In association with the International Commission of Jurists

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10 Jan

[Sina Etezazian serves as Digest of State Practice Regional Coordinator for the Journal on the Use of Force and International Law. He recently completed his PhD at Monash University. His doctoral thesis was titled “Ambiguities Regarding the Necessity and Proportionality Criteria for the Exercise of Self-Defense in International Law”. In 2017, he won the 2016 Monash Law School Students’ Publication...

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03 Jan

[Maziar Homayounnejad is currently a PhD researcher at the Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London. His research primarily focuses on law of armed conflict aspects of autonomous weapon systems, with a secondary focus on arms control and non-proliferation.] On November 13-17, 2017, the UN, acting under the auspices of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), convened its first...

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02 Jan

Although aggression received most of the attention at the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) last month, the ASP also adopted a series of amendments to Art. 8 of the Rome Statute, the war-crimes provision, prohibiting the use of three kinds of weapons in both international armed conflict (IAC) and non-international armed conflict (NIAC): [W]eapons, which use microbial or other biological agents, or...

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20 Dec

[Jeffrey Biller, Lt Col, USAF, is the Associate Director for the Law of Air, Space and Cyber Operations at the Stockton Center for the Study of International Law, US Naval War College.] The use of hospital ships in wartime has always been a contentious issue. Although serving a humanitarian need recognized by most parties, profound suspicion of their misuse led to...

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20 Dec

[Dr. Mohammad Hadi Zakerhossein is a Lecturer at Tilburg University.] On 9th November 2017, the Judges at PTC III of the International Criminal Court sprung a great surprise by unsealing an unexpected decision, thereby authorizing the Prosecutor to open a full investigation into the situation in the Republic of Burundi. The Chamber’s decision sparked off a lively debate on Article 18 of...

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16 Dec

[Jennifer Trahan is Associate Professor, The Center for Global Affairs, NYU-SPS and Chair of the International Criminal Court Committee of the American Branch of the International Law Association] On Thursday, December 14, 2017, the ICC’s Assembly of States Parties (ASP) took the historic and significant decision, by consensus, to activate, effective July 17, 2018, the ICC’s jurisdiction over its 4th crime,...

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15 Dec

A friend who is even more jaded than I called my attention to the following curious paragraph in the Draft Resolution the ASP has just adopted by consensus: 3.    Reaffirms paragraph 1 of article 40 and paragraph 1 of article 119 of the Rome Statute in relation to the judicial independence of the judges of the Court. This paragraph is new --...

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14 Dec

A new document is being circulated at the Assembly of States Parties entitled "Draft Resolution: Activation of the jurisdiction of the Court over the crime of aggression." Operative Provision 1(b) seems to indicate that the opt-out camp, led by Liechtenstein, has conceded the jurisdictional point to the opt-in camp, led by Japan, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Here is the text of OP1(b): (b)   ...

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13 Dec

The US submission to the ASP has finally appeared. It is not very long -- about 1.5 pages -- but manages to pack in a good number of false claims and bizarre interpretations of the Rome Statute. In terms of falsity, the US repeats its longstanding claim that the Court has no jurisdiction over the nationals of non-state parties, even when those...

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11 Dec

Although many important issues will be discussed this week at the Assembly of States Parties (ASP), none will be quite so momentous as the decision to activate the ICC's jurisdiction over the crime of aggression. Whatever one thinks of the merits of the definition of aggression, there is no question that the activation of jurisdiction will represent the culmination of...

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