Search: Syria Insta-Symposium

Bloomberg reports very disturbing statements made by a spokesperson for the Free Syrian Army: Communities inhabited by Shiite Muslims and President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite minority will be “wiped off the map” if the strategic city of Al-Qusair in central Syria falls to government troops, rebel forces said. “We don’t want this to happen, but it will be a reality imposed on everyone,” Colonel Abdel-Hamid Zakaria, a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army in Turkey, told Al-Arabiya television yesterday. “It’s going to be an open, sectarian, bloody war to the end.”...

We are delighted to introduce the second online symposium issue of the Melbourne Journal of International Law hosted by Opinio Juris. This week will feature three pieces published in our most recent issue — issue 11(1). The issue was generalist in its focus and saw articles on topics as diverse as the law of space tourism, the right to cross-examine prosecution witnesses in international criminal courts and the nature of legal inquiry in the Mekong River basin. Three of the authors published in 11(1) will be contributing to this online...

...through which their authors can engage multiple audiences at and beyond the ICC. In my article in the JICJ’s ‘Contemporary International Criminal Law After Critique’ symposium, I explore this advocacy. I argue that making an Article 15 communication enables civil society actors to engage in sociological criminalisation, pursuing a form of extralegal accountability – including for those who remain unaccountable before the ICC. Accountability Beyond the Courtroom There are many reasons why perpetrators of violence and harms may not be held accountable under international criminal law. International criminal law criminalises...

I’m delighted to call readers attention to a symposium next week on my friend Itamar Mann’s new book, Humanity at Sea: Maritime Migration and the Foundations of International Law, which was just published by Cambridge University Press. Here is the 411: This interdisciplinary study engages law, history, and political theory in a first attempt to crystallize the lessons the global ‘refugee crisis’ can teach us about the nature of international law. It connects the dots between the actions of Jewish migrants to Palestine after WWII, Vietnamese ‘boatpeople’, Haitian refugees seeking...

During the coming days, Opinio Juris, along with the UN Team of Experts on the Rule of Law and Sexual Violence in Conflict, will host a Symposium on accountability for conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) crimes associated with slave trade, slavery and trafficking. The Symposium focuses on some of the key aspects developed in the fifth webinar of the Digital Dialogues on CRSV, including: a reflection on the latest innovations and lessons learned related to the criminal investigation of slave trade; efforts to support and strengthen accountability at the national level;...

[Shirleen Chin is the Head of Advocacy & Strategic Partnerships for the Stop Ecocide Foundation , based in The Hague, that runs the “Stop Ecocide: Change the Law ” Campaign.] [This symposium was convened by Shirleen, who was inspired by attending an Expert Working Group on international criminal law and the protection of the environment at the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA School of Law in Spring 2020. See here for the original Opinio Juris symposium which emerged from that meeting.] In July 2019, President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil said, “Brazil...

The forthcoming issue of the European Journal of International Law will feature an article by Professor Simon Chesterman, the Dean of the National University of Singapore’s Faculty of Law, entitled Asia’s Ambivalence About International Law and Institutions: Past, Present and Futures. This week, Opinio Juris and EJILTalk will hold a joint symposium on the two blogs on Professor Chesterman’s article. The article’s abstract explains: Asian states are the least likely of any regional grouping to be party to most international obligations or to have representation reflecting their number and size...

[James Gallen is a Lecturer in the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University.] Jus Post Bellum: Mapping the Normative Foundations provides an important assessment of the potential of international law to shape post-conflict societies in a space of competing and fragmented debates. I agree with Eric de Brabandere’s contribution to this symposium that if jus post bellum is to add real value, it must demonstrate an advantage beyond existing approaches in areas such as peace-building or transitional justice. However, I am more optimistic that distinctive value can...

Another great symposium is lined up for this and next week discussing Charles Jalloh’s monograph, The Legal Legacy of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (Cambridge, 2020). From the publisher: This important book considers whether the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), which was established jointly through an unprecedented bilateral treaty between the United Nations (UN) and Sierra Leone in 2002, has made jurisprudential contributions to the development of the nascent and still unsettled field of international criminal law. A leading authority on the application of international criminal justice in...

...our following posts show, return processes involve national or post-colonial rebranding. They often fail engage with radically different positionalities or inflict new forms of epistemic violence through seemingly ‘neutral’ frames or labels (‘shared heritage’, cooperation, loan). For instance, the management of return claims reduces the engagement with the past to technical-bureaucratic processes (e.g., de-accessioning, transfer of ownership). These factors may impede new encounters with material culture or past histories and a renewal of social relations. This symposium seeks to engage with some of these dilemmas, including some of the themes...

...us to ask ourselves how we – as teachers, researchers, and legal advisers – are to engage with the field in this “post-critical” moment. These big-picture questions require intense debate and reflection, which we are delighted to see addressed in the diverse contributions to the present symposium. In this post, we would like to suggest one potential route out of ICL’s critical impasse – one that does not rely so much on concocting new theoretical innovations, but instead advances a new kind of scholarly sensitivity. In essence, we argue that...

This summer we will host our fifth Emerging Voices symposium, where we invite doctoral students, early-career academics and practicing lawyers to tell Opinio Juris readers about a research project or other international law topic of interest. If you are a doctoral student or in the early stages of your career (e.g., post-docs, junior academics or early-career practitioners within the first five years of finishing your final degree) and would like to participate in the symposium, please send a draft blog post somewhere between 1000-1500 words and your CV to opiniojurisblog...