Search: Syria Insta-Symposium
23 Sep Organizing Rebellion Symposium: Organizing Responses – A (Partial) Reply to the Blog Symposium
[Tilman Rodenhäuser holds a PhD from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. He is currently Legal Adviser at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and worked previously with the German Red Cross, DCAF, and Geneva Call. The views expressed on this blog are those of the author alone and do not engage the ICRC, or previous employers, in any form. This post is the final contribution in our joint symposium with Armed Groups and International Law.] I feel truly honoured to see such rich...04 Jul LJIL Symposium Vol 25-2: Introduction
[Dov Jacobs is the Senior Editor for Expert Blogging at the Leiden Journal of International Law and Assistant Professor of International Law at Leiden University] This post is part of the Leiden Journal of International Law Vol 25-2 symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. In the next couple of days, this second LJIL Symposium brings to you two exchanges on articles published in Vol 25(2) of the Leiden Journal of International Law, on Climate Change and Legal Pluralism. As recent discussions on...
16 Dec Symposium: Accountability in the Digital Age – Introduction
...the usefulness of open source evidence, particularly material gathered from social media, for proving human rights violations. The roundtable also explored the role of social media companies in preventing, detecting and removing hate speech, and the avenues that are available to hold social media companies accountable for their role in the dissemination of such content. Amidst an increasingly global “techlash”, this symposium broadens the interrogative gaze beyond the specific context of Myanmar to examine accountability in the digital age more generally. Specifically, the symposium explores two core themes. The first...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...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...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...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...21 Oct Turkey’s Operation “Peace Spring” and International Law
[ Vito Todeschini is an Associate Legal Adviser at the International Commission of Jurists’ MENA Programme] On 9 October 2019, Turkey launched operation “Peace Spring” in the territory known as Rojava, in north-east Syria. The operation aimed at driving the Kurdish-led People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) out of a number of towns close to the Turkish border and to create a “safe zone” where to resettle Syrian refugees. After days of fighting, a United States-brokered ceasefire has temporarily halted major hostilities in view of the evacuation...