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Search: Syria Insta-Symposium

05 Feb

...the participants when the idea for this symposium materialized. Adding to this dept, commentators provided excellent reviews over the last week. In the following I seek to address some of their arguments being aware that exchange will continue beyond the symposium. Why are Emerging Powers not more radical? I am very grateful for Cai Congyan‘s remark that in his opinion my perspective departs from that of many Western scholars and instead of focusing on the threat emerging powers – and particularly China – may pose for a value-based international order,...
05.02.21 | |

08 Apr

...Conflict. We will kick off the joint symposium with posts by Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the first Prosecutor at the ICC, and by David Crane, the first Prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone. We will then publish a number of posts each day next week, some at Opinio Juris and others at Justice in Conflict. We encourage readers to read the posts at both blogs – and to tell us what you think! Update (20 April 2020): Here is a list with all the posts in the symposium, with links....
08.04.20 | |

10 Jul

[Jed Odermatt is a Reader at The City Law School, City St George’s, University of London] Academic debates often begin with the assertion that international law is in a period of unique crisis. In the face of complex, wicked problems, from climate change to massive human rights abuses, international lawyers question whether international law’s toolkit remains fit for purpose. The responses are also familiar. International agreements should be better designed; states need to comply with their existing legal obligations; failing institutions need to be reformed. Aksenova’s Art,...
10.07.25 | |

09 Jul

[Sofia Stolk is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law and Public International Law, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam] When I had the privilege of collaborating with Marina on an exhibition and performance around art and international justice in The Hague in 2019, I witnessed how she theorizes, practices, and preaches art as an act of love. Her book is the culmination of years of thinking and doing art and international law. It is a wonderful invitation to re-imagining international justice through an aesthetic lens, or rather to...
09.07.25 | |

01 Oct

denuclearization, trade diplomacy, relations with North Korea, Russia and Ukraine, America’s “Forever War” against Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, and the ongoing tragedy in Syria. Koh’s tour d’horizon illustrates the many techniques that players in the transnational legal process have used to blunt Trump’s early initiatives. The high stakes of this struggle, and its broader implications for the future of global governance-now challenged by the rise of populist authoritarians-make this exhausting counter-strategy both worthwhile and necessary. Regular readers will recall that we held a symposium last February on the...
01.10.18 | |

16 May

...For racialised and gendered scholars, the emotional labour in simply being, let alone belonging, is punishing.  On the battlefield, we need allies, creativity, resilience, and, perhaps most of all, we need victories. This symposium is a victory. It was hard fought, with various intervening factors delaying its release and altering its appearance. I tip my hat to those who spoke and do not judge those who did not. I also acknowledge those who, out of fear of reprisals, withdrew their submissions at later stages. There is neither harm nor disappointment....
16.05.22 | |

29 Jul

...weapon of war, massacres of women, men, and children, and mass displacements are characteristic of neocolonial armed conflicts in regions such as Amhara, Cabo Delgado, central Somalia, Khartoum, North Kivu, and Tigray. Our aim with this symposium is to foster a diverse dialogue that illuminates the connections between African and Palestinian liberation struggles, advancing our collective understanding and pursuit of justice and human dignity globally. The symposium is divided into two parts. Part I, which begins on 29 July 2024, opens with David Arita, who highlights the relevance of the...
29.07.24 | and |

22 Apr

...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....
22.04.06 | |

14 Jun

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...
14.06.13 | |

19 Apr

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...
19.04.17 | |

29 Sep

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.”...
29.09.14 | |

07 Sep

As readers of the blog no doubt know, Syria is is one of seven states that have not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). (The others are Angola, Egypt, Israel, Myanmar, North Korea, and South Sudan.) To consider Syria’s use of chemical weapons as a rationale for attacking the country, the USG obviously needs to assume that the use of such weapons is prohibited by customary international law. I have no doubt that they are; after all, the CWC has been ratified by 96% of the world’s states, and nearly...
07.09.13 | |