The connection between ecology and conflict has been the object of extensive study by political scientists and economists. From the contribution of natural resource 'scarcity' to violent unrest and armed conflict; to resource 'abundance' as an incentive for initiating and prolonging armed struggles; to dysfunctional resource management and environmental degradation as obstacles to peacebuilding, this literature has exerted a huge influence upon academic discussions and policy developments. While international law is often invoked as the solution to the socio-environmental challenges faced by conflict-affected countries, its relationship with the ecology of war and peace remains undertheorised. Drawing upon environmental justice perspectives and other theoretical traditions, the book unpacks and problematizes some of the assumptions that underlie the legal field. Through an analysis of the practice of international courts, the UN Security Council, and Truth Commissions, it shows how international law silences and even normalizes forms of structural and slow environmental violence.

This collection of essays is written by some of the world's leading experts in international human rights law, and corresponds to the main junctures in the professional life of Professor David Kretzmer, a leading human right academic and practitioner. The different essays focus on contemporary human rights protection challenges. They address conceptual problems such as differences between limits and restrictions, and application of human rights standards to businesses and international organisations; legal doctrinal responses to changing realities in the field of surveillance and identity politics; the weakness of monitoring institutions engaged in standard setting; and the practical difficulties in applying international human rights law to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a manner sensitive to gender dimensions and the particular political dynamics of the situation. Collectively, the essays offer a rich picture of the current potential shortcomings of international human rights law in addressing complex problems of law, politics and ethics.

Hitherto 'less-lethal' weapons, in contrast to classical firearms and other highly destructive weapons, have literally slipped under the radar of public international law. This book is the first monograph addressing and analysing all international legal regimes applicable to less-lethal weapons, ranging from arms control treaties, international humanitarian, criminal and human rights law. In doing so the different scenarios in which less-lethal weapons come to use will be taken into account, such as law enforcement, armed conflict and law enforcement scenarios during armed conflict. The relationships between the different legal regimes will be elaborated thoroughly with a view to examining how international law responds to less-lethal weapons. The final chapter provides guidelines as well as recommendations on appropriate use and regulation of less-lethal weapons, where the different scenarios of application, such as in armed conflict and law enforcement, will be given due account.

The 'Goldstone Report' of September 2009 started a critical debate at the international level. The Report raised serious allegations of grave violations of international law with regard to the Israeli attack on Gaza of 27 December 2008 - 18 January 2009, amounting to possible war crimes and crimes against humanity. The UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Council, amidst high political pressure, endorsed the Report s recommendations, calling for prompt and proper investigations to ensure accountability and justice for the victims. Given the lack of proper investigations at the national level, international justice mechanisms are now needed. Indeed, the ICC opened a preliminary examination of the situation but difficulties arose because of the uncertain status of the occupied Palestinian territory. The issue of the existence of a State of Palestine is extremely actual and still unsolved at the UN level.
With a foreword by prof. William Schabas, the book collects contributions by renowned international law professors as Eric David, John Dugard, Richard Falk and many other distinguished scholars and lawyers, and brings together for the first time essential documentation on the 'Gaza conflict'. The underlying question, whether there is a court for Gaza, can be seen as a test case for international justice, and shed a light on the role of international institutions in the difficult combination of law and politics that connotes international justice.
Useful forall those interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, such as international and criminal law scholars, and human rights and humanitarian organizations."

This book challenges the traditional approach to international law by concentrating on international hThis book challenges the traditional approach to international law by concentrating on international humanitarian law and placing the focus beyond States: it reflects on current legal, policy and practical issues that concern non-State actors in and around situations of armed conflict. With the emergence of the nation-State, international law was almost entirely focused on inter-State relations, thus excluding - for the most part - non-State entities. In the modern era, such a focus needs to be adjusted, in order to encompass the various types of functions and interactions that those entities perform throughout numerous international decision-making processes. The contributions that comprise this volume are oriented towards a broad readership audience in the academic and professional fields related to international humanitarian law, international criminal law, international human rights law and general public international law. Ezequiel Heffes, LLM, is a Thematic Legal Adviser in the Policy and Legal Unit at Geneva Call in Geneva, Switzerland, Marcos D. Kotlik, LLM, is Academic Coordinator at the Observatory of International Humanitarian Law of the University of Buenos Aires, School of Law and was a Judicial Fellow at the International Court of Justice between 2018-2019, and Manuel J. Ventura, LLM (Hons), is an Associate Legal Officer in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, an Adjunct Fellow at the School of Law at Western Sydney University, and a Director of The Peace and Justice Initiative.

