Topics

Weekly News Wrap: Monday, October 31, 2016

Here’s your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa At least 25 people have been killed, six of them police, in two days of violence around the town of Bambari in the troubled Central African Republic, the UN force MINUSCA has said. Twin suicide bombings by suspected Boko Haram fighters have killed at least...

Opinio Juris Live: The New American President and Crises in Global Order

This Wednesday five of us from Opinio Juris will convene at St. John’s Law School for a roundtable discussion on The New American President and Crises in Global Order. The program is sponsored by St. John’s Center for International and Comparative Law (which I co-direct with Peggy), together with the American Branch of the International Law Association and the New York State...

Weekly News Wrap: Monday, October 24, 2016

Here’s your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa South Africa is pulling out of the International Criminal Court (ICC)because its obligations are inconsistent with laws giving sitting leaders diplomatic immunity, according to government officials Sudan urged African members of the International Criminal Court on Friday to follow South Africain withdrawing from the ICC, insisting...

Håkan Friman

I am very sorry to report the shocking news, that many have already seen on Twitter, that Håkan Friman has passed away, much too young. Anyone involved in international criminal justice surely knows Håkan's name, and more likely than not, knew Håkan personally. In addition to his many many academic publications on international criminal law (including the well-known Introduction to International Criminal Law and...

Still on that Syrian IAC

Thanks to Ryan Goodman for his thoughtful entry in our ongoing discussion about the existence of an international armed conflict (IAC) in Syria. For those just joining, I’d questioned Ryan’s analysis that an IAC exists in Syria as between Syria and the United States on the grounds that none of the three recent events Ryan cited in support for...

A Syrian IAC?

Like Gabor Rona, I, too, found Ryan Goodman’s post yesterday at Just Security intriguing. Further to our ongoing discussions here (e.g.) and there (e.g.) about the classification of armed conflicts, Ryan’s claim is that in light of three recent events (noted below), the armed conflict in which the United States is engaged in Syria (a conflict I think most have understood as a non-international armed conflict (NIAC) between the United States and certain non-state groups (including ISIL and Al Qaeda and associated forces)) is now international in nature – a conflict between (among others) the United States and Syria. He further argues that the ability to now classify the fighting as an international armed conflict (IAC) is a good thing for two main reasons: (1) the IAC designation triggers an obligation among all states (under the Geneva Conventions) to try or extradite those suspected of war crimes in that conflict, with the effect, he argues, of ratcheting up the diplomatic pressure on Syrian officials; and (2) it is possible for the United States (and presumably others) to reap the benefits that come with the legal classification “IAC” without also absorbing the burdens associated with (I take him to mean) the legally meaningless but politically weighty description, “war.” I disagree with Ryan’s analysis that the conflict is, for the reasons he gives, now an IAC. More, I tend to see the relative political and legal consequences of a U.S. recognition of such a conflict as having exactly the opposite effect he anticipates. Here’s my thinking.