In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Regions

03 Nov

[Michelle Burgis-Kasthala is a Senior Lecturer in Public International Law at the University of Edinburgh. Her work explores practices of statehood, territoriality and criminal accountability across the Middle East.] Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   The ceremony of...

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23 Oct

[Chuka Arinze-Onyia is a practicing criminal defense lawyer with an avid interest in international justice issues. He authored this article during a recent stint as an International Justice in Africa Fellow with Amnesty International.] On 16 December 2022, the ICC Prosecutor announced that his office had concluded the investigation phase of its work in Central African Republic (CAR) and would not pursue new...

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20 Oct

[Alonso Gurmendi is a Lecturer in International Relations at Kings College London’s Department of War Studies and a contributing editor at Opinio Juris. I wish to thank Dr. Helen M. Kinsella, Prof. Adil Haque, and Ms. Sarah Zarmsky for their comments on previous versions of this post] On October 7th, Hamas militants broke down the security fences around Gaza, took over...

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19 Oct

[Stefano Angeleri (X/Twitter: @StefAngeleri) is a EU’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at Queen's University Belfast and visiting scientist at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University] Funding: This research was supported by funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 101032116—HEAVEN. During the last 8 years, 7.7 million people have fled Venezuela...

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18 Oct

In a world where powerful states are becoming more brazen in their impunity, it is crucial to give voice to those who resist. Along with nearly 800 lawyers, scholars, and practitioners, representing a diverse range of perspectives from academia and practice, I have signed a statement warning of the possibility of genocide in Gaza, Palestine. This open letter underscores the...

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17 Oct

Introduction  In March 2022, I wrote a piece for Opinio Juris in which I described the international legal community as a “visible college.” Playing on Schachter’s concept of an “invisible college” of international lawyers “dispersed throughout the world” (p 217) but united in their faith in the law’s pacifying and transformative potential, my piece celebrated international lawyers’ willingness to engage with...

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12 Oct

Since my fields of research include criminal law, international law, and international humanitarian law, several colleagues and students have asked for my preliminary legal assessment regarding the recent attacks in Israel by Hamas terrorists. These terrorist attacks were egregious and shocking violations of human dignity and cannot be justified in any context.  Although facts are still being gathered, the available evidence...

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29 Sep

[Shawan Jabarin is General Director at Al-Haq. Ralph Wilde is a member of the Faculty of Laws, University College London.] This was delivered as a lecture to the UK Balfour Project, and is based on arguments set out in greater detail, with full citations, in an article published in the Journal of the History of International Law, both by the second...

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19 Sep

[Ana Srovin Coralli works as a Teaching Assistant in the International Law Department of the Geneva Graduate Institute, where she is pursuing her PhD entitled Bringing Perpetrators of Enforced Disappearances to Justice: In the Shoes of the Prosecutors] The International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances (30 August 2023) was accompanied with a true victory for accountability: an announcement of the upcoming trial for enforced...

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14 Sep

[Patricio Barbirotto is a research fellow and adjunct professor of international law at Ca' Foscari University of Venice] The awareness of the environmental damages provoked by armed conflicts has constantly been increasing after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and in particular since the Vietnam War. The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation on 24 February 2022, occurred...

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