Apr The Violations of Sovereignty and the Right to Self-Determination in Rojava and Ukraine
...as a self-determination unit. In December 2015, the Security Council endorsed the Final Communiqué of the Action Group for Syria through Resolution 2254, reconfirming the legal or formal criteria of peoplehood; ‘the Syrian people [or the whole people of Syria] will decide the future of Syria’. The Syrian people encompass ‘[a]ll groups and segments of society’ (Final Communiqué) in the country. In actual international state practice, it has been outsiders who have decided who constitutes a people, not the peoples themselves. Groups have been designated as peoples on different territorial...06 Sep Syria and the Role of the Security Council
Last Friday, ASIL Insights published an article that I authored, “Legality of Intervention in Syria in Response to Chemical Weapon Attacks.” I followed it up yesterday was an expanded commentary at Lawfare, “Five Fundamental International Law Approaches to the Legality of a Syria Intervention.” A number of readers of the expanded Lawfare post queried me about remarks made near the end of that (lengthy) post concerning the role of the Security Council. Insofar as the disagreements about Syria are serious ones among the great powers, and among permanent five members...27 Aug What’s So Terrible About Chemical Weapons?
it seems to me, is this: either the US believes in unilateral humanitarian intervention or it doesn’t. If it does, it should have been willing to use militarily force in Syria long ago, when tens of thousands of civilians were being indiscriminately slaughtered by the Syrian government. If it doesn’t, the fact that civilians are now being indiscriminately slaughtered by the Syrian government through the use of chemical weapons should be irrelevant. Murder by chemical weapons is terrible. But so is any kind of murder. As Walt says, “[d]ead is...04 Dec On the Legitimacy of the Settlements: A Legal and Historical Perspective
...during which they speak about Palestine as Southern Syria or the kingdom of Faisal. After Faisal is kicked out of Damascus, the next conference doesn’t speak about being part of Syria or the kingdom of Feisal. In the summer of 1920 the episode is finished. Again: You will not find anything similar before 1918 or after 1920. But feel free to back your claim 1 example. The evidence of the forged identity of the “Palestinian people” is overwhelming only to people that know little about it. To have some preliminary...17 Mar Ukraine Insta-Symposium: Intervention and Colonialism as Responses to Alleged Fascism
...The Strategic Culture Foundation, a Moscow-based think tank headed by former Politburo member Yuri Prokofiev, has explicitly drawn a parallel to Syria, noting that “the realization of a national radical project [in Ukraine] would have meant a second Syria, including acts of genocide, internal displacement, destruction of large industrial facilities, ripe with environmental and industrial disasters.” If the facts are relatively undisputed, why, then, have Russia and the West drawn such diametrically opposite normative assessments of the situation? First, Russia’s own well-documented efforts to stifle civil society have created a...
29 Sep On the Anvil: The Netherlands v. Syrian Arab Republic at the International Court of Justice?
to the International Criminal Court; and yet another relates to the critical role of fact-finding and evidence gathering, being undertaken by the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism for Syria and other actors. However, important as these are, I focus on the route that has been chosen by the Netherlands in this instance – that of the CAT and its potential application to the International Court of Justice. In its press statement, referencing a diplomatic note sent to the Syrian government, the Netherlands states: “The Netherlands has invoked Syria’s responsibility for...16 Nov Why It’s Not Surprising Syria Is Destroying Its Chemical Weapons
revulsion. So what’s his motivation? For reasons of his own, he must have decided that he was better off without chemical weapons than with them. Perhaps it has to do with the internal political situation in Syria. Or maybe Russia got fed up for some reason. But it’s a bit of a mystery, and not one that I’ve seen any plausible explanations for. I don’t think it’s a mystery at all. Here is the explanation: Forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad have firmly seized the momentum in the country’s...