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EU Support to Ukraine through Windfall Profits: Reparative Value, International Law, and Future Pathways
Over two years into the Russian Federation’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the fate of Russian assets frozen by Western sanctions is followed almost as closely as battlefield developments. Considering the figures at play (assets worth an estimated $300 billion),...
Beyond Compliance Symposium – Compliance + Restraint Towards Full(er) Protection in War
Editors’ note: This post forms part of the Beyond Compliance Symposium: How to Prevent Harm and Need in Conflict, featured across Articles of War and Armed Groups and International Law. The introductory post can be found here. The symposium invites reflection on the...
Reparations in Colombia: Redressing Civilian Harm in the Midst of Armed Conflict
Commentators often point to Colombia as a success story in terms of confronting the consequences of armed conflict through its extensive engagement with transitional justice efforts to secure peace and to prevent repetition. Yet despite the peace agreement in 2016...
The Woomera Manual and Military Space Activities and Operations
The ongoing armed conflict in Ukraine has clearly demonstrated the critical role satellites in outer space play in the conduct of contemporary armed conflict. The conflict itself has been termed the first commercial space war given the heavy reliance by both Ukraine...
ISIS Detentions in Syria and the Responsibility of Supporting States
While the world’s attention is focused on the hostilities in Gaza and Ukraine, the conflict against ISIS in Syria and Iraq continues. Although out of the headlines, coalition forces led by the United States continue to work with local partner forces to achieve the...
The “Total Defeat” of Hamas and the End of NIAC
Since the onset of the hostilities in Gaza that began on October 7, 2023, Israel has consistently identified the “complete destruction” of the “military and governmental capabilities” of Hamas as one of its principal war aims. If Israel were to achieve that objective,...
Food Security Assessments and International Law
Food security remains an urgent and widespread global issue, with an estimated 281.6 million people in 59 countries or territories facing acute food insecurity in 2023. For nearly half of those people, conflict was the primary driver of their food insecurity. To...
Targeting Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah’s Fuad Shukr
On Wednesday morning, Israel killed the Chief of Hamas’s Political Bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, while he was in Tehran to attend the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. To do so, it reportedly used a bomb that had been smuggled two months earlier into the...
Russia’s Alleged Nuclear Anti-Satellite Weapon: International Law and Political Rhetoric
The development and testing of anti-satellite weapons (ASATs), as well as debates concerning the legal and policy implications of ASAT testing and use, have existed since soon after the dawn of the Space Age. The centrality of these issues has waxed and waned over...
The International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission and Gaza – How is it Involved?
On 20 June 2024, the government of the Republic of Poland signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission (IHFFC) regarding the incident on April 1, 2024 in the Gaza Strip during which seven people working with the...
Space Privateers or Space Pirates? Armed Conflict, Outer Space, and the Attribution of Non-State Activities
Famously, George Clemenceau, Prime Minister of France at the end of the First World War, quipped that “generals always prepare to fight the last war, especially if they won it.” Such flaws of perspicacity, of course, are not limited to generals. After all, as Nobel...
Israel-Hamas 2024 Symposium – Pro-Israel Lawfare, Symbolism, or Genuine Legal Concern?
Israel often perceives itself at the receiving end of what today is termed “lawfare”: warfare by legal means or the use of strategic litigation to achieve in the courtroom what cannot be achieved on the battlefield. South Africa’s case against Israel or Nicaragua’s...
Lessons Learned from the Latest Rendition Cases at the European Court of Human Rights
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) recently finalized its judgment against Lithuania in a case involving Guantanamo Bay (GTMO) detainees. The ECtHR ordered Lithuania to pay Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi 130,000 Euros as redress for violations of the European...
Diversification of Civilian Agency: An Accountability Perspective
Several recent developments have challenged the traditionally assumed passivity of civilians in armed conflict. Most notable are calls to participate in a volunteer IT army, the facilitation of an app that can provide intelligence to armed forces, and calls to...
Precautions and Aerial Superiority or Supremacy
In modern armed conflict, belligerents must control the air domain. Air supremacy or air superiority is a precondition for success in land and naval operations. Simultaneously, belligerents must exercise “constant care to spare the civilian population, civilians and...
Multi-Domain Legal Warfare: China’s Coordinated Attack on International Rule of Law
Law has emerged as an integral element of gray zone competition. State and non-State actors alike increasingly view law as a means to shape operational spaces, forge perceptions of legitimacy, constrain potential adversaries, and refashion the international system,...
National Security Memorandum 20 and the Challenge of Operational End-Use Monitoring
Today, May 8, was the deadline for the Departments of Defense (DoD) and State to answer tough questions about how U.S. supplied weapons are being used in today’s conflicts, including those in Gaza and Ukraine. It appears that the delivery of their reports to Congress...
