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Search: Syria Insta-Symposium

05 Oct

...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...
05.10.15 | |

13 Dec

...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...
13.12.18 | |

03 Sep

...force, as opposed to 1948 when the State of Israel was proclaimed. In other words, uti possidetis juris is relevant to the determination of the borders of the territories to which the Ottoman Empire and its successor Turkey renounced its rights and title, and regarding which the Principal Allied Powers could fix the boundaries (Mandate for Palestine, preamble, para. 1). As such, the borders between Lebanon, Syria and Jordan on the one hand and Mandatory Palestine on the other fell to be determined on the basis of the internal administrative...
03.09.24 | |

29 Jan

...a ransom. Of course, paying the ransom wins the release of the individual hostage. However, it also emboldens and encourages ISIS and other terrorists to perpetrate more kidnappings. It is precisely for this reason that the U.S. refuses to negotiate and pay money to ISIS. The ransom payments are bankrolling the ISIS war in Iraq and Syria. So the European countries that are paying the ransoms are providing (indirectly and under duress) the resources for ISIS to fight the military coalition that is trying to stop them from carving its...
29.01.15 | |

14 Jun

Opinio Juris is pleased to welcome Professor Neomi Rao of George Mason University School of Law as guest-blogger for the next week. With the Syria crisis re-emerging as a possible flashpoint for military intervention, we thought it would be interesting for Professor Rao to discuss her recent work on the status and impact of the “Responsibility to Protect” principle that is forthcoming in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review. Professor Rao teaches both constitutional and comparative law classes, and she has had wide experience at all levels of the U.S....
14.06.13 | |

19 Sep

...the meantime. Examples include the International Independent and Impartial Mechanism (IIIM) for Syria, and the Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan. At the current session of the Human Rights Council, the Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar has called for establishment of an IIIM pending referral to the ICC or an ad hoc tribunal. Opening Remarks were given by Ambassador Monique T.G. van Daalen, Permanent Mission of the Netherlands. The Moderator was Saman Zia-Zarifi, Secretary General, International Commission of Jurists. The panelists included Catherine Marchi-Uhel, Head, International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism...
19.09.18 | |

09 Feb

...renditions.” As Human Rights Watch notes: The CIA has regularly transferred detainees to countries in the Middle East , including Egypt and Syria , known to practice torture routinely. There are reportedly 100 to 150 cases of such “extraordinary renditions.” In one case, Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian in transit in New York , was detained by U.S. authorities and sent to Syria . He was released without charge from Syrian custody ten months later and has described repeated torture, often with cables and electrical cords. In another case, a...
09.02.06 | |

08 Nov

...giving UN humanitarian agencies and their partners authority to breach Syria’s sovereignty by using border crossings to access that state. The rationale was to permit this violation of sovereignty ‘in order to ensure that humanitarian assistance, including medical and surgical supplies, reaches people in need throughout Syria’. The Security Council, in a distinct yet not unrelated situation of war and crisis then, might have acted under a different power and source of legitimacy than the Flotilla, but it should not be considered as less political, or as being more humanitarian....
08.11.14 | |

19 Apr

[Jennifer Trahan is Associate Clinical Professor, at The Center for Global Affairs, NYU-SPS, and Chair of the American Branch of the International Law Association’s International Criminal Court Committee. The views expressed are those of the author.] Postings on Opinio Juris seem fairly squarely against the legality of the U.S. missile strike last week into Syria. Let me join Jens David Ohlin (blogging on Opinio Juris) and Harold Koh (blogging on Just Security) in making the contrary case. When NATO intervened in Kosovo in 1999, member states did not have UN...
19.04.17 | |

13 May

Picking up on Jens’ post about the Administration’s apparent lack of plans for holding detainees picked up in Iraq/Syria, I too found the Times report troubling. In part I suspect it was because I was immediately reminded of one of the findings of the many Pentagon investigative reports issued after the revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib and other U.S. detention facilities in Iraq. All apart from criticisms of changes in policy and legal interpretation, some of the harshest blame for the widespread nature of the abuse was the total...
13.05.16 | |

04 Sep

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the US has agreed upon a draft AUMF, authorizing President Obama to carry out strikes in Syria. Foreign Policy has a post warning that this 60-day authorization may be just a prelude to intervention in the Middle East as well as a piece entitled The Syrian Abyss. Russian President Vladimir Putin said his country may approve a military operation in Syria if evidence shows that Damascus carried out chemical weapons attacks, but only if the operation is conducted with U.N. approval. Kenya’s parliament debated...
04.09.13 | |

07 Dec

Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez will miss Friday’s regional trade summit in Brazil, raising questions about his health. US warships are shifting in order to monitor the planned rocket launch by North Korea, while the US still urges Pyongyang to cancel this exercise. Violence has surged around Damascus as Syrian government forces shell rebel-controlled areas. The UN Special Envoy for Syria held discussions with US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, and her Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, on a creative solution for Syria that may involve ousting President Assad. The King of...
07.12.12 | |