Search: Syria Insta-Symposium
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....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...09 Aug Weekday News Wrap: Thursday, August 9, 2012
According to the UN, Afghanistan civilan deaths are down for the first time since it started counting in 2007, though officials say that this is due to an extremely harsh winter rather than improved security. The United Nations also reports that targeted killings in Afghanistan have risen 53%. Ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair has expressed his deep concern that the UK will leave the European Union in a referendum. In other statements from former heads of state, France’s Nicholas Sarkozy has called for a humanitarian intervention in Syria. Syrian troops...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...
09 Sep The Case of the Istanbul Bar Association: Justice on Trial in Türkiye?
...in Istanbul a day later. It was made in a context in which Türkiye’s active involvement in the armed conflict in Syria, particularly its support to armed Islamist groups and military operations targeting predominantly Kurdish areas in the north, had repeatedly drawn international criticism for serious human rights abuses (here and here). Both journalists had reported extensively over the past decade on the war in Syria, as well as armed clashes between Turkish forces and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in southeastern Türkiye and were reportedly targeted with criminal charges...
19 Feb Justice for the Yazidis in the Ishaq Case by the Stockholm District Court – Part I
...convicted for having committed genocide, crimes against humanity and gross war crime against women and children belonging to the Yazidi community in Syria. It will expand on the summary in English issued by the district court. This was actually the second trial for Ishaq; the same court had in a judgment of 4 March 2022 convicted her for complicity in the war crime of recruiting child soldiers in Raqqa, Syria. Thus, at the time of her second trial she was already serving a six-year prison term. This post is only...