This book analyses the UN's Agenda 2030 and reveals that progress is lagging on all five interlocking and interdependent themes that are discussed: conflict prevention, development, peace, justice and human rights. Many voices have already been raised, including that of the UN Secretary-General that the Sustainable Development Goals will not be met by 2030 unless there is a re-doubling of efforts. Still, on development as such, there is much striving. The book puts the concept of preventive diplomacy into all of the issues of modern international relations, from the US/China confrontation to the various conflicts bedeviling Africa. It bridges the two worlds of the international relations specialist on the one hand and that of the academic interested in UN affairs on the other hand. There is normally little contact between those two specializations. The authors have taken several current issues to show how the millennium debates and the SDG targets are relevant to "realist school" conflicts, and that there is work under way to operationalize ideas and theories in this respect. This is the first ever discussion of the conflict prevention dimension in the UN's Agenda 2030 which seeks to advance sustainable development with a view to reinforcing peace and justice on the foundations of respect for universal human rights.

Economic activity continues during war. But what rules apply when US troops occupy Syrian oil fields? Who is responsible when multinational companies use minerals extracted by child labourers in war zones? This book examines how international law regulates the war economies that are at the heart of strategic competition between great powers and help sustain the irregular warfare in today's war zones. Drawing on advances in our understanding of the social and economic dynamics in war zones, this book identifies predation, a combination of violence and economic opportunity, as the core pathology of war economies. The author presents a framework for understanding the regulation of war economies based on the history of international law and existing norms of international humanitarian law, international criminal law, international human rights law and the law of international peace and security. War Economies and International Law concludes that the pathologies of predation in war demand answers based on an international regulatory strategy.

Foreign investors often sustain injuries during violent situations, such as riots, revolutions, civil wars, and international armed conflicts. There is a great deal of uncertainty about how effective investment treaty protections are in volatile times, how they relate to other applicable legal frameworks, and how they affect the state security policy and the post-conflict transition to peace. This book explores how foreign investment is protected in times of armed conflict under the investment treaty regime. It does so by combining insights from different areas of international law, including international investment law, international humanitarian law, international human rights law, the law of state responsibility, and the law of treaties. While the protections have evolved over time, with the investment treaty regime providing the strongest legal framework for protecting investors yet, there has been an apparent shift in treaty practice towards safeguarding a state's security interests. Jure Zrilic identifies and analyses the flaws in the existent normative framework, but also highlights the potential that investment treaties have for minimising the devastating effects of armed conflict. The book offers an analytical framework for assessing the investment treaty regime in times of armed conflict, distinguishing between different paradigms and different types of conflicts. Crucially, he argues that a new approach is needed to appropriately balance the competing interests of host states and investors when it comes to investment protection in armed conflicts.

In an increasingly complex world, it is more crucial than ever to have a full picture of how international peacekeeping can be a force for good, but can also have potentially negative impacts on host communities. After thirteen years of presence in Haiti, the highly controversial United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti has now withdrawn. The UN's legacy in Haiti is not all negative, but it does include sexual scandals, the divisive use of force to 'clean up' difficult neighbourhoods as well as a cholera epidemic, brought inadvertently by Nepalese peacekeepers that killed more than 8,000 Haitians and infected more than 600,000. This book presents a unique multi-disciplinary analysis of the legacy of the mission for Haiti. It presents an innovative account of contemporary international peacekeeping law and practice, arguing for a new model of accountability, going beyond the outdated immunity mechanisms to foreground human rights.

The application and interpretation of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their two Additional Protocols of 1977 have developed significantly in the seventy years since the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) first published its Commentaries on these important humanitarian treaties. To promote a better understanding of, and respect for, this body of law, the ICRC commissioned a comprehensive update of its original Commentaries, of which this is the third volume. The Third Convention, relative to the treatment of prisoners of war and their protections, takes into account developments in the law and practice in the past seven decades to provide up-to-date interpretations of the Convention. The new Commentary has been reviewed by humanitarian law practitioners and academics from around the world. This new Commentary will be an essential tool for anyone involved with international humanitarian law.

