It is my great pleasure to announce that Jens Ohlin, Professor of Law at Cornell, is joining Opinio Juris as its newest masthead member. (Astute readers will have noticed he was added there yesterday!) I doubt Jens needs much introduction, but here is a snippet from his Cornell bio anyway: Professor Ohlin specializes in international law and all aspects of criminal law, including...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa Somali and African Union forces have launched a long-awaited fresh offensive against al-Shabab fighters aimed at capturing remaining ports from the armed group, army and government officials have said. Somalia asked the International Court of Justice to determine the maritime boundary between it and Kenya, which disagree about the...
As the military situation in eastern Ukraine become more violent with the incursion of Russian troops, Vladimir Putin has called for talks to determine the statehood of eastern Ukraine. The Interpreter, a website that translates and analyzes Russian media reports, states that in an interview on Russian television Putin said: We must immediately get down to a substantial, substantive negotiations, and...
This week on Opinio Juris, Julian asked whether the US President can enter into a legally binding climate change agreement without Congress, and educated news agencies about the difference between Taiwan's airspace and its Air Defense Identification Zone. The main focus this week was on the Middle East. Kevin commented on an Al Jazeera America piece on Israel's attack on Shujaiya, while Peter discussed the...
It's only a matter of time before we start seeing proposals to take away the citizenship of Americans fighting for ISIS/ISIL forces in Syria and Iraq. They have drawn renewed attention in the wake of James Foley's beheading (apparently by a British citizen) and the death, reported at length today in the NYT, of American Douglas McCain in Syria. Several...
The New York Times is running a big report today on the U.S. plan to sign a "sweeping" climate change agreement without having to go to Congress for approval or ratification. Instead of a typical treaty requiring ratification by the Senate, the U.S. has a different more creative strategy. American negotiators are instead homing in on a hybrid agreement — a proposal...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa Families hiding infected loved ones and the existence of "shadow zones" where medics cannot go mean the West African Ebola epidemic is even bigger than thought, the World Health Organisation has said. Mozambique's former rebel group Renamo and the Frelimo-led government have signed a ceasefire deal, ending two years of armed...
This week on Opinio Juris, we had the final instalments of our Emerging Voices symposium, with a post by Tamar Meshel on awakening the "Sleeping Beauty of the Peace Palace" and one by Mélanie Vianney-Liaud on the controversy surrounding the definition of the Cambodian genocide at the ECCC. More definitional issues arose in Kevin's post discussing Britain's expanded definition on terrorism, which now includes watching the video...
Just keeping up with the news on international terrorism/counterterrorism this summer could be a full time job. Among many other potentially significant reports, I wanted to highlight this statement recently released by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), often described by U.S. officials as the branch of Al Qaeda that currently poses the greatest threat to the United States....
[caption id="attachment_31019" align="alignnone" width="300"] Map credit: Wikimedia Commons via Radiolab[/caption] Radiolab has posted an informative and entertaining essay entitled "How to Cross 5 International Borders in 1 Minute without Sweating." It describes the intertwined municipalities of the Dutch town Baarle-Nassau and the Belgian town Baarle-Hertog. Here's the evocative description by Robert Krulwich of Radiolab: The hunky yellow bit labeled "H1" (for Hartog)...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa Kenya is closing its borders to travellers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three countries worst hit by the Ebola outbreak, the government has announced. Two U.N. peacekeepers were killed and nine others injured in a suicide attack on a patrol base in northern Mali, the U.N....
