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Search: kony 2012

27 Jul

The skies over Somalia have become so congested with drones that the UAVs pose a threat to air traffic and potentially to an arms-embargo. In a shift from the past, the Egyptian president, Mohamed Mursi, met with the leader of Hamas, Ismael Haniyeh. The Netherlands suspended $6.15 million in aid to Rwanda yesterday, following a similar move by the US a day earlier, over Rwanda’s support for rebels in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon urges nations to “bridge their differences” in...
27.07.12 | |

06 Sep

The Liberian Daily Observer has reported that Judge Sow of the Special Court for Sierra Leone has been called by the defense team of Charles Taylor and will testify in his appeal. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has accused both the government and the rebel forces in Syria of human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law. Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, said that Palestine will make a bid this month at the UN General Assembly for an upgraded status to non-member...
06.09.12 | |

19 Sep

Syrian rebel forces clash with government troops near the Turkish border as UN envoy says the Syrian crisis is worsening. According to diplomats, Sudan and South Sudan have made progress on reaching a border deal. Iraq has re-opened its border to refugees from Syria, but is excluding young men from entry for security reasons. The European Court of Human Rights ruled yesterday that UK provisions about indefinite detention could result in arbitrary detention in the case of James, Wells and Lee v. UK (.pdf). The US State...
19.09.12 | |

20 Jun

The Commander of the UN observers in Syria has given more information on his decision to suspend the mission’s activities until both sides honor the peace plan. The same article also reveals that the Russian ship carrying military helicopters for Assad’s forces returned to Russia after its UK insurer revoked coverage. Tensions have flared up along the border between Israel and the Gaza strip. Wikileaks’ Julian Assange has sought asylum at the Ecuador’s embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden on sex charges. The ICJ has...
20.06.12 | |

17 May

The trial against Ratko Mladic at the ICTY continued today, with testimony today covering the systematic execution of 8,000 Muslim men and boys. However, due to prosecutorial error, Judge Orie has suspended the presentation of evidence indefinitely, originally to begin May 29. Foreign Policy takes us back to the early days of the tribunal with this graphic representation. In Libya, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi is refusing to appoint a defense lawyer for domestic charges against him in that country. ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said yesterday that he would...
17.05.12 | |

15 Aug

In Syria, fresh clashes have broken out in Damascus and Aleppo, even though the defected Prime Minister Hijab has said the regime is close to collapse. Human Rights Watch reports that fighter planes have struck a hospital in Aleppo, while Reuters provides an exclusive about Libyan fighters joining the rebel forces. US Defense Secretary Panetta has accused Iran of supporting pro-Assad militias in Syria. Meanwhile, China has argued Western states’ attempts to engineer a regime change in Syria undermine solidarity on the UN Security Council. The Guardian...
15.08.12 | |

11 Jun

A four-member delegation from the ICC in Libya, who went to meet with Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, has been detained by Libyan authorities after one of the lawyers, Melinda Taylor, was found allegedly carrying suspicious documents. Syrian government forces renewed their attacks on Homs, killing at least 35. Protesters in Chile rallied against a documentary honoring Augusto Pinochet. The world’s newest country, South Sudan, struggles to open embassies, with only about a dozen open to this point. After a blast that killed women and children over the weekend,...
11.06.12 | |

26 Jun

...statehood, international lawyers often retreat to the trap of declaratory versus constitutive statehood. Such frameworks have not helped Palestinians before and they won’t now. At best, interrogating these typologies reveals how contingent and political the process of state-making is. As Joseph Weiler noted in 2013 in the wake of Palestine’s recognition as a non-member observer state at the UN in 2012, embracing either a constitutive or a declarative stance is unhelpful in the face of Palestine’s own ‘differentiated’, but nevertheless, ‘evolving’ statehood.  Similarly, today, we find ourselves as international lawyers...
26.06.24 | |

18 Sep

The group claiming responsibility for a suicide bomb that killed 12 near Kabul, Afghanistan, including nine foreigners, said the attack was revenge for the anti-Islam film, Innocence of Muslims. Other protests throughout Asia and the Middle East were carried out in response to the film in multiple cities in Pakistan, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Tunisia, Azerbaijan–and as far as Britain and Australia. NATO has ordered a suspension of certain joint patrols in Afghanistan in an effort to curb “green on blue” insider attacks. The Nigerian military claims to...
18.09.12 | |

01 Nov

The United Nations is resisting calls by the African Union to end the arms embargo against Somalia. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking France’s backing over Iran. EU sanctions on natural gas exports have unintentionally strangled Iranian liquefied petroleum gas exports. As spending cuts have stopped insecticide spraying in Greece, years after the disease has been wiped out, cases of malaria have been confirmed. The 1996 Hague Convention on Jurisdiction, Applicable Law, Recognition, Enforcement and Co-operation in respect of Parental Responsibility and Measures for the Protection...
01.11.12 | |

20 Oct

This week on Opinio Juris, we hosted a book discussion on Informal International Lawmaking, a new volume edited by Joost Pauwelyn, Ramses Wessel and Jan Wouters, hot of the presses from OUP. In a post on the conceptual approaches adopted by the authors, Joost Pauwelyn explained what they mean by “informal” international lawmaking and what the book hopes to add to the debate on non-traditional forms of international law. David Zaring asked where the boundaries of “informal” law stop and discussed the legitimization technique used in the book,...
20.10.12 | |

16 Aug

Militants have attacked Pakistan’s nuclear air base which houses US F-16 fighters and about 100 nuclear warheads. The Organization on Islamic Co-operation has suspended Syria over the violent repression of the political protests, although there was no support for an external military intervention. A political and media advisor to Syria’s Assad is visiting Beijing where she has praised China and Russia for not being colonizers. A UN Independent Commission of Inquiry has concluded that both sides in the Syrian conflict have committed war crimes throughout the conflict,...
16.08.12 | |