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.
3,583 Articles
Guilty Pleas For GTMO Detainees (Without Ever Setting Foot on US Soil)
Last week Steve wrote about the then-not-yet public provision in the Senate version of the FY2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would permit Guantánamo detainees…
Can Detainees Plead Their Way Out of Guantánamo?
One of the more curious tidbits to emerge from the Senate Armed Services Committee’s draft of the FY2017 National Defense Authorization Act (which the Committee approved…
Transparency, Review, and Relief: The Far-Reaching Implications of the Kunduz Report
Thus far, many discussions of the US military’s release of a 120-page detailed report of the lawfulness of its attack on the Médicins Sans Frontières (MSF) facility in Kunduz,…
Michael Ratner: The Leading Progressive Lawyer of a Generation
I just heard that Michael Ratner passed away from complications due to cancer. His New York Times obituary is here. My heart is broken. Michael was an extraordinary lawyer and…
Michael Ratner, RIP
My good friend and mentor, Michael Ratner, has died at age 72. A lawyer who worked with the Center for Constitutional Rights for more than 40 years, he was one of the great human…
The UK’s Report on Drones and Targeted Killing Leaves Unanswered Questions
Yesterday, the British Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights published the report of its months-long inquiry into the use of drones for targeted killing. The 110-page…
What the Kunduz Report Gets Right (and Wrong)
Over the past week, many thoughtful posts have appeared, here and elsewhere, reacting to the US military’s report on the 2015 airstrike of a Médicins Sans Frontières (MSF)…
Why Captain Smith’s suit to enforce the War Powers Resolution won’t be a big deal
Last week, Army Captain Nathan Michael Smith filed a federal court suit against President Obama, seeking a declaration that the War Powers Resolution requires the President to…
Recklessness, War Crimes, and the Kunduz Hospital Bombing
Last Friday, the US military announced that it was disciplining 16 service members involved in the bombing of the Médicins Sans Frontières hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan that…
US Government Concludes no “War Crimes” in Kunduz Strike, But Fails to Explain Why
The US government’s 120-page report on the Kunduz airstrike — in which US forces killed 42 civilians and destroyed a Médicins Sans Frontières hospital — found that US forces…
Congress’s Embarrassingly Empty (National Security) Record
This week, we learned the United States will send 250 special operations troops to the war in Syria, bringing the publicly known total number of American troops operating in the…
The Proposed Military Commissions Fix Is Anything But
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…