Search: Syria Insta-Symposium

...months. Former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden, peace negotiators in Colombia or Greek islanders helping Syrian refugees were among tips for the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize at the deadline for nominations on Monday. Regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran should reconcile and help resolve tensions in the Middle East, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Monday. The United Nations has said that there should be no amnesty for people suspected of committing war crimes as talks aimed at ending Syria’s war continued to struggle in Geneva. The United...

...Levant (ISIL) group in Syria have killed more than 1,600 people since they began five months ago, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The UN special envoy to Syria is travelling to Damascus to try to reduce the fighting which has intensified in Aleppo, where rebels claim to have killed 300 government soldiers in the past week. A Moroccan court sentenced a former Spanish soldier to eight years in jail on Friday on charges of leading an Islamist network in the kingdom that was plotting terror attacks, the...

Edward Brynes Here is an excerpt from the Hilton article: "Earlier this year, Soas held an ‘Israel Apartheid Week’ , culminating in a vote to ‘boycott’ the Jewish state: not a student protest, but an official, university-sanctioned boycott. Needless to say, there have been no comparable protests against Syria, Saudi Arabia or China, which have far worse human rights records. You might forgive a bit of idealised student geo-political ignorance, but Soas’s decision to boycott Israel was made with the endorsement of the school’s academic staff. The vote was preceded...

This week on Opinio Juris, we continued the discussion on Syria. Geoff Corn started the week by examining President Obama’s options if Congress were not to enact an AUMF, a question that also occupied Peter who yearned for the good old days of unilateral presidential authority to initiated use of force. When the surprise Russian proposal to put Syria’s chemical weapons under international control put the Congressional vote on hold, Kevin was not convinced that this twist had anything to do with the “credible threat” of a US unilateral strike....

...if you do, damned if you don’t.” CNN explains: Facebook recently changed its listing for the Golan Heights — which Israel captured from Syria in 1967 — so users there could choose to say whether they live in Israel or Syria. It was responding to pressure from a pro-Israel group called HonestReporting — and from Facebook users who set up a group on the site itself called “Facebook, Golan Residents Live in Israel, not Syria.” “It is not for Facebook to decide the national origin of Golan residents,” the group...

A Syrian airstrike has killed at least 54 amid heavy fighting in northern Syria. At a UN Security Council meeting, Iran was attacked about the aid it is providing to Syria’s government forces. At the IAEA’s meeting in Geneva, Iran and Israel squared off about nuclear proliferation in the Middle East region. The US has lifted a ban on New Zealand naval ships visiting US ports or bases in place since 1986, after New Zealand’s decision to ban any nuclear powered ships or nuclear armed ships from its ports, as...

...minority within the PRC. On the meaning of the China-Russia veto of the Syria UNSC resolution that dismayed the US and European allies: Bosco: The recent Chinese and Russian veto of a draft resolution on Syria has generated anger from Western governments and from the human rights community. It seems to confirm the perception that China is wedded to a vision of national sovereignty very much at odds with that of the West and that may prevent the Security Council from effectively addressing bloody internal conflicts. How do you see...

Chris Borgen Roger, these are defintely the tough questions that are on the table. I make no claims at answers but I'll do some thinking aloud (well, figuratively aloud) to pick up the conversation you started. Without revisiting the issue of when/whether combatting a terrorist organization would be international armed conflict (shades of Hamdan), I'll comment on whether state responsibility can be ascribed to Lebanon for the actions of Hezbollah (of course there's also the issue of Iranian and Syrian repsonsibility but I will also set those aside for now)....

...The dilemma is not really a dilemma. It is the result of the fact that the powerful want to commit their crimes with impunity. Otherwise we would have had the means by now to prevent abuse during humanitarian interventions. Imagine for instance that U.S. wants to put her own dictator in Syria and succeeds. After a while the documents of this policy might get declassified or leaked. The Syrians should be able to sue U.S. in an international court. Another possibility is that U.S. goes to ICJ and sues Syria...

...country to a trickle. The sound of whirring helicopter blades fills Syrians with fear that “hell and fire” is about fall in a barrel bomb, a rescue worker told the United Nations Security Council on Friday as pressure mounts for the body to take action to stop civilian killings in Syria. United Nations human rights experts appealed to the United States on Friday to impose a moratorium on the death penalty for federal crimes, including the sentence imposed on the Boston Marathon bomber, with a view to abolishing the practice....

...that the sexual allegations against Assange would not constitute a felony in Latin America. Rebels have claimed new victories in Syria’s Aleppo, while heavy fighting continues. Russia has warned the West with unilateral action after US president Barack Obama threatened the use of military force, were Syria to engage with use of chemical weapons. At talks in Moscow, Syria’s Depute Prime Minister has indicated that although Assad’s resignation cannot be a condition for starting talks, it could be on the table during negotiations if necessary to reach a settlement. Japan...

...Syria? Jordan Well, my last question nearly made the news -- with an Israeli strike on a target in Syria. But there is still a question whether a weapons research lab was struck or a conveoy of trucks carrying weapons. Perhaps the prior Syrian armed attack on Israel justified this measure in self-defense? Or did it initiate an armed conflict with Syria, the law of war paradigm, and the permissibility of targeting lawful military targets? If the latter, will Israel destroy the chemical weapons and biologic weapons stashed in Syria?...