Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa Somalia last week deposited its instrument of ratification of the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), leaving the United States as the world’s only country that has not done so. Militants claiming loyalty to Islamic State said they were behind suicide bombings near the...
It's been widely reported over the past few days that Russia has been bombing the Free Syrian Army under the pretext of joining the fight against ISIS. That development spurred an interesting post at Lawfare by Bobby Chesney about whether Art. II of the Constitution -- the Commander-in-Chief Clause -- would permit the US to defend the FSA, which it has been...
The UN General Assembly is set to vote once again (for the 24th consecutive year) on a Cuba-sponsored resolution condemning the United States' economic, commercial, and financial embargo against Cuba. This resolution will probably get near majority support, and perhaps even unanimous support. Indeed, there are rumors that the U.S. government itself may abstain from voting against the resolution, which is...
[Matt Brown is a current LLM student at Leiden University, studying Public International Law, with a specific interest in international criminal law, transitional justice and cultural heritage law. He tweets about these and other topics @_mattbrown.] The International Criminal Court concerns itself with the ‘most serious crimes of concern to the international community.’ Often we understand this term to reflect examples...
A few days ago, I pointed out that Kate Martin's "broad consensus that there is a right to use military force in self-defense when the host country is unable or unwilling to stop the attack" actually includes no more than four of the world's 194 states. That consensus is not exactly broad -- and it looks even shakier now that Russia...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa At least 21 people were killed in the capital of Central African Republic on Saturday and around 100 others were wounded as Muslims attacked a mainly Christian neighborhood, senior hospital officials and a government spokesman said.. A Norwegian-flagged ship that was held in Kenya for more than a...
States whose nationals died in the attack on MH17 were understandably upset when Russia vetoed a Security Council resolution that would have created an ad hoc tribunal to prosecute those responsible for the attack. Their idea to create a treaty-based court, however, is simply not helpful: Australia’s foreign minister, Julie Bishop, will meet with her counterparts from Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Ukraine on...
Yes, the "unwilling or unable" test marches on. The latest step forward is a Just Security blog post by Kate Martin, the Director of the Center for National Security Studies, that cites absolutely nothing in defense of the test other than another scholar who cites almost nothing in defense of the test. Here is what Martin says in the context of the UK's recent drone strikes...
So the ICJ ruled today (14-2) that the Court does have jurisdiction to hear Bolivia's claim that Chile has violated its legal obligation to negotiate "sovereign access to the sea" despite a 1904 Treaty that had settled the borders between the two countries. I have been super-critical of Bolivia's claim, going so far as to suggest there was a slam-dunk...
[Dr. Başak Çalı is Director for the Center of Global Public Law and Associate Professor of International Law at Koç University, Turkey. She the secretary general of the European Society of International Law. The following is written in her personal capacity.] It is a rare event for international lawyers to overwhelmingly agree on the content, scope and interpretation of international law....
Wishing Jews a happy Yom Kippur -- good. Doing so over an image of the yellow star Jews were forced to wear by the Nazis -- not so much: Not surprisingly, WGN Chicago has since apologized....
Thanks to Kevin Govern and Duncan Hollis for providing the two previous posts (here and here) in this book symposium on Cyber War: Law and Ethics for Virtual Conflicts. In my post, I want to explore the difficulties arising from causal investigations in cyber attacks. Everyone knows that the increasing threat of cyber attacks will place immense pressure on the operational capacities for...
