Armed Conflict
Just Security’s expert authors provide analysis on the legal, policy, and strategic dimensions of armed conflict, including the Russia-Ukraine war, the Israel-Hamas war, counterterrorism operations, conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, and other armed conflicts across the globe, with a focus on international humanitarian law, war crimes and accountability, mitigating and remedying civilian harm, and the humanitarian impacts of warfare.
3,526 Articles

International Law Roundup: Part III
In addition to discussing developments at the international criminal tribunals, addressed in Parts I and II of this series, the IHL Dialogs also offered insights into human rights…

New UN Report Says All Parties to Yemen Conflict May be Responsible for War Crimes
The report, written by the group of eminent experts (GEE) appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council to investigate the conflict in Yemen, calls on the international community…

International Criminal Law Roundup: Part II
This is Part II of an international criminal law roundup focused on the ad hoc international and hybrid tribunals. Part I was dedicated to developments at the ICC. Part III will…

International Criminal Law Roundup Series: Part I
[UPDATED] To turn our lens to international criminal law for a moment, I recently attended the annual International Humanitarian Law Dialogs in Chautauqua, New York. This year’s…

Niger Facing Pressure to Ensure U.S. and French Drone Strikes Comply with Human Rights Law
Thanks to the diligent work of journalists, Just Security readers probably know by now that the United States has a squadron of armed drones based in the West African nation of…

Does Pervasive Secrecy Impede Intelligence Collection?: How Intelligence Agencies Could Use Crowdsourcing to Foil WMD Attacks
For decades, the edifice of the U.S. intelligence community (IC) has been built on a single principle: that intelligence is best when it is secret. Within the IC, this principle…

U.N. Peace Operations Should Get Off the Counter-Terror Bandwagon
There has been too little discussion of the enormous risks that counter-terrorism involvement in U.N. peace operations poses for U.N. efforts to maintain and build peace.

Guantanamo is No Answer–But Here’s What Can Work
While there are real challenges and difficult tradeoffs to be made, one question should not be difficult at all: nobody should be sent to Guantanamo. It would be bad policy,…

Condolence Payments for Civilian Casualties: Lessons for Applying the New NDAA
The new National Defense Authorization Act can help improve the way the U.S. responds to civilian casualties. FOIA requests and interviews with DoD officials, U.S. soldiers, judge…

New Russia Sanctions, Putin’s Economy, and the Shadow Over Planned U.S.-Russia Business Group
How US-Russia business ties hold up, even though a proposed Putin working group may not.

“ISIS Widows” and “Boko Haram Wives”: Overlooked Abuses in Iraq and Nigeria
Thousands of displaced women in Iraq and Nigeria have been arbitrarily branded as affiliated with IS or Boko Haram, and subjected to abuse as a result. Almost 400 in-depth interviews…

US Military Admits It Killed Dozens More Civilians Than Previously Acknowledged. Now What?
In June and July, the US-led Coalition of countries fighting the armed group calling itself the Islamic State admitted that reports of civilian casualties it had previously dismissed…