In Honor of Yoram Dinstein – Co-application of IHL and IHRL: Some Takeaways from the Ukraine and Gaza Wars
Editors’ note: This post is part of a series to honor Professor Yoram Dinstein, who passed away on Saturday February 10, 2024. These posts recognize Professor Dinstein’s work and the significant contribution his scholarship has made to our understanding of...
In Honor of Yoram Dinstein – Will the Separation Between Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello Survive the Conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza?
Editors’ note: This post is part of a series to honor Professor Yoram Dinstein, who passed away on Saturday February 10, 2024. These posts recognize Professor Dinstein’s work and the significant contribution his scholarship has made to our understanding of...
Palestine’s Quest for Full United Nations Membership
Amidst the ongoing war between Hamas and Israel in Gaza, the United States vetoed Palestine’s latest bid for full acceptance as a member State of the United Nations (UN). In the view of the United States, the only way for a stable future between Israel and Palestine...
Retaliation, Retribution, and Punishment and International Law
On April 13, Iran launched a massive missile and drone attack on Israel. Hezbollah and Houthi attacks took place contemporaneously. Israel, alongside forces from France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Jordan, successfully neutralized most of these threats,...
MARWAN 1: How U.S. Central Command Transferred Seized Iranian Ammunition to Ukraine
On December 1, 2022, the USS Lewis B. Puller, an expeditionary mobile base ship assigned to the U.S. 5th Fleet and U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, intercepted a fishing trawler, the Marwan 1 (Marwan), a flagless vessel, in the Gulf of Oman. A security team from the...
Israel – Hamas 2024 Symposium – Press Access during Armed Conflict
The conflict between Hamas and Israel remains a focus of global media coverage. The unprecedented nature of Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, the troubled, long-standing history of the independence of Palestine, and questions regarding the tactical and operational...
Israel-Hamas 2024 Symposium – Israel’s Declaration of War on Hamas: A Modern Invocation of Recognized Belligerency?
Hours after Hamas launched a horrific and unprecedently large-scale terrorist assault on Israel, the Israeli Security Cabinet invoked, for the first time in Israel’s history, Article 40(a) of its Basic Law: The Government. Israel’s invocation of Article 40(a) was...
Regulating Military Force Series – The Meaning of Prohibited “Use of Force” in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter
Editors’ note: The author delivered remarks on the subject of this post at the conference “International Law and the Regulation of Resort to Force: Exhaustion, Destruction, Rebirth?” at the Centre for International Humanitarian and Operational Law, Palacký University...
Regulating Military Force Series – Justice and Accountability in the Era of Modern Mercenarism
Editors’ note: The author delivered remarks on the subject of this post at the conference “International Law and the Regulation of Resort to Force: Exhaustion, Destruction, Rebirth?” at the Centre for International Humanitarian and Operational Law, Palacký University...
Regulating Military Force Series – Rhetoric and Warfare in the Age of Rights
Editors’ note: The author delivered remarks on the subject of this post at the conference “International Law and the Regulation of Resort to Force: Exhaustion, Destruction, Rebirth?” at the Centre for International Humanitarian and Operational Law, Palacký University...
Regulating Military Force Series – Hybrid Warfare and Jus ad Bellum
Editors' note: The author delivered remarks on the subject of this post at the conference “International Law and the Regulation of Resort to Force: Exhaustion, Destruction, Rebirth?” at the Centre for International Humanitarian and Operational Law, Palacký University...
Russian Nuclear Weapons in Space
Recent news reports indicate that U.S. authorities fear Russia “wants to put,” a nuclear weapon into space, with U.S. intelligence describing this as a “serious security threat.” The suggested possible purpose of the weapons would be to target Western satellites in...
Lieber Studies Big Data Volume – Algorithms of Care: Military AI, Digital Rights, and the Duty of Constant Care
Editors’ note: This post is based on the authors’ chapter in Big Data and Armed Conflict (Laura Dickinson and Ed Berg eds. 2024), the ninth volume of the Lieber Studies series published with Oxford University Press. In Big Data and Armed Conflict: Legal Issues Above...
Attacking the Quds Force and Affiliated Groups under the Jus ad Bellum
On 28 January, a drone strike on a U.S. military outpost in Jordan known as Tower 22 killed three soldiers and wounded 34. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a non-State militia group, claimed responsibility for the attack which it said was in response to U.S. support...
Lieber Studies Big Data Volume – Corporate Data Responsibility
Editors’ note: This post is based on the authors’ chapter in Big Data and Armed Conflict (Laura Dickinson and Ed Berg eds. 2024), the ninth volume of the Lieber Studies series published with Oxford University Press. Big data is playing an important role in the global...
The Law of Self-Defense and the U.S. and UK Strikes against the Houthis
The Houthis are an Iran-aligned armed group that controls large swathes of territory in northern Yemen. Since 19 November 2023, and to support Hamas during its ongoing armed conflict with Israel, the Houthis have launched attacks against vessels transiting through the...
