Search: Syria Insta-Symposium

...to fulfill the title’s goal. To this end, Opinio Juris is pleased to be hosting a symposium on the book in furtherance of the conversation on how to ensure respect for IHL. This symposium follows a webinar on the book hosted by the Irish Centre for Human Rights, which will be made into a podcast. In this symposium a number of authors have been asked to reflect on the themes of the book – both by way of review of the book chapters but also by way of proposing new...

[Tim Fish Hodgson is a Legal Adviser for the International Commission of Jurists and Tanveer Jeewa is a Communications Consultant for the International Commission of Jurists.] This week Opinio Juris is hosting an online symposium on the impact of COVID-19 on human rights in Africa. Coordinated by the International Commission of Jurists’ Africa Team, the symposium hones in some key issues arising out of the global pandemic and State responses to it in Africa. Its key focus throughout is highlighting the need for States’ COVID-19 responses to be consistent with...

[Marina Aksenova is an Associate Professor of International and Comparative Criminal Law at IE University] In this concluding post, I would like to offer a few observations on the themes raised by the participants of the symposium. Above all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the contributors for taking time to reflect on my book and offer their brilliant and innovative insights as well as to Kevin Heller and Opinio Juris team for generously hosting the symposium. The points I raise are not exhaustive but rather tentative...

[Ralph Mamiya is team leader for the Protection of Civilians Team in the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations but writes here in a purely personal capacity, and the views expressed do not represent official positions of his Department or the United Nations. This post is the concluding post of the Protection of Civilians Symposium . ] This week’s symposium on the protection of civilians highlighted the range of legal and practical issues facing UN peacekeepers. Featuring posts from two contributors to the new volume, Protection of Civilians from Oxford University...

the Symposium and will be published in the following days shall contribute to the vivacious and constructive debate around the goals and challenges the ICC is facing today. We are looking forward to a lively discussion on these important issues this week, and we are very grateful to Opinio Juris for hosting this Symposium. Symposium Posts: ‘Injustice Anywhere is a Threat to Justice Everywhere’ – Palestine, Israel, and the ICC by Mark Kersten Mind the Gap– The ‘Palestine Situation’ before the ICC by Alice Panepinto General Assembly Resolution 67/19 and...

Tomorrow, the Center for International and Comparative Law (CICL) of St. John’s University School of Law will have its inaugural symposium. Peggy and I are CICL’s Co-Directors, and we are looking forward to what we hope will be a great kick-off. The symposium, entitled Challenges to International Law, Challenges from International Law: New Realities and the Global Order, is co-sponsored by the American Society of International Law and the St. John’s Journal of International and Comparative Law (the Center’s new online journal). Presenters will include Michael Mattler, the Minority Chief...

...practices of international criminal justice processes to advance their strategic agendas; and second, a critical perspective concerned with contextualising the historical narratives constructed within international criminal judgments and viewing them in more humble terms as moments of discursive beginning rather than instances of historical closure. Reflections on the Symposium Turning to the contributions to this symposium, I am grateful that each of the contributors has focused on different themes within the book. In this section, my aim is less to offer a response than to continue the conversation by offering...

[Andrea Bianchi is Professor of International Law at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva; Moshe Hirsch is the Von Hofmannsthal Professor of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Co-director of the International Law Forum at the Hebrew University Law Faculty.] We are extremely grateful to the editors of Opinio Juris and Alexandra Hofer for hosting and organizing this book symposium. Thank you also to the contributors – Emiliano Buis, Adil Hasan Khan, Sofia Stolk and Alexandra Hofer – for their engagement with the arguments raised...

I will be back blogging regularly soon, but I want to call readers’ attention to a phenomenal new article at the Intercept by Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain about how the US government has cynically manipulated public fears of terrorism in order to justify its bombing campaign in Syria. Recall that Samantha Power — the UN Ambassador formerly known as a progressive — invoked the scary spectre of the Khorasan Group in her letter to the Security Council concerning the US’s supposed right to bomb terrorists in Syria in “self-defence.”...

...Syria’s legal obligation (if any) to cooperate with the new tribunal. Presumably, Syria could be harboring the Harari assassins. But would it have to turn them over? Maybe, but not necessarily. I’ll have to think about this some more, but it is not obvious to me that the U.N. Security Council has the authority to require Syria to cooperate with an international tribunal investigating crimes that occurred in a third country. But maybe they do. In any case, it looks like we are all going to find out pretty soon....

Over at Vox, I have published an essay fleshing out the thoughts I first published here on the legality of the recent U.S. cruise missile attacks on Syria and the international reaction to it. President Donald Trump’s surprising decision to launch a cruise missile strike on Syria was sharply criticized by Russia as a “flagrant violation of international law.” While it might be tempting to dismiss this claim as mere Putinesque propaganda, on this question at least, Russia is almost certainly correct. In the view of most international lawyers, the...

The White House’s recent statement that it would begin supplying Syrian rebels with arms demonstrates how military assistance and intervention remain a choice of states rather than an obligation. Recent events confirm the arguments I make in a recent article The Choice to Protect: Rethinking Responsibility for Humanitarian Intervention. I am pleased to be guest blogging about this topic over the next few days and thank the editors at Opinio Juris for the opportunity. The comparison between the intervention in Libya and the foot dragging with respect to Syria should...