In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Use of Force

22 Dec

[Audrey Wabwire is A Nairobi-based media manager at Human Rights Watch.] What’s the path to justice after years of conflict, during which widespread atrocities were committed? This is a question that South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, confronts. After nearly seven years of conflict ended with the signing of a peace deal in September 2018, South Sudan finally established a transitional national unity government earlier this...

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18 Dec

[Clive Baldwin is a Senior Legal Advisor for the legal and policy office at Human Rights Watch.] UK nationals committed abuses in Iraq after 2003 on a significant scale. The International Criminal Court’s Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) Final Report on the UK and Iraq on December 9 is the latest official report to find that members of UK armed forces subjected Iraqi detainees to abuse,...

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18 Dec

[Marta Bo is a Researcher at the Graduate Institute (LAWS and War Crimes Project) and at the T.M.C. Asser Institute.] Meaningful Human Control is at the core of regulatory and ethical debates on autonomous weapon systems. In international discussions and writings, the problem of meaningful human control has been addressed from different angles: from philosophical, ethical and legal (here and here), to operational, cognitive and...

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01 Dec

A number of us -- me, Aurel Sari, Eliav Lieblich, Andrew Bell, Sasha Greenawalt, Craig Martin, Ed Swaine -- have been having an interesting discussion on Twitter about two important issues concerning the use of force. The first is when IHL begins to apply in an IAC. The traditional position is that any use of interstate force triggers IHL and...

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30 Nov

[Charles C. Jalloh is a Professor of Law at Florida International University and Founding Editor, African Journal of  Legal Studies and African Journal of International Criminal Justice. He is a member of the International Law Commission. His latest book is The Legal Legacy of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (Cambridge, 2020).] It was a pleasure to have been invited to this...

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30 Nov

This week, we have the pleasure of hosting an exciting discussion on Jennifer Trahan's award-winning book, Existing Legal Limits to Security Council Veto Power in the Face of Atrocity Crimes, published by Cambridge University Press. From the Publisher: In this book, the author outlines three independent bases for the existence of legal limits to the veto by UN Security Council permanent members...

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20 Nov

[Eve Massingham is a Senior Research Fellow with the School of Law at The University of Queensland.] Over the coming months there will be considerable attention, both in Australia and internationally, on the findings of the Brereton Inquiry into crimes alleged to have been committed by Australian special forces operating in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016. The report specifically identifies 19...

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20 Nov

[David Matyas is a PhD Candidate and Gates Cambridge Scholar at the University of Cambridge, Lauterpacht Centre for International Law.] For over two weeks, violent and escalating clashes in the Tigray region of Ethiopia have resulted in hundreds of deaths, thousands of displaced persons and ever growing humanitarian needs in this mountainous region of northern Ethiopia. The parties to this conflict include the government of...

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19 Nov

[Hadi Dadmehr is a PhD candidate in Public International law at the National University of Iran (SBU). Hadi was Head of the Department of Law at the University of Zabol, Iran,  for 6 years. You can find him on Twitter @HadiDadmehr.] Donald Trump, the 45th U.S. president, repeatedly claimed during his campaign rallies that the first call he would receive after winning the election would be...

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06 Nov

[Vanessa Sant'Anna Bonifacio Tavares is a PhD candidate in Interdisciplinary International Studies (IIS) at the Vienna School of International Studies. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect any official position.] In about 90 days, the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) shall enter into force, proscribing nuclear weapons use, threat of use, testing, development, production, possession,...

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02 Nov

[Marko Svicevic is a post-doctoral research fellow at the South African Research Chair in International Law, University of Johannesburg.] Introduction The growing insurgency in Mozambique continues to worry its neighboring states and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) alike. Known as Ansar al-Sunna, the insurgency first arose in 2017 in Mozambique’s northern province of Cabo Delgado. By July 2019, it had pledged allegiance...

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28 Oct

[Dapo Akande, Antonio Coco, Talita de Souza Dias, Duncan B. Hollis, Harold Hongju Koh, James C. O’Brien and Tsvetelina van Benthem.] Election insecurity constitutes a dangerous global threat. Thirteen prominent intelligence experts stated, in a brief filed in U.S. federal court, that: “Over the last several years, evidence has emerged that Moscow has launched an aggressive series of active measure campaigns to interfere...

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