In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Use of Force

28 Apr

[Katharine Fortin is an Associate Professor at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, Utrecht University. She is the founder and co-editor of the Armed Groups and International Law blog.]  The author is grateful to comments from Brianne McGonigle Leyh and Vivek Bhatt on an earlier draft of this post. Reading Boyd van Dijk’s Preparing for War at a time when the prospect of...

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27 Apr

[Andrew Clapham is a Professor of International Law at the Geneva Graduate Institute. He has been a Commissioner with the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan since 2017. He is an Honorary Member of the International Commission of Jurists. In 2021 he published a book entitled War.] Preparing for War is a fascinating read. Dr Boyd van Dijk takes us to the heart...

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27 Apr

[Doreen Lustig is a Senior Lecturer at Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law. She studies the history and theory of international law, global governance and constitutional law. She is the author of Veiled Power: International Law and the Private Corporation 1886-1980 (Oxford University Press, 2020).] Preparing for War is an insightful account of the history of the drafting of the four...

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26 Apr

So far, the 2020s have been a great decade for books on the history of international humanitarian law. 2020 saw the publication of Giovani Mantilla’s exceptional Lawmaking Under Pressure, on the history of Common Article 3; 2021 gave us Samuel Moyn’s Humane, a powerful critique on the idea that war can be humanised; and now 2022 starts off with Boyd van Dijk’s Preparing for War. I...

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25 Apr

Over the coming five days, we are happy to host a book symposium on Boyd van Dijk’s new book, Preparing for War: The Making of the Geneva Conventions, published by Oxford University Press. In addition to comments from van Dijk himself, we have the honor to hear from this list of renowned scholars and practitioners: Eyal Benvenisti, Andrew Clapham, Doreen Lustig, Katharine Fortin, Karin Loevy...

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22 Apr

[Dr Ka Lok Yip is an Assistant Professor at Hamad Bin Khalifa University.] Events vs Tendencies: an Interdisciplinary Divide? In view of the gravity of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it is understandable that most legal commentators focus on the legal norms regulating the event directly, jus contra bellum, rather than other legal norms regulating the tendencies that make up the more...

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11 Apr

[Francisco Lobo is a Doctoral Researcher at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London and a Legal Theory and International Criminal Law lecturer. He holds an LLM in International Legal Studies (NYU), an LLM in International Law, and an LLB (University of Chile).] During the past weeks a flurry of legal opinions concerning Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine has flooded...

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08 Apr

[Nurlan Mustafayev is a counsel on international legal affairs at the State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan, an instructor on public international law, and a pro bono advisor to Azerbaijani refugees on claims before the European Court of Human Rights.] Introduction  Unlike Russia’s ongoing direct invasion of Ukraine, many cases of military invasions were a mixture of direct and indirect or...

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07 Apr

[Dr Tomas Hamilton (@tomhamilton) is a Researcher at the University of Amsterdam and Managing Editor of the VICI-funded project 'Rethinking the Outer Limits of Secondary Liability for International Crimes and Serious Human Rights Violations'.] China’s Obligations Under Article 7 of the ATT Not to Transfer Arms to Russia In the event that assistance does not fall into the above mandatory prohibitions of Article 6, for instance if Russia provides...

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06 Apr

[Dr Tomas Hamilton (@tomhamilton) is a Researcher at the University of Amsterdam and Managing Editor of the VICI-funded project 'Rethinking the Outer Limits of Secondary Liability for International Crimes and Serious Human Rights Violations'.] As Russian aggression against Ukraine continues and evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity mounts, third-party States and individuals may be considering their potential liability for supplying arms to Russia. On 24 March...

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05 Apr

[Kim Christian Priemel is Professor of Contemporary European History at the University of Oslo and author of The Betrayal. The Nuremberg Trials and German Divergence (OUP 2016).] The Kremlin’s allegation that its invasion of Ukraine was necessary to stop a genocide committed by the Kiev government against the population of the secessionist Donetsk and Luhansk provinces has been widely and rightly...

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