Search: Syria Insta-Symposium
23 Aug Syria, Chemical Weapons, and the Incoherence of the VCLT
My friend Dapo Akande has a superb post at EJIL: Talk! discussing whether the ICC could prosecute the use of chemical weapons by the government in Syria. I agree almost entirely with Dapo’s analysis, but I do want to offer a couple of thoughts about his discussion of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties: The argument that chemical weapons are not covered by Art. 8 is thus based on the removal of the explicit prohibition and the fact that it was thought that it would be the annex...31 Jan The CIA Violated the Terrorist Bombing Convention
...self-defense against the non-state actor who is DPAA are not measures against the territorial state. Kevin Jon Heller The next time Syria uses a chemical weapon to defend itself against an armed attack, I look forward to your argument that Syria's "inherent right of self-defence" has "primacy" over its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention. Xavier @ Jordan: Would you apply the standard that you are invoking in your comment universally? For example, it is well known that CIA backed terrorists have organized attacks against Cuba from South Florida. One...14 Nov MJIL Symposium: A Response to Spencer Zifcak by Ramesh Thakur
back in New York, there was an unbridgeable gap between effective civilian protection, which Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (‘BRICS’) supported, and regime change, which they strongly opposed. One important result of the gaps was a split in the international response to the worsening crisis in Syria. Both China and Russia, still smarting from the over-interpretation of Resolution 1973, have been defiantly opposed to any resolution that could set in train a sequence of events leading to a 1973-type authorisation for outside military operations in Syria. Fourthly, the...27 Sep Putting the Cart Before the Horse? Top Panel of International Criminal Law Experts Proposes “Extraordinary” Criminal Tribunal for Syria
...disadvantage to this approach? We would need a new Syrian government to set up and carry out this proposed statute. And to get that new Syrian government, would we have to promise some sort of immunity to the old Syrian government that committed all those horrible crimes we want to prosecute? I agree in part: I think such discussions should be informal and as much as possible under the radar if only because knowledge of same by the Syrian regime simply adds another complicating variable to eventual resolution of this...28 Aug Non-Syria News: Update on that Philippines-China Arbitration
I’ve been distracted the last few days by all this Syria stuff (and a nasty case of poison ivy), so I neglected to keep up with the latest on that Philippines-China UNCLOS arbitration now seated at the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. Luckily, Luke Petersen of Investment Arbitration Reporter is on the case and has this great post analyzing the information released so far about the arbitration. Note that the Philippines has until March 2014 to file their memorial. This seems ridiculously long given that they’ve been preparing...06 Feb Al Jazeera Panel Discussion on Siege Warfare in Syria
Sorry for the endless self-promotion, but I thought readers might be interested in the following episode of Al Jazeera’s Inside Story, which includes a 30-minute panel on siege warfare in Syria that I participated in. It was quite a wide-ranging discussion, focusing less on international law than I expected. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fM8PwT9hz3c&feature=youtu.be As always, comments welcome! I hope readers don’t think I was too soft on either Assad or the UN…...10 Sep Rapid Response Seminar: Humanitarian Intervention, International Law and Syria
Normally, we post our conference announcements weekly, but we just got word of one tomorrow that’s worth flagging. The British Institute of International and Comparative law (BIICL) will be holding a Rapid Response Seminar tomorrow, September 11, from 4-6 pm to discuss ‘Humanitarian Intervention, International Law and Syria’. As the title suggests, the conversation will discuss whether humanitarian intervention falls within the corpus of international law and, if so, whether it can be applied to the current Syrian situation. Robert McCorquodale (BIICL) will chair the panel, with scheduled speakers including...
21 Aug The Missing Perpetrator and the Missing Victim: What France’s First Conviction for the Yazidi Genocide Reveals
be placed at the centre of justice and treated as a core part of accountability, not as a separate issue. This means investing in forensic work and DNA analysis, coordinating exhumations with criminal investigations, and ensuring that information from trials and from missing-persons work flows in both directions. It also means using and supporting existing mechanisms, such as the UN Independent Institution on Missing Persons in the Syrian Arab Republic (IIMP) and the new Syrian national commission on the missing and disappeared, and linking them to efforts in Iraq. Finally,...16 Feb Weekly News Wrap: Tuesday, February 16, 2016
...Documenting war and harsh reality of life, some Syrian media outlets are now based in Turkey informing those back home. For the past week, Turkish military forces have been shelling targets in northern Syria held by the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units, the armed wing of the Syrian Democratic Union Party, a group designated by Turkey as a terrorist organisation, leading to speculation about “ethnic cleansing.” Asia U.S. President Barack Obama and allies from Southeast Asia will turn their attention to China on Tuesday on the second day of a...