In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Humanitarian Law

28 Sep

[Zsuzsanna Deen-Racsmány holds a Ph.D. in public international law from Leiden University. She is an independent researcher and has worked, inter alia, at Leiden University and the University of Amsterdam, and been a rapporteur for Oxford International Organizations.]  Introduction This post is the second in a series of three in which I advocate for reconsideration of the dominant interpretation of Article II...

|
28 Sep

[Zsuzsanna Deen-Racsmány holds a Ph.D. in public international law from Leiden University. She is an independent researcher and has worked, inter alia, at Leiden University and the University of Amsterdam, and been a rapporteur for Oxford International Organizations.] Introduction Contrary to the earlier genocide cases before the International Court of Justice (ICJ or the Court) against Serbia (here and here), the nature...

|
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...

|
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...

|
07 Sep

[Melanie O’Brien is Professor of International Law and Deputy Head of School (Research) at the University of Western Australia Law School, and visiting scholar with the University of Minnesota Law School’s Human Rights Center. Thomas Shacklock is the research director of Crane Center for Mass Atrocity Prevention, a research contributor at the Human Rights Research Center, and a nonprofit consultant at...

and |
07 Sep

[Mehmet Sercan Ercan is an independent researcher with a PhD in Public Law, working in the fields of general public law and constitutional law.] International legal norms already exist. What is missing is the institutional capacity to enforce them in situations of mass atrocity. The post-Cold War era nurtured the ambition to transform humanitarian intervention into a universal standard, later conceptualized...

|
31 Aug

[Mei Ching Liu is an Associate Research Fellow with the Military Transformations Programme (MTP) at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Singapore.] All views expressed in this post are the author’s own and do not reflect the official position of RSIS. The UN Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS) will meet later this month...

|
28 Aug

[Yousuf Syed Khan is a Manager, Law and Policy at Legal Action Worldwide in Geneva. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council (Strategic Litigation Project), and an Associate Fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism - The Hague. Jérôme de Hemptinne is an Assistant Professor at Utrecht University.] In Part I of this post, we clarified which legal regimes...

and |
28 Aug

[Yousuf Syed Khan is a Manager, Law and Policy at Legal Action Worldwide in Geneva. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council (Strategic Litigation Project), and an Associate Fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism - The Hague. Jérôme de Hemptinne is an Assistant Professor at Utrecht University.] We read with real interest Alexandria Virginski’s recent post, Behind Enemy...

and |
28 Aug

[Netta Goussac is Associate Senior Researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and Special Counsel at Lexbridge.] Editorial Note: This post forms the third 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 Conventional Weapons. A version...

|
27 Aug

[Ambassador Alexander Kmentt is an Austrian career diplomat, currently serving as Permanent Representative of Austria to the United Nations Office and to the Specialized Institutions in Geneva. He has worked extensively on disarmament and non-proliferation issues and is one of the architects of the initiative on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons...

|