The laws of war are facing new challenges from emerging technologies and changing methods of warfare, as well as the growth of human rights and international criminal law. International mechanisms of accountability have increased and international criminal law has greater relevance in the calculations of political and military leaders, yet perpetrators often remain at large and the laws of war raise numerous normative, structural and systemic issues and problems. This edited collection brings together leading academic, military and professional experts to examine the key issues for the continuing role and relevance of the laws of war in the twenty-first century. Marking Professor Peter Rowe's contribution to the subject, this book re-examines the purposes of the laws of war and asks whether existing laws found in treaties and customs work to achieve these purposes and, if not, whether they can be fixed by specific reforms or wholesale revision.

Diplomacy is used primarily to advance the interests of a state beyond its borders, within a set of global norms intended to assure a degree of international harmony. As a result of internal and international armed conflicts, the need to negotiate peace through an emerging system of international humanitarian and criminal law has required nations to use diplomacy to negotiate 'peace versus justice' trade-offs. Justice and Diplomacy is the product of a research project sponsored by the Academie Diplomatique Internationale and the International Bar Association, and focuses on specific moments of collision or contradiction in diplomatic and judicial processes during the humanitarian crises in Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, Darfur, and Libya. The five case studies present critical issues at the intersection of justice and diplomacy, including the role of timing, signalling, legal terminology, accountability, and compliance. Each case study focuses on a specific moment and dynamic, highlighting the key issues and lessons learned.

Until 1919, European wars were settled without post-war trials, and individuals were not punishable under international law. After World War One, European jurists at the Paris Peace Conference developed new concepts of international justice to deal with violations of the laws of war. Though these were not implemented for political reasons, later jurists applied these ideas to other problems, writing new laws and proposing various types of courts to maintain the post-World War One political order. They also aimed to enhance internal state security, address states' failures to respect minority rights, or rectify irregularities in war crimes trials after World War Two. The Birth of the New Justice shows that legal organizations were not merely interested in ensuring that the guilty were punished or that international peace was assured. They hoped to instill particular moral values, represent the interests of certain social groups, and even pursue national agendas. When jurists had to scale back their projects, it was not only because state governments opposed them. It was also because they lacked political connections and did not build public support for their ideas. In some cases, they decided that compromises were better than nothing. Rather than arguing that new legal projects were spearheaded by state governments motivated by "liberal legalism," Mark Lewis shows that legal organizations had a broad range of ideological motives - liberal, conservative, utopian, humanitarian, nationalist, and particularist. The International Law Association, the International Association of Penal Law, the World Jewish Congress, and the International Committee of the Red Cross transformed the concept of international violation to deal with new political and moral problems. They repeatedly altered the purpose of an international criminal court, sometimes dropping it altogether when national courts seemed more pragmatic.

The Oxford Handbook of International Refugee Law is a comprehensive, critical work, which analyses the state of research across the refugee law regime as a whole. Drawing together leading and emerging scholars, the Handbook provides both doctrinal and theoretical analyses of international refugee law and practice. It critiques existing law from a variety of normative positions, with several chapters identifying foundational flaws that open up space for radical rethinking. Many authors work directly in the field, and their contributions demonstrate how scholarship and practice can mutually inform each other. Contributions assess a wide range of international legal instruments relevant to refugee protection, including from international human rights law, international humanitarian law, international migration law, the law of the sea, and international and transnational criminal law. Geographically, contributors examine regional and domestic laws and practices from around the world, with 10 chapters focused on specific regions. This Handbook provides an account, as well as a critique, of the status quo, and in so doing it sets the agenda for future academic research in international refugee law.

