Armed Conflict • International Law
Law of Armed Conflict/IHL
1,652 Articles
Ending the Forever War: One Year After President Obama’s NDU Speech
Today, May 23, 2014, marks the one-year anniversary of President’s important speech at the National Defense University (NDU) setting forth his proposed framework for post-9/11…
David Barron and the OTHER missing memos
David Barron was just confirmed to the First Circuit. To secure that vote, the Administration announced it would not appeal the Second Circuit’s order to turn over a redacted…
Is the CIA Drone Program More Accurate than the DOD’s—and if so, why?
Some commentators suggest that we have the data: CIA-directed drone strikes appear to involve fewer civilian casualties (e.g., less collateral damage) on average than DOD-directed drone…
United States War Crimes Statute & Sri Lanka
Ryan Goodman’s post on Sri Lanka calls for the prosecution under U.S. law of Gotabaya Rajapaksa. In prior posts, we’ve discussed the way in which international crimes (including…
Sri Lanka’s Greatest War Criminal (Gotabaya) is a US Citizen: It’s Time to Hold Him Accountable
Monday, May 19th marks the five-year anniversary of the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war, which claimed the lives of 40,000 to 70,000 civilians in its “catastrophic”…
Governments Conclude First (Ever) Debate on Autonomous Weapons: What Happened and What’s Next
This week at the United Nations in Geneva, the 117 states parties to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) held the first inter-governmental debate on autonomous…
The Limits of the Logic that the Power to Kill includes the Power to Detain
I will soon have a longer post on the UK High Court judgment in Mohammed v. Ministry of Defense, but here I want to consider a specific argument that implicates the authority of…
Backgrounder: Preliminary Examination into Abuses by United Kingdom Personnel in Iraq
As we reported earlier, the ICC Office of the Prosecutor has reopened the preliminary examination into crimes committed by United Kingdom personnel in Iraq from 2003-2008 during…
Do women have anything to say about autonomous weapons? [Updated on October 25, 2016]
Update (October 25, 2016) — Mary Wareham of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots maintains a regularly updated “Binder of Women,” listing the names and bios of…
Start of first inter-governmental expert meeting on autonomous weapons
Today, the 117 states parties to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) held their first expert meeting on lethal autonomous weapons systems – weapons that can…
Why Civil Libertarians and Drone Critics Should Support David Barron
Sen. Rand Paul has an op-ed in the New York Times today opposing the nomination of David J. Barron to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit until the memos Barron wrote…
Draft UN Security Council Referral of Syria to the ICC—and US Exemptions
Colum Lynch reported yesterday at Foreign Policy that the Obama administration now supports France’s draft resolution to refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal…