Africa Since Nigeria's army began clearing large areas of the country's northeast from Boko Haram, some of the 1.5 million internally displaced people have started returning home. But thousands could now face severe food shortages as reconstruction lags behind. Rival armed groups in Central African Republic agreed on Sunday to a peace accord requiring them to disarm and potentially face justice for...
Events On May 14, 2014, the British Institute of International and Comparative Law is hosting: Interpretation in International Law: The Object, the Players, the Rules, and the Strategies. Interpretation in international law is usually referred to as an art or a science. These perspectives imply that interpretation is a static exercise, tied to the rules in the Vienna Convention on the Law...
The blog saw quite some discussion over the last two weeks. As Julian was avoiding grading exams, he posted about Helmerich & Payne v. Venezuela, where the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held that "domestic takings" can violate international law. He also covered the Sea Shepherd petition for certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court and how Russia, in lecturing the EU...
Africa Nigeria's military is confident it has Boko Haram cornered, but a final push to clear the Islamist militants from their forest hideouts is being hampered by landmines, it said on Saturday. Congo-Brazzaville has banned Muslim women from wearing the full face-veil in public, citing security reasons, an Islamic association said. Middle East and Northern Africa Nearly 5,800 migrants have been rescued from boats...
Africa Sudan has accused a peacekeeping force in Darfur of killing seven civilians in three separate incidents last week, threatening to exacerbate the government's strained relations with the international mission. Nearly 15,000 Burundians have fled into Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo since mid-March, United Nations and Rwandan officials said on Friday, amid growing fears of violence in the run-up to...
Events The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva (IHEID), International Law Department will hold a conference entitled "International Law and Time" in Geneva, Switzerland, from 12-13 June 2015. Registration for the conference is now open. For more information please visit the conference website or email lawconference@graduateinstitute.ch. A one-day conference entitled The European Convention on Human Rights and General International Law is...
The last two weeks of posts at Opinio Juris have seen several items from Julian, including on his favorite treaty reservation ever in the Hague Child Support Treaty and more on the HCST and the role of US states here. He also asked the burning question of whether the new “Bipartisan Trade Priorities and Accountability Act” violate the U.S. Constitution’s bicameralism and presentment...
Africa Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir will travel to Indonesia on Monday for a summit, Sudan's foreign ministry said, in his first trip outside of Africa or the Middle East in nearly four years. **UPDATE** Al-Bashir cancelled his trip to Indonesia, sources say, based on not receiving permission from several states to fly over their airspace en route to Jakarta. Two Kenyans...
Calls for Papers Call for papers for ‘The Latin American Challenge to the Current System of Investor-State Dispute Settlement’ will analyze current developments and the proposed design of UNASUR’s investment dispute settlement centre, as an example of the Latin American ‘challenge’ to investment arbitration and place it within the wider context of reform of investor-state dispute settlement as evidenced elsewhere in the ...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa Kenya has given the United Nations three months to remove a camp housing more than half a million Somali refugees, as part of a get-tough response to the killing of 148 people by Somali gunmen at a Kenyan university. Middle East and Northern Africa An Egyptian court's decision to...
This week on Opinio Juris, we hosted a Book Symposium on Interpretation in International Law. The Symposium was introduced by Daniel Peat and Matthew Windsor who offered the framework and context of the book in describing their introductory chapter (available here), explaining that the idea of interpretation in their work centers around the metaphor of a game, with each of the authors...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa Gunmen from the Islamist militant group al Shabaab stormed a university in Kenya and killed at least 147 people on Thursday, in the worst attack on Kenyan soil since the U.S. embassy was bombed in 1998. Al Jazeera offers a context piece about why al Shabaab has...