The internet has changed the rules of many industries, and war is no exception. But can a computer virus be classed as an act of war? Does a Denial of Service attack count as an armed attack? And does a state have a right to self-defence when cyber attacked? With the range and sophistication of cyber attacks against states showing a dramatic increase in recent times, this book investigates the traditional concepts of 'use of force', 'armed attack', and 'armed conflict' and asks whether existing laws created for analogue technologies can be applied to new digital developments. The book provides a comprehensive analysis of primary documents and surrounding literature, to investigate whether and how existing rules on the use of force in international law apply to a relatively new phenomenon such as cyberspace operations. It assesses the rules of jus ad bellum and jus in bello, whether based on treaty or custom, and analyses why each rule applies or does not apply to cyber operations. Those rules which can be seen to apply are then discussed in the context of each specific type of cyber operation. The book addresses the key questions of whether a cyber operation amounts to the use of force and, if so, whether the victim state can exercise its right of self-defence; whether cyber operations trigger the application of international humanitarian law when they are not accompanied by traditional hostilities; what rules must be followed in the conduct of cyber hostilities; how neutrality is affected by cyber operations; whether those conducting cyber operations are combatants, civilians, or civilians taking direct part in hostilities. The book is essential reading for everyone wanting a better understanding of how international law regulates cyber combat.

Although sexual violence directed at both females and males is a reality in many on-going conflicts throughout the world today, accountability for the perpetrators of such violence remains the exception rather than the rule. While awareness of the problem is growing, more effective approaches are urgently needed for the investigation and prosecution of conflict-related sexual violence crimes. Upon its establishment in 1993, the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) began the challenging task of prosecuting the perpetrators of conflict-related sexual violence crimes, alongside the many other atrocities committed during the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. This book documents the experiences, achievements, challenges, and fundamental insights of the OTP in prosecuting conflict-related sexual violence crimes at the ICTY over the past two decades. It draws on an extensive dossier of OTP documentation, court filings, trial exhibits, testimony, ICTY judgements, and other materials, as well as interviews with current and former OTP staff members. The authors provide a unique analytical perspective on the obstacles faced in prioritizing, investigating, and prosecuting conflict-related sexual violence crimes. While ICTY has made great stridesin developing international criminal law in this area, this volumeexposes the pressing need for determined and increasingly sophisticated strategies in order to overcome the ongoing obstacles in prosecuting conflict-related sexual violence crimes. The book presents concrete recommendations to inform future work being done at the national and international levels, including that of the International Criminal Court, international investigation commissions, and countries developing transitional justice processes. It provides an essential resource for investigators and criminal lawyers, human rights fact-finders, policy makers, rule of law experts, and academics.

The book systematically analyses the relationship and interaction between rules of engagement (ROE) and the legal framework regulating armed conflicts, both at the international and national levels. At the international level, the relationship between ROE and human rights law and international humanitarian law is explored. At the national level, the book relates ROE to (comparative) criminal law. A separate chapter analyses the complex relationship between self-defence law and rules of engagement. It is the first monograph to comprehensively examine these issues and to analyse how ROE interact with the various sources of the (international) law of military operations, both in terms of the law as a source for these rules and how the law is reflected and implemented through them. In doing so, and based on the author's own experience, the book provides examples of how complicated, often controversial issues of law can be resolved while keeping the rules understandable at all levels of military operations. Aimed at both scholars and practitioners, the book provides a bridge between the academic world and the operational world. It provides new insights for both of those audiences in terms of understanding how the law applies to - and through - the rules on the use of force for military operations.

Emerging technologies have always played an important role in armed conflict. From the crossbow to cyber capabilities, technology that could be weaponized to create an advantage over an adversary has inevitably found its way into military arsenals for use in armed conflict. The weaponization of emerging technologies, however, raises challenging legal issues with respect to the law of armed conflict. As States continue to develop and exploit new technologies, how will the law of armed conflict address the use of these technologies on the battlefield? Is existing law sufficient to regulate new technologies, such as cyber capabilities, autonomous weapons systems, and artificial intelligence? Have emerging technologies fundamentally altered the way we should understand concepts such as law-of-war precautions and the principle of distinction? How can we ensure compliance and accountability in light of technological advancement? This volume of the Lieber Studies explores these critical questions while highlighting the legal challenges-and opportunities-presented by the use of emerging technologies on the battlefield.

