In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Use of Force

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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05 Apr

[John Quigley was appointed in 1994 by the US Department of State and the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (predecessor to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) as an independent legal expert to recommend solutions for the status of Crimea and to promote reconciliation between the authorities in Kiev and Simferopol.] Russia’s failure to achieve a quick...

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30 Mar

[Owiso Owiso is a Lecturer in Public International Law at the University of Groningen.] Introduction Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine commenced in February 2022, there have been increased calls for criminal accountability for crimes allegedly (being) committed in the context of the invasion. Following Ukraine’s declarations of February 2014 and February 2015 accepting the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and...

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29 Mar

[Dr Pavel Doubek is a postdoctoral researcher at Institutum Iurisprudentiae, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. He publishes in the field of International Law and Human Rights.] In the face of unprecedented aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine and the civilian population, calls are getting stronger for the international community to impose a no-fly zone over the Ukraine territory and adopt other necessary...

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28 Mar

Announcements ABILA - Crisis in Ukraine: International Law and Accountability: The ABILA ICC Committee is pleased to co-sponsor a virtual panel on Crisis in Ukraine: International Law and Accountability on Thursday, March 31 at 12:15-1:45 pm ET. Given the tragic outbreak of war in Ukraine and Russia’s flagrant violation of the UN Charter and ongoing commission of crimes, this panel will...

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21 Mar

[Dimitrios A. Kourtis is an Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Nicosia and a PhD researcher at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.] In Aesop’s fable The Boy Who Cried Wolf a young shepherd repeatedly tricks nearby villagers into thinking that a wolf is going to attack. When this happens, poetic justice intervenes and the liar who ‘cried wolf’ is not believed....

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16 Mar

In an excellent recent blog post at Just Security, Tom Dannenbaum identified four options for prosecuting Russia's unprovoked aggression against Ukraine: [T]he International Criminal Court, an ad hoc international tribunal (whether along the lines proposed at Chatham House or pursuant to a General Assembly resolution), a domestic court exercising territorial jurisdiction (in Russia, Belarus, or Ukraine), or a domestic court exercising...

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15 Mar

[Dr Carrie McDougall, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne, is author of The Crime of Aggression under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (2nd ed 2021, Cambridge University Press) and was involved in the Special Working Group on the Crime of Aggression and ICC Assembly of States Parties’ negotiations in relation to the crime of aggression.] This post is a reply to the post published...

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14 Mar

[Agata Kleczkowska is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Law Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland.] Since February 24, the international community has been discussing Russia’s ‘attack’, ‘aggression’, ‘invasion’, or ‘assault’ against Ukraine. While certainly all of these terms rightly describe what happened in Ukraine on the morning of February 24, many seem to forget that there has been an ongoing...

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11 Mar

[Marc Weller is Professor of International Law at the University of Cambridge and a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers. He served as United Nations Senior Mediation Expert and has been an advisor in a large number of peace negotiations. He is the co-editor of International Law and Peace Settlements (Cambridge University Press, 2021). The views expressed are his own alone.] On Monday, Russia floated a peace balloon....

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10 Mar

[Nikolas M. Rajkovic is Chair of International Law at Tilburg University (The Netherlands). He is a Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at the Law Department of the European University Institute (Italy).] NATO and EU leaders present Russia’s aggression against Ukraine as a storied conflict between geopolitical power and a “rules-based order.”  In the hours that followed the invasion, EU Commission President, Ursula Von...

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