Search: Syria Insta-Symposium

...Africa Any Israeli-Palestinian peace deal must lead to improved living conditions for Palestinians to prevent violence between the two from erupting again, Middle East peace envoy Tony Blair said on Sunday. Fighters pledging allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have released a video purporting to show the killing of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians kidnapped in Libya. The United States and its coalition partners conducted three air strikes against Islamic State militants in Syria and eight in Iraq since Saturday, according to the U.S. military. Thousands...

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Middle East The UN General Assembly has elected Jordan to the Security Council to replace Saudi Arabia, which had rejected the seat in an unprecedented act to protest the council’s failure to end the Syrian and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. Syria’s Bashar al-Assad will remain president and lead any transition agreed upon in Geneva peace talks planned for next month, a government minister has insisted. Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s local branch in Syria, has sent Al Jazeera exclusive footage...

Western powers have said that Iran is considering their offer of lifting some financial sanctions in return for a scaled-back nuclear program from Tehran. Saudi Arabia has purchased a large amount of infantry weapons from Croatia and quietly funneled them to rebel forces in Syria. Fighting rages on in Syria, with battles nearing a 12th-century mosque in Aleppo, threatening to further damage the historic structure. Symantec Corp researchers have found that the Stuxnet virus that was deployed against Iran began in November 2007, two years earlier than previously thought. An...

...the consistent case law adopting a narrow interpretation of the crime there is a broader use of the term, by NGOs, by journalists, by politicians, and even by UN bodies. For example, recently a fact-finding commission of the Human Rights Council suggested that the persecution of the Rohingya could be characterized as genocide. A few years earlier, another commission of inquiry of the Council said much the same about the Yazidi in Syria. There was a time, some decades ago, where these matters were still open to debate by reasonable...

...the EU rather than be granted it automatically. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the IMF, has settled the civil lawsuit with a maid out of court for an undisclosed amount of money. The EU has boosted the status of Syria’s opposition, calling the coalition the “legitimate representatives” of the Syrian people. Over at Lawfare, Ashley Deeks has a post about Syria, chemical weapons and possible US military action. For those who have not seen it yet, the second batch of basic materials for the Jessup Competition is now available....

...of the 193 members of the United Nations to rail against the International Criminal Court (ICC), which he said has become a political tool to target African leaders. Boko Haram Islamist fighters killed at least two Niger soldiers and wounded four others in an attack on a village near the Nigerian border, army officers said on Friday. Middle East and Northern Africa At least 39 civilians, including eight children and eight women, have been killed in Russian air strikes in Syria in the past four days, the Syrian Observatory for...

...Court of Arbitration would be a forum for such peaceful settlements. Back here in The Hague, a palace to house that court was rising. Now 100 years later we honor von Suttner, and the civic activism that can move nations. It may seem strange to celebrate the centennial of the Peace Palace when today’s great powers are at odds over what to do in the face of carnage in Syria. Whether public opinion is—or even should be—taken into account in such decisions of “high politics” is also at issue. But...

...peacemaker in conflicts and crises in regions such as Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. The pursuit of harmony and mutual cooperation has found resonance among countries with Islamic interpretations as their guiding principles. For them, the concept of harmony is not foreign, but rather a cherished value deeply embedded within Islamic thought and tradition. From Islamic perspectives, harmony serves as essential building blocks in establishing harmonious relationships among all people—Muslim and non-Muslim alike—in the contemporary period. However, China’s influence in the transnational legal order is frequently disregarded...

...Kosovo, Rwanda, Libya and Syria are well known as examples of humanitarian intervention. To be thrown into many years of civil war, such as in Libya and Syria, without consultation or for the intervening states to have the option to remove themselves from the consequences of intervention is grossly unfair. The state practice and opinio juris of dissenting states also have to be taken into consideration for an unbiased consideration of the legal validity of a legal norm. Assuming that one state can make a unilateral decision over another’s will...

An inadvertent suggestion by John Kerry may have provided a solution to the international stalemate on Syria, as it led to a Russian proposal to bring chemical weapons under international control for destruction. The US is open but sceptical to the proposal, as are its allies. Syria’s foreign minister has welcomed the proposal, tacitly admitting in the process that the regime has chemical weapons. One year after its controversial purchase of the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands, a Japanese spokesperson said Japan may consider stationing government workers on the islands to defend its...

...situation. Middle East and Northern Africa The United States called Russia’s action in Syria “barbarism”, while Moscow’s UN envoy said ending the war was “almost an impossible task”, as government forces relentlessly bombed the besieged city of Aleppo. Yemen plans to complain to the U.N. Security Council over what it says are Iran’s weapon transfers to Houthi allies fighting the internationally recognized Yemeni government, the foreign minister said on Saturday. Four alleged members of al Qaeda’s Yemen branch, including a local commander, were killed in a suspected U.S. drone strike...

The Syrian Prime Minister has survived a car bomb in Damascus, an event UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon labelled a “terrorist attack.” Ban Ki-Moon also urged Syria to allow international experts access in order to establish whether chemical weapons were used. Meanwhile, in a phone call to President Putin, President Obama has expressed his concern over the use of chemical weapons in Syria. The European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX) sentenced five men to prison for their roles in an organ trafficking syndicate. Afghan President Hamid Karzai...