Search: Syria Insta-Symposium
05 Feb More on the Al Qaeda Name
For those who try to keep up with the shifting nature of radical Islamist groups – groups too many in the media sometimes wrongly link to Al Qaeda –the stories earlier this week on the group formerly known as Al Qaeda in Iraq, now calling itself ISIS, are significant: Early Monday morning the leadership of al-Qaeda disowned Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), the most effective of its two franchises fighting in Syria, in a maneuver that could alter the trajectory of the fight against President Bashar Assad....
16 Feb Symposium on Rewriting Histories of the Use of Force: What Narratives Do
...by mythical belief, blind faith, or a kind of stubborn optimism that has turned out to be cruel. Other recent contributions within the discipline have followed a similar pattern, across different fields of inquiry. Sigrid Boysen has, for instance, drawn attention to the narrative effects that it has had when the field of international environmental law places its origins at the 1972 Stockholm Conference, thereby seeking to distance the law from its entanglements with patterns of colonial exploitation. Or one may consider Jessica Whyte’s history of human rights, which draws...04 Sep Weekday News Wrap: Wednesday, September 4, 2013
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...13 Dec Weekly News Wrap: December 14, 2015
...Russian passenger plane in Sinai that killed all 224 people on board on Oct. 31. Asia Chinese oil major Sinopec is building a filling station on an island in the South China Sea, as China continues to expand its civilian infrastructure in the disputed waterway, entrenching its reach in the maritime heart of Southeast Asia. Europe Russia on Sunday warned Turkey to stop staging what it called provocations against its forces in or near Syria after one of its warships fired warning shots at a Turkish vessel in the Aegean...19 Apr In Defense of Humanitarian Intervention
[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...11 May Weekly News Wrap: Monday, May 11, 2015
...allies have conducted 15 air strikes against Islamic State in Syria and 13 in Iraq since Friday, the coalition leading the operations said in a statement. Asia Malaysia detained 1,018 Bangladeshi and Rohingya refugees after they arrived in three boats on Monday, police said, a day after Indonesian authorities rescued 600 stranded off the coast of Aceh. South Korea has said that North Korea’s recent test-firing of a ballistic missile from a submarine was “very serious and concerning”, and that it will respond “mercilessly” to the threat. China has invited...
05 Apr The ICJ’s Findings on Plausible Genocide in Gaza and its Implications for the International Criminal Court
...on this blog that the plausibility test might be akin to a ‘reasonable grounds’ standard and notes that in the Gambia v. Myanmar, the Court heavily relied on reports of the Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, which concluded, ‘on reasonable grounds, that the factors allowing the inference of genocidal intent are present’ (§1441). This mission clarified that it ‘employed the “reasonable grounds” standard in making factual determinations’ (§10). Similarly, in Canada and the Netherlands v Syria, the Court relied on reports by the Commission of Inquiry on Syria, which applied a...27 Feb The Problem of International Parental Child Abduction
...she has sole custody. (link) Read more … about Adam Haseeb—in his memory…. He is my son who is now deceased. I blame the abduction—and how the State Department handled this case on his death…. Back in the year 2000 I was not notified that his father had obtained a passport on Adam and then while we were still fighting for custody he abducted four year old Adam to Syria. Hakeem Haseeb (Was a U.S. citizen—converted to ISLAM) and had no relatives in Syria…. Adam Haseeb, R.I.P. (November 9, 1995...