[Nathaniel Berman is the Rahel Varnhagen Professor of International Affairs, Law, and Modern Culture at Brown University. This is the first part of a two-part post.] Israel may be on the brink of formally annexing large swaths of the West Bank. Ever since Trump’s victory in 2016, the pro-settler Israeli right has sensed a historic opportunity to secure its cherished goal:...
On May 3rd, a group of 60 Venezuelan expatriates and two American former Green Berets launched an operation to topple the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro, in Venezuela. The operation looked more like something out of a bad streaming series than an actual military mission. Their plan was to arrive by boat at a fishing town north of the Capital, Caracas, somehow storm the heavily fortified...
[Jonathan Turner is a barrister in London and Chief Executive of UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI)] Practising advocates know that what is not included in reply submissions is usually more interesting than what is there. One of the omissions in the ICC Prosecutor’s recent Response on the issue of the Court’s territorial jurisdiction in respect of Palestine is that it does not address the argument made by...
[Mathias Holvoet works as a Legal Officer at the Federal Prosecutor’s Office of Belgium.] This post is a follow-up post on Kevin Jon Heller’s post ‘the OTP Lets Australia off the Hook’, in which he vehemently criticized the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor’s decision not to open a preliminary examination over the situation in Nauru and Manus Island, after denying to qualify...
[Kate Vigneswaran is a Senior Legal Advisor with the International Commission of Jurists.] As other countries across North Africa entered lockdown in March 2020 to prevent and contain the spread of COVID-19, warring parties in Libya ramped up their hostilities. On 24 March 2020, the day after the UN Secretary-General called for a global ceasefire to combat the pandemic, the first diagnosed case of COVID 19 was...
[Eve Massingham, Simon McKenzie and Rain Liivoja are members of the Law and the Future of War Research Group at the University of Queensland Law School. The Research Group receives funding from the Australian Government through the Defence Cooperative Research Centre for Trusted Autonomous Systems. The views and opinions expressed in the article are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australian Government...
[Elke Schwarz is a Lecturer in Political Theory at Queen Mary University London and Researcher in ethics and technology. This post is part of our symposium on legal, operational, and ethical questions on the use of AI and machine learning in armed conflict.] Artificial Intelligence (AI) in armed conflict is often considered under the cluster of ‘emerging technologies’, but the concept and field of study has its origins...
[Nadia Marsan is Senior Assistant Legal Adviser in the NATO Office of Legal Affairs. The views expressed in this article are hers alone and do not necessarily represent the views of NATO or its Allies. This post is part of our symposium on legal, operational, and ethical questions on the use of AI and machine learning in armed conflict.] The ICRC, in its latest report on...
[Dustin A. Lewis is the Research Director at Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict. This post is part of our symposium on legal, operational, and ethical questions on the use of AI and machine learning in armed conflict.] I am grateful for the invitation to contribute to this online symposium. The preservation of international legal responsibility and agency concerning the employment of artificial-intelligence techniques...
Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are computer programs that carry out tasks – often associated with human intelligence – that require cognition, planning, reasoning or learning. Machine learning systems are AI systems that are “trained” on and “learn” from data, which ultimately define the way they function. Both are complex software tools, or algorithms, that can be applied to many different tasks. However, AI and machine learning...
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning tools are already in use to help identify targets on the battlefield and they might soon power new types of cyber and autonomous weapons. These technologies could have profound implications for the role of humans in armed conflict and there will be important choices ahead. Among the most pressing – for compliance with international...
[Yasmine Nahlawi is an independent researcher specialising in R2P and its applicability to the Syrian and Libyan conflicts. She holds a PhD in Public International Law from Newcastle University, LLM in International Legal Studies from Newcastle University, and BSc in Political Science from Eastern Michigan University.] I would like to begin my response post by expressing my deepest gratitude to the distinguished reviewers of my book,...