Search: Syria Insta-Symposium
27 Oct Lafarge on Trial: Cementing Accountability
At its core, the case raises questions of corporate power, double standards, and the pursuit of accountability for those who enable or profit from grave human rights abuses in Syria and beyond. According to the French investigating judges, Lafarge transferred via its subsidiary Lafarge Cement Syria (LCS) more than five million euros to the Islamic State (IS), the al-Nusra Front, and Ahrar al-Sham during 2013 – 2014, in order to continue running its cement factory in northeastern Syria. The upcoming criminal trial represents a turning point in the nine-year-long legal...
01 Oct Unlocking the Road to Justice in Syria
allowed domestic courts in a number of countries hosting Syrian refugees to prosecute crimes committed in Syria. These efforts led to, for instance, the conviction of two former Syrian intelligence officials in the first ever trial on Syrian state torture, the al-Khatib trial, in Koblenz, Germany. This created a strong momentum for international criminal justice efforts. While highlighting the horror of the Syrian prison system or gulag, it has also triggered vivid debates within Syria’s civil society about the meaning and limits of prosecuting and trying a handful of midlevel...24 Aug President Obama Cites International Law as Limitation on U.S. Response to Syria’s Chemical Weapons Attack
As regular readers may recall, I am skeptical that the use of chemical weapons, by itself, can justify the use of military force under current international law absent authorization from the U.N. Security Council. Of course, I wouldn’t oppose the use of military force by the U.S. to stop the use of chemical weapons in Syria, I just doubt its legality under international law. More importantly, so does President Obama. Although reports are out suggesting the U.S. is preparing to launch cruise missiles into Syria, President Obama also told CNN...06 Nov A Friendly Request for Paul Clement, the Solicitor General, and the Supreme Court — Please read up on what it means to sign a treaty!
...Convention with those who did not sign it. And just when you think the argument’s over and they can’t make any more mistakes, Paul Clement offers up this: Now, the government says you can’t do that because that’s going to mess up what’s going on in Syria. With all due respect, I assume that the issue in Syria is whether or not the nation state of Syria is doing something that would violate the convention if, contrary to fact, they were a signatory to this convention.” (emphasis added) Well, as...14 Nov MJIL Symposium: The Responsibility to Protect after Libya and Syria
[Spencer Zifcak is Allan Myers Professor of Law and Director of the Institute of Legal Studies at the Australian Catholic University.] This post is part of the MJIL 13(1) Symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. My article on this subject attempts to encapsulate the standing of coercive (Pillar 3) intervention within the framework of the Responsibility to Protect (‘R2P’) following the application of the doctrine in Libya and paralysis with respect to it in Syria. In 2011, the international community was confronted...01 Apr A Response to Alonso Gurmendi: The ICJ Must Consider Israel’s Legal Rights to the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem
...for Palestine, whose primary object was the reconstitution of the Jewish national home in that territory. The Lausanne Treaty did not include provisions on Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia as these articles had become moot in the interim. France had been selected as Mandatory for Syria and Lebanon, and Great Britain the Mandatory for Mesopotamia, with the Mandates coming into force in September 1923. The draft Mandate for Palestine was submitted for League of Nation’s approval in December 1920, approved in July 1922, and came into force in September 1923. The...
19 Apr Syrian Victims Alter the Justice Landscape
the 2011 uprising started in Syria, both Syrian and international actors advanced the transitional justice paradigm to accompany the hoped-for transition. When the perspective of a transition vanished, Syrian civil society continued to use the paradigm to pursue justice in a situation where impunity increasingly seems the norm. The international community did not only fail to stop the regime’s and Russia’s policies of annihilation, but it also proved to be unsuccessful to open justice avenues to prosecute crimes committed in Syria. Syrian and international civil society organizations have resisted the...