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23 Sep

[Francesca Spry is an associate at Bailey Glasser International, and an Australian-qualified solicitor.] Introduction  Climate change is increasingly driving displacement worldwide. This includes in Africa, where millions of people are displaced every year due to impacts of climate change, such as drought, desertification and flooding.  This year the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights (AfCHPR) is considering a landmark request for an...

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23 Sep

[Jacquline Wambui Wamai is a labour rights lawyer and an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya. She is currently the Regional Coordinator for Sub‑Saharan Africa at the International Lawyers Assisting Workers (ILAW) Network, where she leads legal and policy initiatives supporting workers’ organisations and lawyers across the region. The ILAW Network is a party to both submissions discussed in...

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22 Sep

[Priyanka Naidoo is a South African human rights lawyer and an African Lawyers Alliance Fellow. She holds a BSocSci in Politics and Law, LLB and LLM from the University of Cape Town. She writes in her personal capacity.] Against a backdrop of escalating climate harm, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (the Court) has been asked to clarify the...

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22 Sep

[Beatrice Njeri is a human rights lawyer, an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya and Regional Litigator for Africa at the Global Strategic Litigation Council. Bella Mosselmans is the Director of the Global Strategic Litigation Council and a human rights lawyer. She is co-initiator of the Climate Mobility Case Database, a former Kennedy Memorial Trust Scholar at Harvard Law School...

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21 Sep

[Dzimbabwe Chimbga is an international human rights and climate justice lawyer. He is currently the Team Leader at the African Climate Platform and the lead drafter of the Request for an advisory opinion on climate change, currently pending before the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights.] A Historic Petition On 2 May 2025, the African Climate Platform (ACP), a Pan-African coalition...

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21 Sep

[Beatrice Njeri is a human rights lawyer, an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya and Regional Litigator for Africa at the Global Strategic Litigation Council. Maria Jose Alarcon is an Assistant Editor for Opinio Juris. She writes in her personal capacity. The views expressed in this post are her own and do not represent those of the Climate Litigation Network (CLN)...

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21 Sep

[Godfrey Odongo is a nonresident senior fellow with the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council.] Introduction Africa has witnessed several intractable armed conflicts, political crises and upheavals. including examples over the last four decades such as the 1994 Rwandan genocide and previous armed conflicts dating back to the 1990s. The International Committee of the Red Cross estimated in 2025 that Africa...

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19 Sep

The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran (IIFFM), created by the Human Rights Council, has released a new report. It's a depressing read, painstakingly cataloging Iran's human-rights violations and analysing two airstrikes carried out by the United States on 28 February 2026 -- the notorious attack on the the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab, which...

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18 Sep

[Jessica Dorsey is an Assistant Professor of International Law at Utrecht University School of Law and Managing Editor of Opinio Juris.]The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran (FFMI) released its 18-page report to the Human Rights Council on 17 September 2026. In the report, among other findings, the Mission outlines reasonable grounds to believe that the United...

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17 Sep

[Veronika Vozniuk is a Ukrainian legal and policy professional working on issues related to international humanitarian law, human rights, and the legal consequences of armed conflict.] Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine has made significant efforts to investigate and prosecute individuals responsible for war crimes committed on its territory. The scale of the alleged crimes is immense and continues...

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16 Sep

[Madara Meļņika is a PhD Researcher in Law at the European University Institute, where her research examines how international security organisations respond to environmental realities.] In May 2026, the media reported plans for NATO’s AI Centre of Excellence to be established in Rennes, a city already famous for France’s armed forces’ cyber-defence command and other AI institutions. Allegedly, France was the...

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16 Sep

[Amir Abbas Kiani is a collaborating researcher in International Law at Shiraz University, Iran.] On June 17, 2026, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America (U.S.) signed an agreement, formally entitled the ‘Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding’ (MoU), to resolve certain disputes arising from the international armed conflict (IAC) that broke out between them on February 28, 2026,...

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