Public International Law

[Radhika Kapoor (Twitter: @Radhikaaah) is a Fellow at the Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict (HLS PILAC), where she researches and writes about contemporary legal issues concerning the international legal regulation of armed conflict.] [This blog post has been written in the author's personal capacity and does not reflect the views of author's institution. Any errors are...

[Oscar Genaro Macias Betancourt is the Former Director of Restitutions at the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a Specialist in International Law on Cultural Property.] 1. Introduction There is a problem with museums, the art market and international law. A chapter in the colonial history of many peoples include instances were relics filled with cultural meaning were taken by old empires as retaliation or...

[Kudakwashe Mapako holds an LLB Degree in International Law (Cum Laude) from Zhejiang Gongshang University and Prospective Masters Candidate at University of Cape town specializing in international law. He is a Research Officer at African Center for Science and International Security (AFRICSIS) in the Arms Control and Nonproliferation program.] Introduction Humanity's wars have seen a slew of instances in which installations containing dangerous...

[Janhavi Pande is a Researcher at the South East Asia Research Programme, Institute of Peace & Conflict Studies, India.] INTRODUCTION In May this year, China imposed its annual three-month fishing ban in the South China Sea (SCS). The ban, introduced in 1999, extends to all coastal states whose fishermen tread China’s claimed Exclusive Economic Zone, lying above the 12 degrees North parallel. Both Vietnam and the...

[Dr. Marta Bo is an Associate Senior Researcher on emerging military technologies at Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Researcher in Public International Law at the University of Amsterdam- Asser Institute and Research Fellow at the Geneva Graduate Institute.] To hold an individual criminally responsible for committing an unlawful attack, it must be established that they launched the attack with some...

[Fajri Matahati Muhammadin is an assistant professor at the Department of International Law, Faculty of Law, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia, and Director of Pusat Kajian Hukum Internasional Islam (Research Center for Islamic International Law).] Al-Mahdi: An Overlooked Question Before being brought to the ICC, Al-Mahdi made Islamic justifications for attacking shrines and a mosque (after actually previously being against it). His Al-Qaeda...

The Sixth Committee of the United Nations adopted resolution A/C.6/77/L.4 on the Draft Convention on Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Humanity on 18 November 2022. This draft convention was elaborated upon and adopted by the International Law Commission, and submitted by the ILC to the General Assembly for further consideration and action in 2019.  The resolution at the Sixth Committee was co-sponsored...

[Professor Shane Darcy is the Deputy Director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights in the School of Law at the University of Galway and the author of ‘To Serve the Enemy: Informers, Collaborators and the Laws of Armed Conflict’ (Oxford University Press).] Every war has its collaborators. And every country at war must at some point not only come to...

[Antarnihita Mishra is an Assistant Professor of Law at IFIM Law School, Bengaluru, India. She has an LL.M. in International Law from South Asian University, New Delhi.] Recent data released by the UN Refugee Agency suggests that the Mediterranean, the world's deadliest sea crossing, has become even more fatal now. Despite a fall in the number of migrants and refugees making...

[Fiona Nelson is Acting Executive Director at the Australian Centre for International Justice. Kobra Moradi is a lawyer at the Australian Centre for International Justice.] November 2020 saw the publication of a redacted version of the Afghanistan Inquiry Report by the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force. The Inquiry was set up in 2016 to investigate potential war crimes and other serious...

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) was created by the Cambodian government in partnership with the United Nations. Its purpose was to prosecute crimes under international and Cambodian law committed between 1975 and 1979, when Cambodia was ruled by the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), better known as the ‘Khmer Rouge’. On 22 September 2022, the ECCC’s appeal chamber delivered its final judgment,...