Search: Syria Insta-Symposium

...AI may assist States in discharging this obligation in several ways, for instance by improving situational awareness, facilitating target identification, supporting collateral damage estimation, enhancing military training and assisting military legal advisers. At the same time, if States choose to rely on AI systems in the conduct of military operations by their organs or agents, they remain under an obligation to ensure that those systems can be employed consistently with IHL. This has several important consequences. First, military personnel cannot reasonably be expected to employ AI consistently with IHL unless...

[Alex Whiting is the Prosecution Coordinator at the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court. The views expressed are his own.] This post is part of the NYU Journal of International Law and Politics Vol. 45, No. 1 symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. I commend Jenia on her thoughtful and balanced analysis of remedies at the ICC for prosecutorial mistakes or misconduct. It is a topic that should be of interest and concern to all actors within the Court,...

...earlier draft of this blog. Furthermore, we would like to extend our gratitude to all the research participants who generously dedicated their time to provide their insights on the themes of this blog post. An academic article that analyses in depth the themes raised in this blog post is currently in the making. This blog is part of a seven-part symposium which was reviewed and edited by members of the IBOF Futureproofing human rights’ team: Tine Destrooper (Ghent University), Wouter Vandenhole (Antwerp University), Ben Grama (Ghent University), and Marion Sandner (Hasselt University)....

[Suzanne Katzenstein is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Duke University School of Law.] This post is part of the HILJ Online Symposium: Volumes 54(2) & 55(1). Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. Thank you to Opinio Juris and the Harvard Journal of International Law for hosting this exchange and to Karen Alter for her thoughtful comments. My article’s central question is why governments create global international courts or, put more precisely, why some government attempts to create such courts succeed and other...

[James Stewart is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia, Faculty of Law. He is currently undertaking a Global Hauser Fellowship at New York University School of Law.] This post is part of the MJIL 13(1) symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. It is a pleasure to be invited to comment on Professor Darryl Robinson’s excellent new article How Command Responsibility Got So Complicated. His meticulous research has, once again, advanced our understanding considerably. Indeed, this particular article is but...

[Markus Wagner is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Wollongong. This post is part of our New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace Symposium .] The question of how law relates to technological innovation is far from new. For the most part, law has played catchup to technological developments – both in the civilian and military realm. While digital technologies are not exactly new, we are in the midst of a qualitative leap in how computational decision-making will shape our lives. Whether law merely follows technological...

...spaces as well as their communities of origin. Peripheralization of borders –one of borders built-in features– allows states to be selectively present (for instance, through extreme securitization and border controls), while at the same time absent when needed (for instance, when it comes to protecting people in mobility trying to enter these borders). Here, too, voids are filled by private actors, as evidenced by smuggling accounts in the Mediterranean or testimonies from migrants at the Darién Gap, El Petén in Central America and the Mexico–U.S. border, where individuals are even...

This week, we are pleased to host a symposium on The Electronic Silk Road (Yale University Press) by Anupam Chander (UC Davis). The publisher’s description is: On the ancient Silk Road, treasure-laden caravans made their arduous way through deserts and mountain passes, establishing trade between Asia and the civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean. Today’s electronic Silk Roads ferry information across continents, enabling individuals and corporations anywhere to provide or receive services without obtaining a visa. But the legal infrastructure for such trade is yet rudimentary and uncertain. If an...

[Jennifer Keene-McCann is a Senior Legal Fellow at the Asia Justice Coalition and is based in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. Aakash Chandran is a Fellow at the Asia Justice Coalition and is based in New Delhi, India.] This third Opinio Juris symposium relating to crimes against the Rohingya marks another difficult anniversary. Its theme, ‘Myanmar and International Indifference: Rethinking Accountability’, evokes a call to keep approaches to international justice fresh, creative, and most importantly relevant to the needs of survivors. This includes continually searching and testing new avenues for justice. Over the...

[Jonathan Baron is Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.] This post is part of the Virginia Journal of International Law/Opinio Juris Symposium, Volume 52, Issue 3. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. Thank you to the Virginia Journal of International Law for inviting me to participate and to Opinio Juris for hosting this discussion. I found this Article to be interesting and informative. It all makes sense to me, and I have no major criticisms. I would like to mention a...

...Special Court for Sierra Leone (Cambridge, 2020). I wish to take this opportunity to heartily thank these A-list of scholars, practitioners, and scholar-practitioners, who took time out of their busy schedules to read and comment on my work.  The reviews, as posted during this online symposium over the past couple of weeks, moved from the (more) general to the (more) specific. Authors in the first group commented broadly on the book, and in several instances, also highlighted key issues of particular relevance (Prosecutor Stephen J. Rapp here and here, Mr....

...States parties in fulfilling their obligations in applying the 1951 Convention, like every other treaty body issuing its views, such as the Human Rights Committee when it promulgates General Comments. As the Director of UNHCR’s Division of International Protection and Solutions has announced in her contribution to this Symposium on the 75th Anniversary of the 1951 Convention, UNHCR is now engaged in renewing the 1979 Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status (Handbook). After almost fifty years, the Handbook is still UNHCR’s authoritative and comprehensive interpretative guidance of...