The main theme of this volume of the Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law is weapons law. In several chapters, how International Humanitarian Law (IHL) copes with old and new weapons as well as political developments in regard to military technology is discussed, while in two chapters the significance of non- or less-lethal weapons in peace-keeping and law enforcement operations as well as the legality of lethal autonomous weapon systems under IHL are analysed. Moreover, the volume describes the current status of nuclear deterrence under international law. Another layer is added by examining how IHL influences the programming of automatic target recognition systems using artificial intelligence. The second part of the book contains a historic perspective on the roots of IHL in Europe, which can be traced back to the ninth century, as well as a Year in Review describing the most important events and legal developments in the area of IHL that took place in 2018. The Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law is the world's only annual publication devoted to the study of the laws governing armed conflict. It provides a truly international forum for high-quality, peer-reviewed academic articles focusing on this crucial branch of international law. Distinguished by contemporary relevance, the Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law bridges the gap between theory and practice and serves as a useful reference tool for scholars, practitioners, military personnel, civil servants, diplomats, human rights workers and students.

This book analyses the politics of the humanitarian disarmament community-a loose coalition of activist and advocacy groups, humanitarian agencies and diplomats-who have successfully achieved international treaties banning landmines, cluster munitions and nuclear weapons, as well as restricting the global arms trade. Two campaigns have won Nobel Peace Prizes. Disarmament has long been a dirty word in the international relations lexicon. But the success of the humanitarian disarmament agenda shows that people often choose to prohibit or limit certain violent technologies, for reasons of security, honour, ethics or humanitarianism. This edited volume showcases interdisciplinary research by scholars and practitioners seeking to understand the dynamics and impact of the new global activism on weapons. While some raise concerns that humanitarian disarmament may be piecemeal and depoliticizing, others see opportunities to breathe new life into moribund arms control policymaking. Foreword by 1997 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jody Williams.

The book makes a comprehensive analysis of the basic principles and theories of military law, restructuring the theoretic framework of military law. It also puts forwards the new concepts of "core military law" and "international military law" for the first time in China, and even the world. The book could help legal scholars and lawyers, especially military lawyers and research fellows in military law, to have a new approach to study military law.

This multidisciplinary book introduces readers to original perspectives on crimmigration that foster holistic, contextual, and critical appreciation of the concept in Australia and its individual consequences and broader effects. This collection draws together contributions from nationally and internationally respected legal scholars and social scientists united by common and overlapping interests, who identify, critique, and reimagine crimmigration law and practice in Australia, and thereby advance understanding of this important field of inquiry. Specifically, crimmigration is addressed and analysed from a variety of standpoints, including: criminal law/justice; administrative law/justice; immigration law; international law; sociology of law; legal history feminist theory, settler colonialism, and political sociology. The book aims to: explore the historical antecedents of contemporary crimmigration and continuities with the past in Australia reveal the forces driving crimmigration and explain its relationship to border securitisation in Australia identify and examine the different facets of crimmigration, comprising: the substantive overlaps between criminal and immigration law; crimmigration processes; investigative techniques, surveillance strategies, and law enforcement agents, institutions and practices uncover the impacts of crimmigration law and practice upon the human rights and interests of non-citizens and their families. analyse crimmigration from assorted critical standpoints; including settler colonialism, race and feminist perspectives By focusing upon these issues, the book provides an interconnected collection of chapters with a cohesive narrative, notwithstanding that contributors approach the themes and specific issues from different theoretical and critical standpoints, and employ a range of research methods.

The last couple of years have witnessed an unprecedented battle within Europe between values and pragmatism, and between states' interests and individuals' rights. This book examines humanitarian considerations and immigration control from two perspectives; one broader and more philosophical, the other more practical. The impetus to show compassion for certain categories of persons with vulnerabilities can depend on religious, philosophical and political thought. Manifestation of this compassion can vary from the notion of a charitable act to aid 'the wretched' in their home country, to humanitarian assistance for the 'distant needy' in foreign lands and, finally, to immigration policies deciding who to admit or expel from the country. The domestic practice of humanitarian protection has increasingly drawn in transnational law through the expansion of the EU acquis on asylum, and the interpretation of the European Court of Human Rights.

