In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Middle East

02 Oct

With contributions from Mohsen al Attar, Brendan Ciarán Browne, Shahd Hammouri, Nawal Hend, Ata Hindi, and Ali Osman Karaoğlu The Gaza Riviera: Colonial Fantasy Masquerading as Peace Both the American president, Donald Trump, and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, caught the headlines this week, with much of mainstream media publicising the offering of a “peace plan” to the Palestinians. The European...

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26 Sep

[Winona Xu teaches international law and reproductive health at UCLA] Introduction As of September 15, 2025, eight weeks after Israel’s Operation Rising Lion (June 13) and the U.S. companion strikes (Operation Midnight Hammer, June 21–22) on Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, the immediate legal question has fused with an acute non‑proliferation and nuclear‑safety crisis. The IAEA still cannot verify the fate of Iran’s...

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23 Sep

From Liberation in Algiers to Pacification in Brussels More than most disciplines, international law has found it difficult to escape the stability of its canon, a series of venerated doctrines and texts that circumscribe legal imagination within the confines of Western thought. Indeed, international law has long stood as an essential feature of the structuring logic of imperial domination—including the doctrine...

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23 Sep

[Cansu Bostan is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology of Law at Lund University and a Visiting Researcher at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg] On February 11, 2025, the Stockholm District Court delivered a landmark ruling, convicting a member of the Islamic State (IS) for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes against Yazidis in Syria....

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15 Sep

[Antonia Mulvey is the Founder and Executive Director of Legal Action Worldwide Terry Flyte is the Programme Manager for Lebanon and Syria at Legal Action Worldwide] Over the past two decades, Lebanon has taken notable steps to address human trafficking occurring within its territory. In 2008, the country ratified the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and its Protocol to Prevent,...

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03 Sep

[Mohammad Mishal is a graduate of the Advanced Master in European and international human rights law at Leiden University and has most recently worked as Academic Coordinator of the same programme] Introduction  In a 2021 article, Dapo Akande and Antonios Tazanakopoulos posit that when a state’s territory is occupied by an unlawful armed attack, the occupation continues the attack, allowing the injured state...

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01 Sep

[Christine Evans is an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the law faculty of Lund University and a human rights practitioner/investigator who has worked for the UN. Nieves Molina is an international lawyer and former senior UN officer. She is writing in her own capacity.] This post argues that the current political situation requires urgent and critical reconsideration of the role that sanctions can...

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19 Aug

[Jinan Bastaki is an associate professor of legal studies at New York University, Abu Dhabi, and a visiting fellow at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford] On the 19th of July 2025, Keir Starmer, the UK’s Prime Minister, threatened Israel with recognizing a Palestinian state if Israel did not end the ‘appalling situation’ in Gaza. While the UK is effectively...

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15 Aug

[Dr. Mais Qandeel is an Associate Professor of International Law at Örebro University, Sweden. She holds a Ph.D. in international humanitarian law from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.] The Israeli ongoing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is not disconnected from the killings, torture, forcible transfer by Israeli military and settlers in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. It is...

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14 Aug

[Greta Ramelli is a legal officer at the Public International Law and Policy Group and a legal advisor at Hostage Italia Onlus. Dr Mohammed Alkhalid is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Sapienza University of Rome.] Introduction  The capture of Damascus by HTS on December 8, 2024, occurred after a long and devastating civil war that began with protests against the Assad regime in 2011...

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13 Aug

[Isabelle Bienfait is a programme co-ordinator at eyeWitness to Atrocities] Two recent convictions of Syrian nationals for crimes committed during the civil war merit attention. On 16 June 2025, Syrian-born Alaa M. was convicted by a Frankfurt court for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed at several medical and military facilities. A few weeks earlier, on 28 May 2025, a...

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