Despite the key importance of accountability for the legitimacy of humanitarian action, inadequate academic attention has been given to how the concept of accountability is evolving within the specific branches of the humanitarian enterprise. Up to now, there exists no comprehensive account of what we label the 'technologies of accountability', the effects of their interaction, or the question of how the current turn to decision-making software and biometrics as both the means and ends of accountability may contribute to reshaping humanitarian governance. UNHCR and the Struggle for Accountability explores the UNHCR's quest for accountability by viewing the UNHCR's accountability obligations through the web of institutional relationships within which the agency is placed (beneficiaries, host governments, implementing partners, donors, the Executive Committee and UNGA). The book takes a multidisciplinary approach in order to illuminate the various layers and relationships that constitute accountability and also to reflect on what constitutes good enough accountability. This book contributes to the discussion regarding how we construct knowledge about concepts in humanitarian studies and is a valuable resource for academics, researchers and professionals in the areas of anthropology, history, international relations, international law, science, technology studies and socio-legal studies.

In the late 1990s NATO dropped bombs and supported armed insurgencies in Yugoslavia while insisting that its motives were purely humanitarian and that its only goal was peace. However, George Szamuely argues that NATO interventions actually prolonged conflicts, heightened enmity, increased casualties, and fueled demands for more interventions.
Eschewing the one-sided approach adopted by previous works on the Yugoslavian crisis, Szamuely offers a broad overview of the conflict, its role in the rise of NATO's authority, and its influence on Western policy on the Balkans. His timely, judicious, and accessible study sheds new light on the roots of the contemporary doctrine of humanitarian intervention.

At the turn of the millennium, a new phenomenon emerged: conservatives, who just decades before had rejected the expanding human rights culture, began to embrace human rights in order to advance their political goals. In this book, Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon account for how human rights - generally conceived as a counter-hegemonic instrument for righting historical injustices - are being deployed to further subjugate the weak and legitimize domination. Using Israel/Palestine as its main case study, The Human Right to Dominate describes the establishment of settler NGOs that appropriate human rights to dispossess indigenous Palestinians and military think-tanks that rationalize lethal violence by invoking human rights. The book underscores the increasing convergences between human rights NGOs, security agencies, settler organizations, and extreme right nationalists, showing how political actors of different stripes champion the dissemination of human rights and mirror each other's political strategies. Indeed, Perugini and Gordon demonstrate the multifaceted role that this discourse is currently playing in the international arena: on the one hand, human rights have become the lingua franca of global moral speak, while on the other, they have become reconstrued as a tool for enhancing domination.

'Taxpayers are complicit in the illegal wars waged by their governments.' 'Corporations are complicit in human rights abuses perpetrated by their suppliers.' 'Aid workers who compromise with militias are complicit in their reign of terror.' We hear such allegations all the time. Yet there are many ways of being mixed up with the wrongdoing of others. They are not all on a par, morally; some are worse than others. Furthermore, complicitly contributing to wrongdoing, while still wrong in itself, might nonetheless be the right thing to do if that is the only way to achieve some greater good. Drawing on philosophy, law and political science, and on a wealth of practical experience delivering emergency medical services in conflict-ridden settings, Lepora and Goodin untangle the complexities surrounding compromise and complicity: carefully cataloguing their many varieties; identifying the dimensions along which those differ; and explaining why some are morally more worrying than others. Lepora and Goodin summarize their analysis in a formula that can be used as a decision heuristic for assessing any given act of complicity. They go on to illustrate its practical usefulness by applying it first to some stylized philosophical examples and then, in a more sustained way, to two vexing cases of complicity in the real world: the complicity of humanitarian aid organizations with genocidaires controlling Rwandan refugee camps; and the complicity of physicians treating patients who are being subjected to torture. Both rigorous and rooted, this is a book for philosophers and practitioners alike.