In the past two decades, peace negotiators around the world have increasingly accepted that granting amnesties for human rights violations is no longer an acceptable bargaining tool or incentive, even when the signing of a peace agreement is at stake. While many states that previously saw sweeping amnesties as integral to their peace processes now avoid amnesties for human rights violations, this anti-amnesty turn has been conspicuously absent in Asia. In Negotiating Peace: Amnesties, Justice and Human Rights Renee Jeffery examines why peace negotiators in Asia have resisted global anti-impunity measures more fervently and successfully than their counterparts around the world. Drawing on a new global dataset of 146 peace agreements (1980-2015) and with in-depth analysis of four key cases - Timor-Leste, Aceh Indonesia, Nepal and the Philippines - Jeffery uncovers the legal, political, economic and cultural reasons for the persistent popularity of amnesties in Asian peace processes.

'Professor Sassoli has combined his first hand experience of the challenges facing the application of international humanitarian law with his scholarly understanding of international law. He sets out the details necessary for a complete understanding of humanitarian law but also highlights the contemporary controversies. One of the many qualities of this book is that the author always offers us his considered view on what are the best solutions to the dilemmas he highlights. This book is destined to become an authoritative point of reference for generations to come.' - Andrew Clapham, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Switzerland International humanitarian law (IHL) protects persons and property affected by armed conflicts. Focusing on the controversies that impact IHL in practice, this much-anticipated book from leading expert Marco Sassoli discusses when IHL applies, its substantive rules, how to ensure its respect and whether the traditional distinction between international and non-international armed conflicts remains relevant. Sassoli draws on a depth of practical experience to provide invaluable insight and comprehensive guidance on the rules protecting certain categories of persons (for example, civilians, wounded, etc.) during conflict and the rules governing different types of conduct (or example, occupation, naval warfare, etc.). The book examines how these rules interact with other branches of international law, such as human rights and international criminal law, and how the rules are applied to non-State armed groups. Cross-cutting issues, including terrorism, autonomous weapons, cyber warfare, gender and cultural heritage, are also addressed, providing readers with a well-rounded view of IHL and associated concerns. Structured in a clear and accessible way, this book will be the turn-to resource for scholars, lawyers, civil servants and other actors directly involved in the sphere of IHL. It will also be the essential text for forthcoming generations of students, giving them a solid understanding of both the rules relating to IHL and how they are implemented in practice.

In international humanitarian law (IHL), the principle of distinction delineates the difference between the civilian and the combatant, and it safeguards the former from being intentionally targeted in armed conflicts. This monograph explores the way in which the idea of distinction circulates within, and beyond, IHL. Taking a bottom-up approach, the multi-sited study follows distinction across three realms: the kinetic realm, where distinction is in motion in South Sudan; the pedagogical realm, where distinction is taught in civil-military training spaces in Europe; and the intellectual realm, where distinction is formulated and adjudicated in Geneva and the Hague. Directing attention to international humanitarian actors, the book shows that these actors seize upon signifiers of 'civilianness' in everyday practice. To safeguard their civilian status, and to deflect any qualities of 'combatantness' that might affix to them, humanitarian actors strive to distinguish themselves from other international actors in their midst. The latter include peacekeepers working for the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), and soldiers who deploy with NATO missions. Crucially, some of the distinctions enacted cut along civilian-civilian lines, suggesting that humanitarian actors are longing for something more than civilian status - the 'civilian plus'. This special status presents a paradox: the appeal to the 'civilian plus' undermines general civilian protection, yet as the civilian ideal becomes increasingly beleaguered, a special civilian status appears ever more desirable. However disruptive these practices may be to the principle of distinction in IHL, the monograph emphasizes that even at the most normative level there is no bright line distinction to be found.

Natural resource wealth is conducive to a country's development. Nevertheless, the last few decades have shown a harsher reality, where natural resources have also triggered, financed or fuelled a number of internal armed conflicts. Examples include the armed conflicts in Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which have been financed with the exploitation of a variety of valuable natural resources, including diamonds, gold, timber, oil and cocoa. The aim of this book is to assess the contribution of international law in ensuring that natural resources are used to promote development and to achieve sustainable peace instead of financing armed conflict. For this purpose, the author discusses the international legal framework for the governance of natural resources in States in general, in situations of armed conflict and as part of conflict resolution and post-conflict peacebuilding efforts.