Lieber Studies Big Data Volume – Big Data and Armed Conflict – Legal Issues Above and Below the Armed Conflict Threshold
Editor’s note: This is the first post in a symposium addressing themes from a new book entitled Big Data and Armed Conflict: Legal Issues Above and Below the Armed Conflict Threshold, the ninth in the Lieber Institute’s Lieber Studies series with Oxford University...
Detention by Non-State Armed Groups – A Review of Ezequiel Heffes’ Monograph
Notwithstanding the ongoing hostilities between Russia and Ukraine, most conflicts today are non-international in character and involve one or more non-State armed groups (NSAG). Detention is an inherent part of conflict; therefore, it is unsurprising that many of the...
Israel – Hamas 2024 Symposium – Information Warfare and the Protection of Civilians in the Gaza Conflict
In the recent Gaza conflict, the battle has extended into a conflict of morality, with each party attempting to demonize the other side to morally justify their own actions. As this battle has mainly been conducted in the media, and in particular social media,...
The Use of Force and the International Legal System
The editors of Articles of War kindly invited me to submit a short post regarding the book I co-authored with Kinga Tibori Szabó on the use of force which was recently published by Cambridge University Press under the abovementioned title. I will give a brief overview...
Foreign Assistance Act Resolution and the Lex Specialis Rule
On the last full day of work before adjourning for holiday recess, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) announced on the floor of the Senate his intent to call a vote on a resolution he filed just before the holiday break. The resolution, filed pursuant to the Foreign...
Recapping “Cyber in War: Lessons from the Russia-Ukraine Conflict”
We are fast approaching the two-year mark of the massive escalation of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. While much of this war has been fought in the physical realm, to devastating effect, cyber operations have also played a significant role, giving the...
Year in Review – 2023
2023 has witnessed not only a continuation of ongoing conflicts, including those in Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabakh, but also the emergence of new hostilities. A notable addition to the global security landscape was the renewed armed conflict between Israel and Hamas....
The Korean Space Race
At the end of 2023, we enter a new phase of competition and proxy war on the Korean Peninsula in what could be dubbed the Korean Space Race. Kim Jong-un, the mercurial North Korean leader, has long prioritized placing military spy satellites over the Korean Peninsula....
Israel – Hamas 2023 Symposium – Delivery of Humanitarian Aid from the Sea
In response to the current situation in Gaza, several States have directed their naval forces into the eastern Mediterranean. For instance, the United States redirected aircraft carrier strike groups to the region and the United Kingdom sent a Royal Navy Task Group...
Israel – Hamas 2023 Symposium – Damage to UN Premises in Armed Conflict: IHL and Beyond
Does a party to an armed conflict necessarily violate international law if it causes damage to United Nations (UN) premises? Certainly, the UN Secretariat considers that any damage—direct or indirect—caused to UN premises in armed conflict gives rise to an...
Israel – Hamas 2023 Symposium – Israel’s Right to Self-Defence against Hamas
Recent posts (here and here) have discussed Israel’s right to use force by way of self-defence against Hamas following the October 7 attacks. The gist of the first post’s argument, notwithstanding the caveats, is that the right to self-defence provided in Article 51...
The U.S. Turkish Drone Shootdown Over Syria and the Jus Ad Bellum
In early October, the United States shot down an armed Turkish unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) operating over Syrian airspace with an F-16 fighter jet. The aerial engagement was unusual, if not unprecedented, in that it targeted an aircraft belonging to “one of...
Israel – Hamas 2023 Symposium – Refugee Law
International refugee law and human rights law are both crystal clear when it comes to protecting people from persecution and other serious harm. People must not be forced back to any place where they face a real risk of being persecuted or subjected to torture,...
Arms Exporters’ Corporate Liability for Due Diligence Failures
The intensification of the armed conflict between Israel and Hamas is reported to have led to another surge in international arms sales. In fact, lately, new weapon systems have been in increasing demand from various countries. The Stockholm International Peace...
International Law, Political Will, and Regulation of the Foreign-Fighter Phenomenon
Editor’s Note: This post is based on an article, “Regulating the Foreign-Fighter Phenomenon” published in the Virginia Journal of International Law, available here. Across at least three centuries, foreign fighters—individuals who voluntarily depart their countries of...
The Emergence of Collective Countermeasures
Editor’s Note: This post is based on a forthcoming article, “War Reparations: The Case for Countermeasures” in the Stanford Law Review, available here. When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, it launched the largest land war in Europe since the Second World...
Israel – Hamas 2023 Symposium – After the Battlefield: Transnational Criminal Law, Hamas, and Seeking Justice – Part II
Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part series illustrating the “transnational legal order” that must be used to counter Hamas outside the battlefield. The first post discussed the range of international legal instruments that comprise the transnational legal...
