In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Middle East

21 Aug

[Natia Navrouzov is a lawyer and the Executive Director of Yazda, a global Yazidi organisation that has documented ISIL’s crimes since 2014 and supports survivors of the Yazidi genocide through legal, psychosocial, and advocacy work] On 20 March 2026, the Paris Assize Court convicted Sabri Essid of genocide and crimes against humanity for atrocities committed against the Yazidi community in Iraq....

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21 Aug

[Fadel Abdulghany is executive director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights and author of The Use of Chemical Weapons in Syria and the Failure of the International Community and Undermining the Independence of the Judiciary in Syria and Pathways to Its Reform.] For six years, Al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria was the world's largest and most troubled detention site linked to the Islamic State and the...

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21 Aug

[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.] On the morning of 17 July 2026, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) struck the offices of the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan in the Kurdistan...

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17 Aug

[Davit Khachatryan is a lecturer at American University of Armenia and Russian-Armenian University] There is something almost ritualistic about restating the law of self-defense. Article 51 has been parsed, contested, stretched, and invoked in nearly every major armed conflict since 1945. Few provisions of international law are at once so settled in principle and so contested in application. Yet the war between Iran...

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17 Aug

[Sarah Shoker is a Senior Non-Resident Fellow in artificial intelligence at U.C. Berkeley Risk and Security Lab and former Geopolitics Team Lead at OpenAI. Jessica Dorsey is an Assistant Professor of International Law at Utrecht University School of Law and Managing Editor of Opinio Juris.] What began as a quiet contract dispute between the U.S. Department of Defense and the AI...

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17 Jul

[Taylor Kate Woodcock is a researcher in public international law at the T.M.C. Asser Instituut and Jessica Dorsey is an Assistant Professor of International Law at Utrecht University School of Law and Managing Editor of Opinio Juris.]  Four and a half months have passed since the Minab school bombing by United States forces in Iran on 28 February 2026, killing at least 157 people – including 120...

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18 May

[Gerhard Kemp is professor of criminal law at UWE Bristol and serves on the board of directors and executive committee of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town] The recently adopted “Death Penalty for Terrorists Law” (unofficial translation, here) was met with widespread condemnation by governments (e.g., here, here), civil society and human rights groups (e.g., here), the UN High...

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13 May

[Garima Dhankhar holds an LL.M. in International Arbitration and Dispute Resolution from the National University of Singapore. She currently works with Justice Indu Malhotra, former Judge of the Supreme Court of India and a Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, assisting in international arbitrations.] The past few years have demonstrated, with increasing clarity, that geopolitical conflicts are no longer peripheral...

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06 May

[Konstantinos Deligiannis-Virvos is a PhD Research Fellow with the Norwegian Centre for the Law of the Sea (NCLOS) at the Law Faculty of UiT-The Arctic University of Norway] The illegal armed attack against Iran by Israel and the US on February 28, 2026 prompted Iran to “close” the strait of Hormuz to international navigation. The attack against Iran clearly contravenes Art....

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16 Mar

[Kate McInnes and Elsa Wyllie practice international criminal law at Arendt Chambers] Bill 5776-2026, establishing a special tribunal for the perpetrators of the October 7 attacks on Israel (the “October 7 Court”), is rapidly advancing through the Knesset.  The legislation’s earliest iterations presented the October 7 Court as a hybrid tribunal in all but name. What was proposed was a special judicial...

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02 Mar

[Jessica Dorsey is an Assistant Professor of International Law at Utrecht University School of Law; Elke Schwarz is a Professor of Political Theory at Queen Mary University London; Ingvild Bode is a Professor of International Relations, University of Southern Denmark; Zena Assaad is an Associate Professor at the School of Engineering, Australian National University; and Neil Renic is a Lecturer...

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