In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Humanitarian Law

27 Aug

[Rain Liivoja is a Professor at the University of Queensland Law School and a Director of the Asia-Pacific Institute for Law and Security.]Editorial Note: This post forms the first of three posts of the Opinio Juris mini-symposium on the upcoming meeting of the Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems within the auspices of the Convention on Certain...

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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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20 Aug

[Rafael Braga da Silva is an international criminal and human rights lawyer] The symbol of the red cross against a white field has become common in modern media. It has been used in books, movies, videogames, toys and costumes throughout. Its meaning usually deemed obvious: a red cross on a white field equals health, healing, recovery. It is ubiquitous visual slang:...

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19 Aug

[Benazir Jatoi is a UK-based human rights lawyer from Pakistan. She has consulted with the UNFPA and UNWomen, Pakistan.] It is essential that countries critically re-examine the expansionist approach to self-defence. This is because it has become an arbitrary tool of affluent military powers to justify war and set dangerous precedents of raw and brutal force, causing devastating human suffering, primarily...

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18 Aug

[Kenaw Akililu is currently a MAS candidate in the Master of Advanced Studies in Transitional Justice, Human Rights and Rule of Law at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, and a former law lecturer at Bahir Dar University] Introduction  Cyber operations and targeting of cyber infrastructure, including data centres, are increasingly employed during armed conflict and can cause...

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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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07 Aug

[Gaia Zoboli is a PhD candidate and Lecturer in Public International Law at Maastricht University. Ruben Peetam is a PhD candidate in Dutch Constitutional and Administrative Law at Maastricht University and a member of the Maastricht Research Centre for Society and Law.] Introduction ‘How many military flights connected to the illegal war in Iran make use of the Dutch airspace?’. This question was...

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27 Jul

[Yiokasti Mouratidi is a Doctoral Candidate at the Swedish Defence University, jointly with Utrecht University] IBM is widely recognised as bringing computers to the masses. But less known is its collaboration with the US military during the Vietnam War, providing computing power to advance data-driven military targeting. This collaboration reportedly included posting 250 IBM employees on overseas assignments to Southeast Asia, tasked with installing and maintaining data...

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