In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Humanitarian Law

12 Aug

[David J. Scheffer is Visiting Senior Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations and Tom A. Bernstein Genocide Prevention Fellow, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and was the first U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues (1997-2001). The author’s observations and views in this article are solely his own and do not reflect any institutional position.] How will the survival and legacies of tens of millions...

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12 Aug

Our friends at West Point have just launched an ambitious new blog, Articles of War.  The "Authors" page lists seven contributors, all of whom are well-known in IHL, military law, and cognate-discipline circles: Col. Joshua F. Berry, Prof. Geoff Corn, Prof. Ashley Deeks, Lt. Gen. Charles N. Pede, Col. Shane Reeves, Prof. Michael N. Schmitt, and Prof. Sean Watts. The...

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11 Aug

[Dapo Akande, Antonio Coco, Talita de Souza Dias, Duncan B. Hollis, Harold Hongju Koh, James C. O’Brien and Tsvetelina van Benthem.] The alarming spread of the global COVID-19 pandemic—now infecting nearly 19 million and claiming more than 700,000 lives worldwide—has made it increasingly urgent to define international law protections for the health care sector against malicious cyber operations. In May 2020, malicious cyberattacks on...

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10 Aug

[Nathaniel Berman is the Rahel Varnhagen Professor of International Affairs, Law, and Modern Culture at Brown University.] The Land between the River and the Sea, the land that cannot even be named without provoking heated controversy, has once again moved to the forefront of international debate. There are many possible explanations for this upsurge: perhaps the “Trump Plan,” perhaps Israeli threats...

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28 Jul

[Ahmed Abofoul is a Research Assistant at the Kalshoven-Gieskes Forum on International Humanitarian Law. He Served as a research assistant to Dr. Robert Heinsch and Dr. Giulia Pinzauti in submitting their amici curiae observations in the Situation in the State of Palestine to the Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court. An Arabic translation by the author follows the...

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19 Jul

Book Launch Event on 23 July 2020 Existing Legal Limits to Security Council Veto Power in the Face of Atrocity Crimes (Cambridge University Press 2020), co-sponsored by the American Society of International Law International Criminal Law Interest Group and the American Branch of the International Law Association United Nations Committee. Join leading experts in the field discuss Professor Jennifer Trahan's new book, which...

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17 Jul

[Verity Robson is the Legal Counsellor at the Permanent Mission of the United Kingdom to the United Nations and other International Organisations in Geneva. A longer version of this article first appeared in the Journal for Conflict and Security Law, Volume 25 Issue 1.] With last month’s publication online of the ICRC’s impressive new Commentary on the Third Geneva Convention, it’s worth revisiting initial reactions to the volumes...

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02 Jul

[Alejandra Muñoz is an International Legal Advisor with a Colombian lawyers' collective, ''Colectivo de Abogados José Alvear Restrepo (CAJAR)'] In February this year, the long awaited first voluntary statement rendered by Colombian army general Mario Montoya Uribe before the country’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace (SJP) sparked a great deal of frustration and disappointment among victims. After refusing to speak entirely on the first day, his declarations on...

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30 Jun

[John B. Quigley is Emeritus Professor of Law at Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State University.] The annexation, now under consideration by Israel, of land in occupied Palestine is aimed, in part, at bringing many of Israel’s settlements into the territory of Israel. Annexation, however, may bring the unintended consequence of the loss of those very settlements. Much of the land on which the...

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26 Jun

Luca Ferro is a post-doctoral researcher at the Ghent Rolin-Jaequemyns International Law Institute (GRILI). He wrote his doctoral dissertation on International ‘Intervention’ in Theory and in Practice, assessing the legality of third-State involvement in the internal and external affairs of other States. Prematurely calling time of death on ‘negative equality’? On 5 and 6 December 2019, the Journal on the Use of Force and International Law (JUFIL) and the...

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26 Jun

[Marie Steinbrecher is currently a teaching fellow at UCL’s Department of Political Science while completing her PhD at Royal Holloway’s School of Law.] The Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT) obliges State Parties to designate a National Preventive Mechanism (NPM). NPMs are mandated to visit all places of deprivation of liberty to prevent torture and ill-treatment. To date, 90 States have ratified OPCAT...

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19 Jun

[Dr. Michael Kearney is a legal researcher with Al-Haq.] A March 2020 Amicus Brief submitted by Palestinian human rights organisations, including Al-Haq, to the Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court suggested that the Court’s territorial jurisdiction extends to Palestine’s Exclusive Economic Zone. The Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), a jurisdictional space derived from the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, was proclaimed by Palestine in September 2019....

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