Search: extraterritorial sanctions
03 Jun Current Human Rights Concerns in Iran: Women’s Rights and Arbitrary Executions
...the regime’s overall goal of surveillance and control of public life, particularly for women and girls. The draconian and harsh criminal sanctions for failing to comply with compulsory hijab is shocking and unacceptable, and unsurprisingly, the law attracted significant criticism, including from UN human rights experts. On 13 December 2024, a group of UN experts released a statement that ‘[t]he new hijab law marks an intensification of state control over women’s bodies in Iran and is a further assault on women’s rights and freedoms’. States and human rights organisations were...
05 Mar If Unilateral Force Becomes Normalized, Who Will be Disciplined Next and by Whom? The Structural Vulnerability of Third World Sovereignty
...sanctions on Venezuela. Venezuela’s alleged cooperation with States such as Russia and Iran, cited by the US as regional security threats, had intensified periodic threats of military invention. Against this context, on 3 January 2026, the US conducted a military operation against Venezuela during which US forces carried out airstrikes and captured President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, subsequently flying them to the US to face criminal charges including allegations of narcoterrorism and drug trafficking. President Donald J. Trump publicly announced the operation as a success and indicated...12 May Events and Announcements: 12 May 2024
...from one country to another, states are looking for effective ways to respond consistently with international law. Governments regularly resort to unfriendly but lawful acts of retorsion in the cyber context, such as the US expelling diplomats and imposing sanctions following the Solar Winds hack. International law also allows states to take ‘countermeasures’ in response to wrongful acts in cyberspace and beyond. Countermeasures are responses that would normally be unlawful but are justified when taken to stop and/or repair acts that violate international law. The use of countermeasures in cyberspace is...
22 Jul Between State Responsibility and Decolonial Practices: The Case of Gender Apartheid in Dismantling the Gender-Based Oppression of Afghan Women
...discharge their duties only via secondary mitigation measures: granting asylum, issuing targeted sanctions against individual Taliban members, or supporting individual prosecutions. In cases of apartheid, the institutional framework itself is declared unlawful. Crucially, the legal target triggers not only individual prosecutions and diplomatic isolation but also a duty of cooperation to dismantle the structures of the regime. Therefore, it does not merely mitigate consequences. Thus, gender apartheid becomes a tool for dismantling gender oppression and treating the disease, not only its symptoms. In sum, by targeting the system itself, this...
13 Mar The “Inverted Border”: When did the Border become an Obligation to Keep In Rather than a Prerogative to Keep Out?
...and objects from passing into the territory of other states. This is of course outside of special regimes that may stipulate otherwise. It has long been recognized, as it happens in the context of border relations between Canada and the US in the famous Trail Smelter case, that certain types of cross-border environmental harm can engage a state’s responsibility. There is arguably a special case against tolerating the presence of armed irregulars or terrorist groups that are hostile to a neighboring state on one’s territory and the UN’s sanctions regime...09 Mar Events and Announcements: 9 March 2025
...Boğaziçi University Faculty of Law is holding a conference on “Justice and Reconstruction in Post-Conflict Societies”, scheduled for 5 and 6 July 2025 in Istanbul. The conference will critically explore the role of international law in shaping post-conflict transitions, with a focus on security, economic recovery, refugee returns, constitutional processes, sanctions, environmental justice, maritime disputes, and international courts. The deadline for abstract submissions is 27 April 2025. A limited number of funding opportunities are available. For further details on the call for papers, submission guidelines and important dates, please visit...
12 May Gulf States and Iran: The Implications of Hosting Military Bases Under Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello (Part II)
...Law Association’s Committee on the Use of Force, part of the Multidisciplinary Network on Sanctions (MINOS) and a former official of the Council of Europe.] This is part II of a two part series. Part I available here. Scenario Three: Use of the Bases to Launch Attacks In the first part of this post, we addressed situations in which bases are used to support the war effort – such as for the transit of military personnel, weapons, and fuel – without serving as launch points for attacks. We now turn...
30 May Futureproofing Human Rights Symposium: Insulting Language as Ground for Inadmissibility – Thin-Skinned Accountability?
...rights, such an outcome should be questioned. Fair and consistent accountability for alleged human rights violations requires oversight mechanisms with thick skin. Should human rights mechanisms decide (or be required) to address complainants’ word choice, they should: 1) apply a clear and consistent standard for determining when language is excessively offensive; 2) apply the proportionality test to ensure that any response meets human rights standards; and, 3) limit possible consequences to sanctions that do not foreclose the possibility of accountability, such as by striking the offending language. As the ECtHR’s...
09 Feb When the Host Turns Hostile: Moving UN Headquarters to Save Multilateralism?
...protected terms. That promise depends heavily on the host-state’s adherence to the 1947 Headquarters Agreement in cooperation with the Committee on Relations with the Host Country, established through GA Resolution 2819 in 1971. New York is now a critical stress test: repeated controversies over visas for delegations, including Palestinian officials travelling to ’s 2025 session, prompted UN experts to warn that the United States was at risk of breaching its obligations. Targeted sanctions imposed by Executive Order on members of the International Criminal Court as well as Special Rapporteur on...
12 May Gulf States and Iran: The Implications of Hosting Military Bases Under Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello (Part I)
...International Law Association’s Committee on the Use of Force, part of the Multidisciplinary Network on Sanctions (MINOS) and a former official of the Council of Europe.] The Factual and Legal Baseline: Armed Attack and Aggression Since late February 2026, the United States and Israel have conducted sustained strikes on Iranian territory. The chronology of these operations makes clear that the campaign has involved coordinated strikes on nuclear, military, leadership, and civilian targets. The jus ad bellum arguments advanced by Washington, principally a theory of anticipatory self-defence against Iran’s nuclear program,...