This book seeks to clarify the legal concept of proportionality in international humanitarian law, as it applies during armed conflict. It is argued in the book that a refocus of the interpretation of the proportionality rule is warranted to enhance the protection of civilians. More precisely, this book seeks to dissect the origins of the rule, determine how its components must be interpreted and how it is to be applied in practice. The book considers practical situations that may arise in the conduct of military operations and searches for the limits international humanitarian law sets to commanders' assessments of proportionality during armed conflict. The book concludes that proportionality is an inherently subjective and imprecise yardstick that nonetheless serves to protect civilians during armed conflict.

There are currently over 100 stateless nations pressing for greater self-determination around the globe. The vast majority of these groups will never achieve independence. Many groups will receive some accommodation over self-determination, many will engage in civil war over self-determination, and in many cases, internecine violence will plague these groups. This book examines the dynamic internal politics of states and self-determination groups. The internal structure and political dynamics of states and self-determination groups significantly affect information and credibility problems faced by these actors, as well as the incentives and opportunities for states to pursue partial accommodation of these groups.
Using new data on the internal structure of all self-determination groups and their states and on all accommodation in self-determination disputes, this book shows that states with some, but not too many, internal divisions are best able to accommodate self-determination groups and avoid civil war. When groups are more internally divided, they are both much more likely to be accommodated and to get into civil war with the state, and also more likely to have fighting within the group. Detailed comparison of three self-determination disputes in the conflict-torn region of northeast India reveals that internal divisions in states and groups affect when these groups get the accommodation they seek, which groups violently rebel, and whether actors target violence against their own co-ethnics.
The argument and evidence in this book reveal the dynamic effect that internal divisions within SD groups and states have on their ability to bargain over self-determination. Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham demonstrates that understanding the relations between states and SD groups requires looking at the politics inside these actors.

A new nuclear arms race is underway between Russia and the United States, one that focuses on the technology of delivery of nuclear warheads. This book describes how and why this race is happening, who still possesses nuclear weapons, and what constraints apply to those weapons under international law. A global nuclear ban treaty entered into force in January 2021, but the nuclear powers kept distant. The last remaining treaty restraining the arsenals of the two nuclear superpowers will expire in less than five years' time and the risk is that other States will turn to nuclear arms for their defence, further fracturing the non-proliferation regime installed after the Cuban missile crisis.

This third edition of Human Rights: Between Idealism and Realism presents human rights in action, focusing on their effectiveness as legal tools designed to benefit human beings. By combining conceptual analysis with an emphasis on procedures and mechanisms of implementation, this volume provides a multidimensional overview of human rights. After examining briefly the history of human rights, the author analyses the intellectual framework that forms the basis of their legitimacy. In particular, he covers the concept of universality and the widely used model that classifies human rights into clusters of different 'generations'. In this edition, the author brings together the fundamental aspects of human rights law, addressing human dignity as the ethical foundation of human rights, the principle of equality and non-discrimination as the essence of any culture of human rights, the protections against racial discrimination and discrimination against women, and assesses the individual as a subject of international law. The volume then moves on to assess the activities of the political institutions of the United Nations, the expert bodies established by the relevant treaties, and the international tribunals specifically entrusted at the regional level with protecting human rights. This edition also includes specific analysis of the actions mandated by the UN Security Council against Libya in 2011. It also includes greater coverage of the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights. The author explains how and why the classical array of politically inspired informal devices has been enriched by the addition of international criminal procedures and by endeavours to introduce civil suits against alleged individual violators of human rights. Finally, the volume is rounded off by a consideration of the importance of humanitarian law as an instrument for the protection of human life and dignity and an exploration of the future of human rights.