This book explores how best to recalibrate our understanding of international lawmaking through the lens of increased reporting and legal debate around covert and quasi-covert uses of force. Recent changes in practice and communication call for closer attention to be paid to the requirement of publicity for state practice, since they challenge the perception of the concepts 'public' and 'covert', and thus raise questions as to the impact that covert and quasi-covert acts do and should have on the development of international law. It is argued that, in order to qualify as such practice, acts must be both publicly known and acknowledged. The book further examines how state silence around covert and quasi-covert operations has opened up significant space for legal scholars and other experts to influence the development of international law.

The Fourth Geneva Convention, signed on 12th August 1949, defines necessary humanitarian protections for civilians during armed conflict and occupation. One-hundred-and-ninety-six countries are signatories to the Geneva Conventions, and this particular facet has laid the foundations for all subsequent humanitarian global law. How did the world - against seemingly insurmountable odds - draft and legislate this landmark in humanitarian international law? The Fourth Geneva Convention for Civilians draws on archival research across seven countries to bring together the Cold War interventions, founding motives and global idealisms that shaped its conception. Gilad Ben-Nun draws on the three key principles that the convention brought about to consider the recent events where its application has either been successfully applied or circumvented, from the 2009 Gaza War, the war crimes tribunal in the former Yugoslavia and Nicaragua vs. the United States to the contemporary conflict in Syria. Weaving historical archival research, a grounding in the concepts of international law, and insightful analysis of recent events, this book will appeal to a broad range of students, academics and legal practitioners.

In October 1998, General Augusto Pinochet, former dictator of Chile, was arrested in London. He had been charged with crimes against humanity by a Spanish magistrate, but over the 16 months that Pinochet was detained, equally intriguing questions went unanswered about his links with Britain. Why was Margaret Thatcher so keen to defend the General? Why was Tony Blair's usually cautious government prepared to have him arrested? And why was Britain the General's favourite foreign country? Andy Beckett offers a compound of history, investigation and travelogue that unravels this strange story.

The humanitarian framing of disarmament is not a novel development, but rather represents a re-emergence of a much older and long-standing sensibility of humanitarianism in disarmament. The Book rejects the 'big bang' theory that presents the Anti-Personnel Landmines Convention 1997, and its successors - the Convention on Cluster Munitions 2008, and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons 2017 - as a paradigm shift from an older traditional state-centric approach towards a more progressive humanitarian approach. It shows how humanitarian disarmament has a long and complex history, which includes these treaties. This book argues that the attempt to locate the birth of humanitarian disarmament in these treaties is part of the attempt to cleanse humanitarian disarmament of politics, presenting humanitarianism as a morally superior discourse in disarmament. However, humanitarianism carries its own blind spots and has its own hegemonic leanings. It may be silencing other potentially more transformative discourses.

This important book considers whether the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), which was established jointly through an unprecedented bilateral treaty between the United Nations (UN) and Sierra Leone in 2002, has made jurisprudential contributions to the development of the nascent and still unsettled field of international criminal law. A leading authority on the application of international criminal justice in Africa, Charles Jalloh argues that the SCSL, as an innovative hybrid international penal tribunal, made useful jurisprudential additions on key legal questions concerning greatest responsibility jurisdiction, the war crime of child recruitment, forced marriage as a crime against humanity, amnesty, immunity and the relationship between truth commissions and criminal courts. He demonstrates that some of the SCSL case law broke new ground, and in so doing, bequeathed a 'legal legacy' that remains vital to the ongoing global fight against impunity for atrocity crimes and to the continued development of modern international criminal law.

Through an analysis of UN operations including international territorial administration, refugee camps, peacekeeping, the implementation of sanctions and the provision of humanitarian aid, Guglielmo Verdirame shows that the powers exercised by the UN carry a serious risk of human rights abuse. The International Law Commission has codified and developed the law of institutional responsibility, but, while indispensable, these principles and rules cannot on their own ensure compliance and accountability. The 'liberty deficit' of the UN and of other international organisations, thus remains an urgent legal and political problem. Some solutions may be available; indeed, recent state and institutional practice offers interesting examples in this respect. But at a fundamental level we need to ask ourselves whether, judged on the basis of the principle of liberty, the power shift from states to international organisations is always beneficial.