Search: Syria Insta-Symposium
28 Sep Facebook and Territorial Disputes
...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...
24 Feb The ICJ Ruling on Ensuring Access to Evidence of the UN-mandated Investigative Bodies
...be partly attributed to this inconvenience. Recently, the Court has ordered the prevention of destruction and guarantee of preservation of evidence in a case where such a measure was warranted by its circumstances. For example, it was ordered in The Gambia v. Myanmar, Canada and the Netherlands v. Syria, and South Africa v. Israel while it was rejected in the Armenia / Azerbaijan cases. However, nothing in these cases related to granting access to evidence by the adverse parties. However, the request to provide access to evidence to the UN-mandated...15 Jun Weekend Roundup: June 8-15, 2013
This week on Opinio Juris, there was a lot of news to cover with NSA leak and the US administration’s decision to arm Syrian rebels. On the first, Julian thought Hong Kong was a dumb choice of refuge for the NSA leaker. Chris dug deeper into domestic data-mining with earlier stories about the NSA’s activities. Peter addressed the position of expat Americans in PRISM. Further on cyber-issues, Duncan highlighted Japan’s new Cybersecurity Strategy. On the second bit of news, Julian argued why the “red line” crossed by Syria is meaningless...18 Jun Guest Post: The Politics of Responsibility to Protect
R2P depends on having some conception of the “rights” of people to protection from other states. It is not about leaving the Syrians alone, but rather protecting them from harm. Yet what precisely this right to assistance includes in Syria or elsewhere, no one is able to say. Even accepting a basic moral responsibility, there remain difficult questions about what action best respects rights and what will serve to promote human rights and security overall. The responsibility will always be contingent on political, military, and other calculations and will be...25 Oct Where is the International Law Criticism of the Libya Intervention?
...Chinese and Russian backlash post-Libya be seen as the system's response to the unlawfulness of the actual Libya intervention and the manner in which the mandate was so blatantly exceeded? Okay, there are a number of other political factors guiding Chinese/Russian voting on Syria, but a pretty key issue has been the disillusionment post-Libya. NATO exceeded the limits of the lawful authority it was granted, so therefore any legal authority viz a viz Syria is now being withheld. Rhodri C. Williams @Mihai - I had a sense of that but...01 May Weekday News Wrap: Wednesday, May 1, 2013
weapons in Syria, with President Obama stating that depending on how the weapons were used, the US might have to rethink its strategy in Syria. Foreign Policy has a post about why those wanting intervention in Syria are wrong. The UN International Labor Organization released a report with one major finding that the key to ending child labor is to advocate social protections. May Day protests, meant to demand better workers’ rights, are occurring around the world, in places such as Indonesia, The Philippines, Turkey, Cambodia and several European cities....18 Aug Weekly News Wrap: Monday, August 18, 2014
...forces aided by an expanded US air campaign have advanced to within kilometres of Iraq’s largest dam, less than two weeks after it was captured by the Islamic State group. Additionally, Kurdish militants have trained hundreds of Yazidi volunteers at several camps inside Syria to fight Islamic State forces in Iraq. The Islamic State group has executed 700 members of a tribe it has been battling in eastern Syria during the past two weeks, the majority of them civilians, a monitoring group said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on...14 Sep Weekend Roundup: September 7-13, 2013
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....03 Oct Weekly News Wrap: October 3, 2013
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Middle East The Security Council has urged the Syrian government to allow cross-border aid deliveries, calling on all parties to Syria’s conflict to agree on humanitarian pauses in fighting and key routes for aid convoys. Russian President Vladimir Putin seems optimistic about Syria, saying global powers were “on the right track” with a plan to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons and could avert military intervention in the conflict if they worked together. US Secretary of State, John...02 Jul Weekday News Wrap: July 2, 2012
The ICC turned 10 yesterday. Amnesty International’s Secretary General passes judgement here. Militants in Timbuktu, Mali, are destroying Sufi shrines, which they consider idolatrous. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has expressed his concern and ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has warned that the actions can be considered a war crime. Tensions continue to build along the Syria-Turkey border. The UN-backed Group on Syria reached an agreement over the weekend about principles for the transition government. However, Syria’s opposition has expressed disappointment over the outcome of the Geneva talks, as Russia resisted...