The Concept of the Civilian: Legal Recognition, Adjudication and the Trials of International Criminal Justice offers a critical account of the legal shaping of civilian identities by the processes of international criminal justice. It draws on a detailed case-study of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to explore two key issues central to these justice processes: first, how to understand civilians as a social and legal category of persons and second, how legal practices shape victims' identities and redress in relation to these persons. Integrating socio-legal concepts and methodologies with insights from transitional justice scholarship, Claire Garbett traces the historical emergence of the concept of the civilian, and critically examines how the different stages of legal proceedings produce its conceptual form in distinction from that of combatants. This book shows that the very notions of civilian, protection and redress that underpin current practices of international criminal justice continue to evoke both definitional difficulties and analytic contestation. Using a unique interdisciplinary approach, the author provides a critical analysis of the relationship between mechanisms of transitional justice and civilians that will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of transitional justice, sociology, law, politics and human rights.

This book considers the theoretical, policy and empirical arguments relevant to the debate concerning the legalisation of interrogational torture. Torturing Terrorists examines, as part of a consequentialist analysis, the nature and impact of torture and the implications of its legal regulation on individuals, institutions and wider society. In making an argument against the use of torture, the book engages in a wide ranging interdisciplinary analysis of the arguments and claims that are put forward by the proponents and opponents of legalised torture. This book examines the ticking bomb hypothetical and explains how the component parts of the hypothetical are expansively interpreted in theory and practice. It also considers the effectiveness of torture in producing 'ticking bomb' and 'infrastructure' intelligence and examines the use of interrogational torture and coercion by state officials in Northern Ireland, Algeria, Israel, and as part of the CIA's 'High Value Detainee' interrogation programme. As part of an empirical slippery slope argument, this book examines the difficulties in drafting the text of a torture statute; the difficulties of controlling the use of interrogational torture and problems such a law could create for state officials and wider society. Finally, it critically evaluates suggestions that debating the legalisation of torture is dangerous and should be avoided. The book will be of interest to students and academics of criminology, law, sociology and philosophy, as well as the general reader.

Flexibility is usually seen as a virtue in today's world. Even the dictionary seems to dislike those who stick too hard to their own positions. The thesaurus links "intransigence" to a whole host of words signifying a distaste for loyalty to fixed positions: intractable, stubborn, Pharisaic, close-minded, and stiff-necked, to name a few. In this short and provocative book, constitutional law professor Richard H. Weisberg asks us to reexamine our collective cultural bias toward flexibility, open-mindedness, and compromise. He argues that flexibility has not fared well over the course of history. Indeed, emergencies both real and imagined have led people to betray their soundest traditions. Weisberg explores the rise of flexibility, which he traces not only to the Enlightenment but further back to early Christian reinterpretation of Jewish sacred texts. He illustrates his argument with historical examples from Vichy France and the occupation of the British Channel Islands during World War II as well as post-9/11 betrayals of sound American traditions against torture, eavesdropping, unlimited detention, and drone killings. Despite the damage wrought by Western society's incautious embrace of flexibility over the past two millennia, Weisberg does not make the case for unthinking rigidity. Rather, he argues that a willingness to embrace intransigence allows us to recognize that we have beliefs worth holding on to - without compromise.

Newly revised, this textbook provides an authoritative conceptual and practical overview of international law governing the resort to force. Following an introductory chapter, with a section on the key issues in identifying the law and actual and potential changes to it, the book addresses the breadth and scope of the prohibition of the threat or use of force and the meaning of 'force' as the focus of this. The book proceeds to address the use of force through the United Nations and regional organisations, the use of force in peacekeeping operations, the right of self-defence and the customary limitations upon this right, the controversial right of humanitarian intervention, and forcible interventions in civil conflicts. Updated to include greater focus on aspects such as cyber operations, the threat of force, and the 'human element' to the use force, as well as the inclusion of recent developments such as the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, it seeks to address the contemporary legal framework through the prism of contemporary challenges that it currently faces.

