Use of Force

[Valentina Azarova is an international law practitioner and academic currently Visiting Academic at the Manchester International Law Centre, University of Manchester, and Legal Advisor to the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN). She is co-author of an expert opinion on legality of arms transfers in the Yemen context, and has advised a number of domestic cases in this area.] Domestic licensing procedures...

[Todd Carney is a student at Harvard Law School. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Public Communications. He has also worked in digital media in New York City and Washington D.C.] Since 1991, Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in an extreme conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region on their border. The region contains the unrecognized Republic of Artsakh. Armenia has implicitly...

[Ralph Janik teaches international law at the University of Vienna, Webster University Vienna, and the University of Rostock. He specializes in the interplay of international law and international relations. Twitter: @RalphJanik. This is the second part of a two-part post. The first can be found here. An earlier version of this article was published (in German) on Völkerrechtsblog.org] In the last days I...

[Ralph Janik teaches international law at the University of Vienna, Webster University Vienna, and the University of Rostock. He specializes in the interplay of international law and international relations. Twitter: @RalphJanik. An earlier version of this article was published (in German) on Völkerrechtsblog.org.] The deadly drone strike against Qasem Soleimani has triggered countless extensive legal, political, and strategic debates. In addition to the...

[Marina Aksenova is a Professor of Comparative Criminal and International Law, IE Law School Madrid and Linde Bryk is Legal Advisor - Bertha Justice Fellow, European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights.] On 11 December 2019, ECCHR together with a group of NGOs - Mwatana (Yemen), Rete Disarmo (Italy), Centre Delàs (Spain), the Campaign Against Arms Trade (UK) and Amnesty International Secretariat...

My last post raised a few questions on how we should approach the issue of targeted killings as first strikes in international armed conflicts (IACs). The ensuing Twitter debate proved very enriching, generating some answers and many more questions. This time around, I would like to elaborate on some of these answers and what do I make of their implications...

Yes. The American strike against Qassem Soleimani was illegal. This is the common conclusion of some of the world’s best experts on international law and jus ad bellum (see here and here for a couple of examples). And, lets be clear, the Iranian response was also illegal (see here and here). Let’s not dwell on these already explored and answered...

[Beatrice Walton is a 2018 graduate of Yale Law School and served as Judicial Fellow at the International Court of Justice in The Hague in 2018-2019. Paul Strauch graduated from Yale Law School in 2018, where he was a Herbert J. Hansell student fellow at the Center for Global Legal Challenges and Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Journal of International Law....

[Dearbhla Minogue is a Legal Officer for the Global Legal Action Network and Ruwadzano Patience Makumbe is a Zimbabwean lawyer and currently a Hillary Rodham Clinton Global Challenges Programme Scholar at Swansea University.] Digital technologies have empowered citizens to not only be consumers of information but also creators and distributors, making it possible for ordinary people to highlight human rights violations across the world. As has been the case...

[Catalina Fernández Carter is a Chilean lawyer and holds and LLM from the University of Cambridge.] According to the latest report by the Chilean National Institute of Human Rights, 241 individuals have suffered eye injuries – several of them resulting in partial or total blindness – in the context of the social unrest the country has experienced since October. Images of people with eye patches have become a...