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.

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3,305 Articles
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What the Chilcot Report Teaches Us About National Security Lawyering

This post is the latest installment of our “Monday Reflections” feature, in which a different Just Security editor examines the big stories from the previous week or looks…
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A quick response to John Merriam on proportionality and military medical personnel

Thanks very much to John Merriam for his very thoughtful and insightful post responding to my concerns about the Law of War Manual‘s treatment of how the principle of proportionality…
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Must Military Medical and Religious Personnel Be Accounted for in a Proportionality Analysis?

In a recent post, Marty Lederman echoed criticisms previously leveled by Oona Hathaway about the US DOD’s Law of War Manual. The thrust of their criticism is that several Manual…
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The CMCR’s Latest (Non-)Decision in al-Nashiri [UPDATED with links to supplemental briefs]

After a very long delay, and a couple of new presidential appointments of military judges to the court (resolving one of the two serious structural problems Steve has described…
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Highlights From the Chilcot Report

Earlier today, the UK’s Iraq Inquiry Committee released the report of its seven year investigation into the country’s role in the Iraq War. Started in 2009 at the…
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The Updated First Geneva Convention Commentary, DOD’s Law of War Manual, and a More Perfect Law of War, Part I

It is difficult to overstate the importance of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Nearly synonymous with the law of war itself, the universally ratified 1949 Conventions are not merely…
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The Good and Bad in the US Government’s Civilian Casualties Announcement

The US government on Friday, July 1 released long-sought information on its views as to how many people it has killed in drone and other strikes “outside areas of active hostilities,”…
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The government’s treatment of civilian casualties in counterterrorism operations [updated]

The government has just released two important documents. One is an assessment by the Director of National Intelligence of the cumulative civilian casualties from U.S. counterterrorism…
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Medical Complicity in CIA Torture, Then and Now

The US government released a series of documents about the CIA torture program on June 14 and 15, in response to Freedom of Information Act lawsuits by the ACLU and Vice News.…
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International & US Support for Transitional Justice Initiatives

My prior post discussed new policy papers on transitional justice issued by the US State Department and US AID. These policy papers reflect the fact that the United States’…
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Troubling proportionality and rule-of-distinction provisions in the Law of War Manual

Oona Hathaway is absolutely right to be alarmed, and deeply concerned, about the “civilians’ assumption of risk” provisions in the new DoD Law of War Manual. If you haven’t…
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A Less-Secret Drone Campaign

Stephen Whisler, Predators and Reapers 2012, pastel on paper This post is the latest installment of our “Monday Reflections” feature, in which a different Just Security editor…
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