Search: Syria Insta-Symposium
01 Jan Exploring International Law with Opinio Juris in 2013: Highways, Back Roads, and Uncharted Territories…
find the posts related to them. Rather, this post is an idiosyncratic tour of some of the highways, back roads, and other territory that we traversed in 2013. As for a major highway, we had 33 posts that mentioned Kiobel this year (as well as many earlier posts, totaling 136 as of this writing) including an extensive symposium focused on the decision. A mid-stream round-up of the symposium is here. Roger also wrote about the subsequent interpretation of Kiobel by lower courts and Ken wrote on Kiobel and Bauman v...31 May Syria War Crimes Accountability Act — Now Revised!
Last month, I blogged about the Syria War Crimes Accountability Act of 2017, a bipartisan Senate bill “[t]o require a report on, and to authorize technical assistance for, accountability for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Syria.” I praised the bill, but pointed out that Section 7(a) was drafted in such a way that it permitted the US to provide technical assistance to entities investigating international crimes committed by pro-Assad forces and “violent extremist groups,” but did not permit the US to support entities investigating international crimes committed...06 Apr Question on 2007 Strike Against Syria and Anticipatory Self-Defense
...that link doesn’t work] — there has been virtual silence from the international community about the 2007 strike on the Syrian nuclear facility at al-Kibar. Is that account accurate? I assume that because Israel has never acknowledged its purported involvement, it has also never offered an international law defense of the operation. (True?) Is it also the case that virtually no other nations have said anything one way or the other about its legality? If so, what, if anything, does the 2007 operation portend for the development of the law...26 Nov Syria Avoids Security Council Sanctions, Agrees to Cooperate in Hariri Investigation
Syria has agreed to comply with the demands of Security Council resolution 1636 and will cooperate with the Hariri investigation by allowing five Syrian government officials to be interviewed in UN offices in Vienna. This ends, for now, the Syrian stalemate with the Council, and avoids a follow on resolution that would likely have slapped sanctions against Syria. The progress of the Mehlis team investigating the Hariri murder and the Security Council’s robust response is significant, fairly rebutting Julian’s view that UN investigations tend to produce “muddy, often useless conclusions.”...
04 Dec UNSC Veto Power Symposium: Reply to Professors Sterio and Clark, and Dr. McDougall
...by the duty (see the Bosnia v. Serbia Case, paras. 430–31). While I largely agree with Dr. McDougall’s statement that: “I do not believe [this duty] would be applicable to the situation in Syria,” that is beside the point. The book expressly notes the allegations of genocide in Syria relate to crimes against the Yazidis (p. 44; Chapter 5.1.3.5). The relevant arguments related to most crimes in Syria are those pertaining to war crimes and crimes against humanity. My book also discusses the situation in Myanmar, where the Genocide Convention...
03 Dec UNSC Veto Power Symposium: Mass Atrocities and the Security Council–The Limits of the Law
...the Assad regime, but also because States beyond Russia and China have concerns about more ambitious measures in terms of both the implications for State sovereignty, and the possibility that such assistance could strengthen the hand of different non-State armed actors. As Trahan acknowledges, accountability and humanitarian measures are unlikely to halt mass atrocities by themselves. In a situation such as Syria, it is difficult to see how that could be achieved absent a use of force. Military intervention in Syria has of course been only fleetingly considered: I’d argue...04 Oct Aryeh Neier Calls for Syria No-Fly Zone
Aryeh Neier, recently retired president of the Open Society Institute (and former head of Human Rights Watch and the ACLU), has an opinion piece in Project Ricochet this week calling for a no-fly zone over Syria. He calls for it to be imposed by a regional force and NATO. The US would not lead the effort, though presumably it would participate via NATO – while providing backup, both material and political, another exercise in deliberately “leading from behind.” He is cautious about the US intervening militarily directly, and frames the...