Search: crossing lines

Iran’s seizure last week of 15 UK sailors for allegedly crossing into Iranian territorial waters is part of a very complex diplomatic story intertwined with Iraq, Iran’s nuclear program, and longstanding UK-Iranian tensions. But it also raises some international legal questions. For instance, were the UK sailors actually in Iranian waters? The UK sailors had authority from the Iraqi government and a United Nations Security Council Resolution to operate in Iraqi territorial waters to try to stop smuggling. But their authority plainly did not allow them to stray into Iranian...

...team members are Black.” Moreover, Insider Magazine notes that “only 6.3% of [Oscar] nominations went to Black creatives, while 2.6% went to Latinx people and 1.4% went to Asian people.” As a result, most movies produced in Hollywood have adopted white and Western frames of reference for their storylines and characters. In fact, even when the movies discuss stories involving Black, Indigenous and/or other ethnic minority characters, they tend to fall in the “White Saviour” trope, where a white person is “the great leader who saves blacks from slavery or...

...by OISL, the first independent, international human rights investigation into the atrocities on the island, may have effectively excused the international community from promoting critical discourse, let alone political recognition, of genocide. Genocide appears in the report’s section on applicable international criminal law, which defines the elements of genocide and outlines Sri Lanka’s legal obligations under the Genocide Convention. It is mentioned only once more when the report recommends the domestic criminalization of genocide. The report is silent on genocide allegations as well as investigations and prosecutions thereof. Its omission...

...A. Khan KC, concludes first visit to Israel and State of Palestine by an ICC Prosecutor: “We must show that the law is there, on the front lines, and that it is capable of protecting all” – 3 December 2023 Statement of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim A.A. Khan KC, on the Situation in the State of Palestine: receipt of a referral from five States Parties – 17 November 2023 Prosecutor’s Op-Ed in The Guardian and various newspapers – 10 November 2023 Press statement from Cairo –...

...General Assembly, calling for action to develop “red lines” on AI development before the “window for meaningful intervention closes.” We agree.  In this post we examine, first, how Trump’s AI Action Plan radically increases the risk posed by AGI by sparking a nationalistic competition in AI development, and by deliberately undermining domestic and international AI regulation; and second, why and how it is increasingly urgent that we develop global governance structures designed to address the specific risks associated with AGI. The AI Action Plan – National Dominance & Anti-Governance President...

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa At least 55 people have died and almost 100 were wounded after suicide bombings struck two mosques in different cities in northeast Nigeria, officials said. A senior al Shabaab commander and about 20 of his followers have pledged allegiance to Islamic State, the first move of its kind to emerge in the Somali militant group. Cameroonian soldiers drove Boko Haram insurgents back across the country’s northern border into Nigeria on Friday, a day after the...

...preserving academic freedom, and tackling racial profiling by campus security. They provide such a rich analysis that I didn’t want the essay to end. Upon reflection, it doesn’t; theirs is a call for continued creative and provocative engagement in an ongoing struggle. Most colleagues don’t know that the first course I taught was Feminist Legal Issues. I always felt a natural affinity for gender-based struggles. Class, race, and gender-based oppressions are incestuous, intersecting, multi-secting, and criss-crossing straight through each other. “The most disrespected person in America”, Malcolm X said, “is...

...and described operations in arming the villages and creating defensive perimeters; also in attacking Georgian police and military units and stations, to drive them out of the area. Those guys struck me as very, very, very dangerous – but also completely disciplined as fighters. Out of the front lines, the militia forces on both sides were untrained or at best ill-trained, and fought while drunk and high. David Rieff, who was on that mission, and I walked around the parking lot in Sukhumi where the militia fighters assembled to go...

...beyond the old system of imperialism, militant nationalism, and the balance of power. I cannot help but see the strong parallels with Obama. He has the genuine ability to speak directly to the people, and appeal to a better future, creating momentum for change that cannot be ignored by the stale leadership of the Middle East. Here is my outline of the seven key issues he discussed, together with the applause lines (averaging one per minute): Violent Extremism: We’re not at war with Islam, we are at war with extremists....

...“adjacent to the coast.” Article 76 of the LOS Convention eliminates the adjacency limit, provides that each State Party has a legal continental shelf extending to at least 200 nautical miles from baselines (unless restricted by a boundary with a nearby state), and sets specific criteria under which some continental shelves may extend beyond 200 miles from baselines. The LOS Convention promotes the reliability of coastal states’ outer limits lines by creating a technical body, the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), to which States Parties must...

...(ii) adequate school infrastructure, facilities and environment; (iii) a well-qualified teaching force; (iv) a school that is open to the participation of all”. Along the same lines, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR Committee), the supervisory body for the ICESCR, has underlined that acceptability of education includes curricula and teaching methods that are “relevant, culturally appropriate and of good quality”. Concerning infrastructure, the ICESCR Committee has stressed that States Parties must take measures to ensure the availability of education, including by ensuring availability of “buildings or...

...as: the aircraft or munitions used, unique characteristics regarding how the attack was conducted, or – ideally – official Russian claims of responsibility. The Berlin meeting resulted in a shortlist of incidents involving attacks on hospitals, and some promising lines of inquiry regarding attribution to Russia. Preserving Potential Evidence Syrian Archive, meanwhile, was rapidly preserving online documentation of attacks impacting medical facilities in Syria before it could be taken offline and possibly lost. As of March 2021, Syrian Archive had preserved online, open source videos documenting 410 separate, verified attacks...