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.
3,544 Articles

Preventing the Next Black Hawk Down
(Editors’ note: This article is the third of a three-part series by the author on the Trump administration’s use of special operations. Read parts I and II here and here.)…

The Unstable Status Quo: The Trump Administration’s Approach to Special Operations
(Editors’ note: This article is the second of a three-part series by the author on the Trump administration’s use of special operations. Read part I here.) Donald Trump stormed…

Key U.S. Foreign Policy Positions—including Ambassador for War Crimes—Saved from Getting Axed
Just Security recently broke the story that the State Department was considering shuttering or downgrading certain functional offices and Senate-confirmed ambassadorships within…

Proposed 2019 Start Date for 9/11 Trial Faces Skepticism from Gitmo Judge
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — The military commission proceeding against five detainees allegedly responsible for the September 11th terrorist attacks is slowly inching…

An Update of the Israel-Palestine-International Criminal Court Timeline
A lot has happened before the International Criminal Court since we last reported on the Palestine and related situations. The timeline below picks up where my last timeline of…

Protecting Financial Data in Cyberspace: Precedent for Further Progress on Cyber Norms?
Identifying the legal norms that apply in cyberspace remains highly challenging. The recent collapse of the 5th UN Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on Developments in the Field…

New ICC Arrest Warrant Indirectly Implicates Libyan Warlord, a U.S. Citizen
As I wrote yesterday, the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced last week that it had issued a new arrest warrant for Mahmoud Mustafa Busayf Al-Werfalli, a militia leader…

Federal Court: US Can Extradite Ex-El Salvador Official to Spain for Jesuits Massacre
On Monday, U.S. federal judge Terrence Boyle ruled that Inocente Orlando Montano Morales (Montano)—who headed El Salvador’s National Police as Vice Minister for Public Security…

The ICC’s New Libya Case: Extraterritorial Evidence for an Extraterritorial Court
The International Criminal Court (ICC) announced last week that it had issued a new arrest warrant for Mahmoud Mustafa Busayf Al-Werfalli, a militia leader in Libya. Al-Werfalli…

Aggression, Armed Conflict, and the Right to Life: Does UN Human Rights Committee Get it Right?
Is it possible to respect the human right to life in the context of war? Or does war, by its very nature, involve the arbitrary deprivation of life? Last month, the United Nations…

A Legal and Policy Risk Analysis of the Erik Prince Plan to Privatize War in Afghanistan
Trump administration officials reportedly are considering a plan to privatize a significant portion of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Erik Prince, founder of the notorious security…

No, the U.S. Is Not Bombing ISIS Prisons on Some Theory Prison Labor Contributes to ISIS’s Economy
A recent post at Lawfare—titled “The Al-Mayadeen Prison Bombing and the Problem of War-Sustaining Targets”—suggests that the U.S. military may have struck a prison in Syria…