Search: Syria Insta-Symposium

As UN monitors left Syria, fighting progressed to suburbs of Damascus. US president Barack Obama has said that if Syria’s government were to use chemical weapons, the US would be forced to act. German politicians have said that they will give no leeway to Greece regarding financial reform. Israel has positioned an Iron Dome, a rocket interceptor and destroyer, on the Egyptian border following two rocket attacks on the city of Eilat. The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counterterrorism says that the US government must allow investigation into...

...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...

...United Nations-African Union office in Khartoum. Middle East and Northern Africa An Egyptian court has designated the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) armed group a “terrorist organisation” and banned it in the country. A U.S.-led coalition carried out at least 30 air strikes in Syria against Islamic State militants in the northern province of Raqqa on Saturday, a monitoring group said. At least 50 fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL) have been killed in the past 24 hours in Syria’s Kobane, the biggest...

UN chemical weapons inspectors have handed their report into an alleged gas attack in Syria to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Secretary Ban stated in a UN meeting that an expert team’s report will likely confirm the use of chemical weapons in the August 21 attack on Damascus. At PhD Studies in Human Rights, a post discusses Secretary Ban’s comments and the presumption of innocence. French President Francois Hollande called for a U.N. resolution on Syria backed by the threat of punitive action to be voted by the end of...

As NATO meets over the downing of Turkey’s jet by Syria, Turkey has also written to the UN Security Council that the attack is a “serious threat to peace and security”. The EU foreign ministers have urged Turkey to exercise restraint in its responses. Meanwhile, Syria has allegedly shot at a second Turkish jet. In an interview, the Director-General of MI5 has revealed that the UK has faced 11 credible terrorist threats since 2001, and that the terror threat has been widening since the Arab Spring. Rwanda’s foreign minister has...

Islamic groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad fired rockets into Israel in retaliation for yesterday’s Israeli strikes in the Gaza strip. Amnesty International has reported that Rwandan military intelligence services have engaged in torture, unlawful detention and enforced disappearances of civilians . Sudanese state media reports that the border between Sudan and South Sudan will reopen today, after a security agreement was reached last month. Turkish forces fired across the border into Syria on Sunday after a shell launched from Syria landed in Turkey’s border town of Akcakale, underlining Ankara’s warning...

...are the instances where the de jure State is absent due to having lost control over a territory, with disappearances through non-State actors occurring under such circumstances. This may, for instance, be the case during a non-international armed conflict, where civilians find themselves living under the control of armed non-State actors. One only has to think of the time when the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) gained effective control over large parts of north-western Iraq and Eastern Syria, exercising control over 10 million people, with many individuals disappearing...

...has filed its first WTO complaint, against the EU’s energy policies. Following political protests, Ukraine is resuming negotations with EU. The UN has condemned UK PM Cameron’s immigration policies Middle East Israel-Gaza skirmishes were followed by the closure of the border crossing for goods. Gaza’s only power plant had to stop operations a few days later, but Jerusalem denies that this was caused by the blockade. Egypt has declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization Hundreds of civilians killed in air raids in Aleppo, Syria. Meanwhile, President Assad has outlined...

...armed forces near the Colombia-Venezuela border. Syrian President Assad has condemned the massacre in Houla and has promised that the violence will end if Syrians pull together. He has denied involvement in the massacre. Regarding the Syria situation, Foreign Policy in Focus has called for an intervention…with Russia. CNN provides more about upcoming diplomatic efforts in Syria. The US Ambassador to France has marked the 68th anniversary of D-Day with a mass parachute jump in Normandy. The 23rd anniversary of the crackdown on the Tiananmen Square is creating overtime for...

...Central African Republic, Guinea, Uganda, Syria, Iraq all received special mention. They highlighted the financial and in-kind support it offered to the Extraordinary African Chambers that tried former Chadian President Habré, the Specialist Chambers in Kosovo, the Special Criminal Court in the CAR and even towards Guinea’s efforts to bring to trial those responsible for the brutal crimes against civilians during the 2009 stadium massacre. All this changed the day that the ICC decided to turn its attention to the atrocities in Afghanistan, one of its member states. USA Government...

continent that the court unfairly targets Africans. War crimes blamed on the Syrian opposition are predominantly being carried out by foreign fighters, according to a member of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria. Turkey will provide the UN Security Council and fellow members of the NATO military alliance with details of the circumstances of its shooting down of a Syrian helicopter. Bangladesh’s highest court has sentenced to death a leader of the main Islamist party convicted of crimes against humanity during the war for independence from Pakistan in 1971....

...to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Middle East and Northern Africa U.S. and coalition forces conducted five air strikes against Islamic State fighters in Syria and nine in Iraq since early Sunday, the U.S. military said on Monday. The Arab League called for the creation of a regional force to combat militants as countries face a growing threat from Islamic State and other groups. Islamic State militants in Libya seized a group of foreigners (from Austria, the Czech republic, Bangladesh, the Philippines and at least one...