Former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla has admitted for the first time that the country's brutal 1976-1983 dictatorship "disappeared" leftist opponents and said babies were kidnapped from their parents. A team of six UN observers has gone to Syria, where despite both sides agreeing to a truce, violence is still raging. South Sudan has accused Sudan of indiscriminate bombing in a dispute...
China will begin delivering oil ships to Iran in May, two months ahead of a European ban on tankers carrying Iranian crude. Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in an op-ed that Iran hopes for dialogue and trust from all sides going forward in nuclear talks and that it will be a process, not an event. The Guardian has an article...
Two calls for papers for ASIL events are closing on April 15 and April 20 Second Annual ASIL Research Forum October 20-21, 2012, Athens, GA The American Society of International Law calls for submissions of scholarly paper proposals for the ASIL Research Forum to be held at the University of Georgia School of Law on October 20-21, 2012. The Research Forum, a Society initiative...
Dioncounde Traore will be sworn in as Mali's interim president today and is tasked with pulling the nation in turmoil back on the right track. Syria has said it will comply with its truce deadlines today by halting military activity, but reserves its right to combat terrorist attacks. Kofi Annan says that Iran can be part of Syria's solution. In the wake...
In 1973, Hans Blix and Jirina Emerson edited the Treaty Maker’s Handbook to help newly emerging States appreciate, post-decolonization, the intricacies of treaty-making as a matter of both domestic and international law. One of the work’s lasting legacies was the inclusion of sample provisions drawn from existing treaties on various treaty topics such as participation, entry into force, reservations, and...
The speech delivered by CIA General Counsel Stephen Preston at Harvard yesterday is important and illuminating, and I agree with Ken the administration should be commended for it. But wow does it raise some troubling questions about how the CIA understands the legal authority for and constraints on its drone operations. There’s too much to unpack in it...
A UN convoy carrying the head of the mission to Libya was targeted while traveling in Benghazi; no one was hurt but this incident raises questions about stability and security in the country. The General Counsel of the CIA, Stephen Preston, spoke yesterday at Harvard Law School about the agency the rule of law, including giving a hypothetical about the covert use...
The European Court of Human Rights is getting a lot of play today with its decision to okay the extradition of Abu Hamza to the US. To much less (read: no) fanfare, it also denied a petition to compel external voting rights in Greek parliamentary elections for Greek citizens living outside of Greece in the case of Sitaropoulos and Giakoumopoulos...
The European Court of Human Rights has decided this morning that the UK can extradite Abu Hamza, a British citizen, and six other men to the US. Profiles of the men can be found here. The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, believes that LRA leader, Joseph Kony, will be captured this year. Turkey has accused Syria of firing across the border,...
Daniel Nexon has a gem of a short review of books by Samuel Barkin and Charles Glaser in the December 2011 edition of Perspectives on Politics. I am enough of an outsider to International Relations theory to have missed the "war on paradigmism". I'm glad to hear that it has apparently been won. The next challenge, according to Nexon: What should we...
Guatemala became the 121st state to join the Rome Statute system of the International Criminal Court last week. The statute will enter into force on July 1st, 2012. In other ICC news, Libya's justice minister has stated the country will not hand over Saif al-Islam Gaddafi to the Court, as it would rather try him in Libya. The UN-brokered Syrian ceasefire agreement...