The world is faced with significant and interrelated challenges in the 21st century which threaten human rights in a number of ways. This book examines three of the largest issues of the century - armed conflict, environment, and poverty - and examines how these may be addressed using a human rights framework. It considers how these challenges threaten human rights and reassesses our understanding of human rights in the light of these issues. This multidisciplinary text considers both foundational and applied questions such as the relationship between morality and the laws of war, as well as the application of the International Human Rights Framework in cyber space. Alongside analyses from some of the most prominent lawyers, philosophers, and political theorists in the debate, each section includes contributions by those who have served as Special Rapporteurs within the United Nations Human Rights System on the challenges facing international human rights laws today.

This scholarly legal work focuses on the dilemma of prosecuting gender-based crimes under the statutes of the international criminal tribunals with reference to the principle of fair labelling. In this book Hilmi M. Zawati explains how the abstractness and lack of accurate description of gender-based crimes in the statutory laws of the international criminal tribunals and courts infringe the principle of fair labelling, lead to inconsistent verdicts and punishments, and cause inadequate prosecution of these crimes. This inquiry deals with gender-based crimes as a case study, within the legal principle and theoretical framework of fair labelling. Critical and timely, this study contributes to existing scholarship in many different ways. It is the first legal analysis to focus on the dilemma of prosecuting and punishing wartime gender-based crimes in the statutory laws of the international criminal tribunals and the ICC in the context of fair labelling. Moreover, it emphasizes that applying fair labelling to wartime gender-based crimes would enable the tribunals and the ICC to deliver fair judgments, eliminate inconsistent prosecution, overcome shortcomings in addressing gender-based crimes within their jurisprudence, while breaking the cycle of impunity for these crimes. Consisting of two parts, this work begins by outlining the central focus and theoretical legal framework of the study. It concentrates on fair labelling as an imperative legal principle and a legal framework, and examines its intellectual development, scope and justification, illustrating its applicability to gender-based crimes. The second part addresses the dilemma of prosecuting gender-based crimes in the international criminal tribunals.

War, Aggression and Self-Defence is an indispensable guide to international legal issues of war and peace, the crime of aggression, self-defence and its trigger, armed attack, and the different modalities of self-defence, as well as enforcement measures taken under the aegis of a binding decision of the Security Council. This new and fully updated 6th edition focuses on the key issues at the forefront of the contemporary international legal debate, as well as analysing the new armed conflicts in Syria, Ukraine and Georgia, re-examining the Kampala amendments on the crime of aggression and considering the phenomenon of 'robust' mandates of a peacekeeping force. Suitable for graduate and advanced undergraduate students, this market-leading book offers a wide-ranging and highly readable introduction to the legal issues surrounding war and self-defence.

Through an analysis of the use of drones, Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi explores the ways in which, in the context of counterterrorism, war, technology and the law interact and reshape one another. She demonstrates that drone programs are techno-legal machineries that facilitate and accelerate the emergence of a new kind of warfare. This new model of warfare is individualized and de-materialized in the sense that it focuses on threat anticipation and thus consists in identifying dangerous figures (individualized warfare) rather than responding to acts of hostilities (material warfare). Revolving around threat anticipation, drone wars endure over an extensive timeframe and geographical area, to the extent that the use of drones may even be seen, as appears to be the case for the United States, as part of the normal functioning of the state, with profound consequences for the international legal order.

This book celebrates the scholarship of Richard Baxter, former Judge of the International Court of Justice and former Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School. The volume brings together Professor Baxter's writings on the laws of war, on which he was one of the most influential scholars of the twentieth century. The collection of essays contained in this book once again makes his exceptional writings available to scholars and students in the field. His work remains timely and relevant to today's issues, and offers many analyses which have been borne out in subsequent years. It includes, amongst many wide-ranging topics within the laws of war, Baxter's studies of the Geneva Conventions, human rights in times of war, and the legal problems of international military command. Featuring a new introduction by Professor Detlev Vagts exploring the importance of Baxter's writings, and a Biographical Note by Judge Stephen Schwebel assessing Baxter's life, this book is essential reading for scholars and students of international humanitarian law.