[Anna Andersson is a Senior Researcher in International Law at The Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI). Anna was a member of the Swedish delegation to the GGE LAWS 2023-2026. This post is, however, written in her capacity as a researcher and does not reflect Sweden’s position or understanding. This post is the fourth in a series of analyses on aspects...
Two years before his assassination, the Palestinian revolutionary Ghassan Kanafani was interviewed by the Australian journalist Richard Carleton: Carleton: Why won’t your organisation engage in peace talks with the Israelis?Kanafani: You don’t mean exactly peace talks; you mean capitulation, surrender.C: Why not just talk?K: Talk to whom?C: To the Israeli leaders.K: That kind of conversation is between the sword and the...
[Sally Longworth is a Senior Lecturer in Public International Law at Stockholm University and Researcher in public international law at the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI). The views expressed in this post are her own and do not reflect the position or understanding of Sweden. This post is the third in a series of analyses on aspects of the recent...
[Rain Liivoja is a Professor at the University of Queensland Law School, and a Director of the Asia-Pacific Institute for Law and Security. This post is the second in a series of analyses on aspects of the recent adoption of the 2024-2026 CCW GGE LAWS report.] What exactly are we talking about when we discuss autonomous weapons? This has been an...
[Jessica Dorsey is an Assistant Professor of International Law at Utrecht University School of Law and Managing Editor of Opinio Juris. Rain Liivoja is a Professor at the University of Queensland Law School, and a Director of the Asia-Pacific Institute for Law and Security. Netta Goussac is an Associate Senior Researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and Associate Partner at...
[Arez Rizgari is an Iranian scholar. The author is writing under a pseudonym because they are concerned that this post will subject them to political retaliation or restrictions on their academic freedom by Iranian authorities.] The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has repeatedly targeted Rojhilat (Iranian Kurdistan) parties based in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) with missile and drone strikes...
[Sué González Hauck is a postdoctoral scholar at Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg.] In her opening statement, Germany’s Agent adamantly insisted that questions related to Germany’s actual breaches of or adherence to the fundamental rules of international law have no place in the Preliminary Objections phase (CR 2026/30, p. 15, para. 9 (Monar)). Yet, Germany spent a considerable portion of its pleadings...
[Matthias Goldmann is Professor of International Law at EBS University (Oestrich-Winkel, Germany) and a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law.] The recent hearings before the ICJ in the case of Nicaragua v. Germany revolved around preliminary objections. Yet the arguments the parties exchanged reached well beyond questions of admissibility and touched repeatedly...
[Shahd Hammouri is a lecturer in international law and legal theory at the University of Kent, and a senior legal advisor at Law for Palestine. She is the author of Corporate War Profiteering and International Law (CUP, forthcoming 2026).] Germany’s insistence that ICJ advisory opinions cannot become a route around consent in contentious proceedings is doctrinally intelligible. But its argument risks...
[Jinan Bastaki is Associate Professor of Legal Studies at New York University, Abu Dhabi. Victor Kattan is Assistant Professor of Public International Law, University of Nottingham. He is also a Smuts Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge (2026-7).] The proceedings in Alleged Breaches of Certain International Obligations in Respect of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Nicaragua v. Germany) before the International Court...
[Dr Nahed Samour is Associate Researcher at Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands.] While the oral hearings in the ICJ Alleged Breaches of Certain International Obligations in respect of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Nicaragua v. Germany) from September 7-10, 2026 raise questions of jurisdiction and admissibility only, it would be misleading to understand the question of temporal limitations (ratione temporis) as...
[Ihsan Adel is the Founder and Chair of Law for Palestine and an international lawyer currently pursuing a PhD in Germany.] The preliminary objections proceedings in Nicaragua v Germany raise a temporal question extending beyond that case: when an occupation lasts for decades and its legal character evolves over time, how should a court identify the “situations or facts” giving rise...