In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Featured

24 Apr

[Sayed Hussein Anosh is the Executive Director of Human Rights Defenders Plus (HRD+). Kate McInnes practices international human rights law and international criminal law at Arendt Chambers.] Gender persecution has been the defining feature of Taliban rule since its return to power in 2021. Afghan women and girls continue to be subjected to what commentators have described as one of the worst reversals of rights...

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23 Apr

[Dr Sergey Sayapin is Professor of Law at KIMEP University (Almaty, Kazakhstan) and Distinguished Visiting Global Scholar at the NUS Centre for International Law (2025)] If climate change exposes the limits of consent-based governance in ecological systems, technological disruption reveals a parallel fragility in the architecture of international law. Artificial intelligence, bioengineering, and cyber-autonomous systems do not simply pose new regulatory challenges – they transform the...

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23 Apr

[Chuka Arinze-Onyia is a doctoral student researching universal jurisdiction at Griffith University Law School] Only weeks after the Nigerian government entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the ICC to prosecute crimes committed by Boko Haram and the Nigerian military, the Nigerian Airforce on 11 April 2026, launched airstrikes that killed over 100 people and injured several others. There will be...

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22 Apr

[Girmay Tesfakiros Meressa holds an LL.M. in International Operational Law and is a legal practitioner. His research interests include the law on the use of force, international humanitarian law, and international criminal law, with a particular interest in the legal regulation of contemporary armed conflicts] Introduction A recent investigation by Reuters alleges that Ethiopia constructed a secret facility used to train fighters...

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22 Apr

[Rafael Braga da Silva is a Brazilian-Portuguese criminal and human rights lawyer with over 10 years of experience, specializing in international human rights and criminal law before tribunals including the Kosovo Specialist Prosecutor's Office and the UN International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals] Introduction Twenty-five years ago, the Portuguese-speaking world was present at the founding of the modern international criminal justice system. Lusophone states...

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21 Apr

[Marianne Crielle G. Vitug is a Legal Fellow at the Global Justice Center (GJC)] In January 2026, the International Court of Justice held hearings on the merits in the case concerning the Application on the Convention Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (The Gambia v. Myanmar). While the proceedings are historic in many respects, one notable yet...

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20 Apr

[Dan Byam Shaw is a DPhil candidate in Law at the University of Oxford, writing on self-determination, who has previously worked as a teacher in London, as well as in refugee camps in Greece and Lebanon] The International Court of Justice’s recent advisory opinion – on the Obligations of Israel in relation to the Presence and Activities of the United Nations,...

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15 Apr

[Melanie O’Brien is Professor of International Law and Deputy Head of School (Research) at the University of Western Australia Law School; and visiting scholar with the University of Minnesota Law School’s Human Rights Center] In June 2023, I wrote here about the defamation case relating to the media reporting on allegations of war crimes by Australian soldier Ben Roberts-Smith (‘BRS’). The...

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14 Apr

[Dr Saeed Bagheri is Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in International Law at the University of Reading School of Law. His research focuses on the law on the use of force and international humanitarian law] An Iranian individual traverses the streets of Tehran, with life dictated by meticulous calculation. Words are carefully considered prior to being spoken. Opinions are scrutinised, gestures are moderated,...

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14 Apr

[Davit Khachatryan is an international law expert and lecturer specializing in public international law, alternative dispute resolution, investment law, international humanitarian law, and security] The prohibition on the use of force is international law’s foundational rule. But not every violation of that rule is the same. When force is used not merely to coerce a state but to dismantle and replace its government, something...

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13 Apr

[Rosa Villar is a PhD Candidate in International Law at the University of Aberdeen with research focused on AI-enabled targeting systems, international humanitarian law and international criminal law] Introduction In February 2026, Anthropic declined to use its large-language models for fully autonomous weapons, escalating a dispute with the U.S. Department of Defense. While such a red line on unsupervised systems may be ethically valuable, it seems...

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