Laws and norms that focus on women's lives in conflict have proliferated across the regimes of international humanitarian law, international criminal law, international human rights law and the United Nations Security Council. While separate institutions, with differing powers of monitoring and enforcement, implement these laws and norms, the activities of regimes overlap. Women's Rights in Armed Conflict under International Law is the first book to account for this pluralism and institutional diversity. This book identifies key aspects of how different regimes regulate women's rights in conflict, and how they interact. Using country case studies to reveal the practical implications of the fragmented protection of women's rights in conflict, this book offers a dynamic account of how regimes and institutions interact, the extent to which they reinforce each other, and the tensions and gaps in regulation that emerge.

In this book, the author outlines three independent bases for the existence of legal limits to the veto by UN Security Council permanent members while atrocity crimes are occurring. The provisions of the UN Charter creating the veto cannot override the UN's 'Purposes and Principles', nor jus cogens (peremptory norms of international law). There are also positive obligations imposed by the Geneva and Genocide Conventions in situations of war crimes and genocide - conventions to which all permanent members are parties. The author demonstrates how vetoes and veto threats have blocked the Security Council from pursuing measures that could have prevented or alleviated atrocity crimes (genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes) in places such as Myanmar, Darfur, Syria, and elsewhere. As the practice continues despite regular condemnation by other UN member states and repeated voluntary veto restraint initiatives, the book explores how the legality of this practice could be challenged.

This is an innovative new history of famine relief and humanitarianism. The authors apply a moral economy approach to shed new light on the forces and ideas that motivated and shaped humanitarian aid during the Great Irish Famine, the famine of 1921-1922 in Soviet Russia and the Ukraine, and the 1980s Ethiopian famine. They place these episodes within a distinctive periodisation of humanitarianism which emphasises the correlations with politico-economic regimes: the time of elitist laissez-faire liberalism in the nineteenth century as one of ad hoc humanitarianism; that of Taylorism and mass society from c.1900-1970 as one of organised humanitarianism; and the blend of individualised post-material lifestyles and neoliberal public management since 1970 as one of expressive humanitarianism. The book as a whole shifts the focus of the history of humanitarianism from the imperatives of crisis management to the pragmatic mechanisms of fundraising, relief efforts on the ground, and finance. This book is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

For policymakers, this book explains the ramifications under international humanitarian law of a major new field of weapon development with a focus on questions currently being debated by governments, the United Nations and other bodies. Based on a clear explanation of the principles of autonomous systems and a survey of technologies under active development as well as some that are in use today, it provides a thorough legal analysis grounded on a clear understanding of the technological realities of autonomous weapon systems. For legal practitioners and scholars, it describes the legal constraints that will apply to use of autonomous systems in armed conflict and the measures that will be needed to ensure that the efficacy of the law is maintained. More generally, it serves as a case study in identifying the legal consequences of use of autonomous systems in partnership with, or in place of, human beings.

Like its Nuremberg counterpart, the Tokyo Trial was foundational in the field of international law. However, until now, the persistent notion of 'victor's justice' in the existing historical literature has made it difficult to treat it as such. David Cohen and Yuma Totani seek to redress this by cutting through persistent orthodoxies and ideologies that have plagued the trial. Instead they present it simply as a judicial process, and in so doing reveal its enduring importance for international jurisprudence. A wide range of primary sources are considered, including court transcripts, court exhibits, the majority judgment, and five separate concurring and dissenting opinions. The authors also provide comparative analysis of the Allied trials at Nuremberg, resulting in a comprehensive and empirically grounded study of the trial. The Tokyo Tribunal was a watershed moment in the history of the Asia-Pacific region. This groundbreaking study reveals it is of continuing relevance today.

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention is the first comprehensive review of the contributions of this important institution to understanding arbitrary detention today. The Working Group is a body of five independent human rights experts that considers individual complaints of arbitrary detention, adopting legal opinions as to whether a detention is compatible with states' obligations under international law. Since its establishment in 1991, it has adopted more than 1,200 case opinions and conducted more than fifty country missions. But much more than a jurisprudential review, these cases are presented in the book in the style of a treatise, where the widest array of issues on arbitrary detention are placed in the context of the requirements of multilateral treaties and other relevant international standards. Written for both practitioners and serious scholars alike, this book includes five case studies and a foreword by Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu.

With more than 158,000 treaties and some 125 judicial organisations, international law has become an inescapable factor in world politics since the Second World War. In recent years, however, international law has also been increasingly challenged as states are voicing concerns that it is producing unintended effects and accuse international courts of judicial activism. This book provides an important corrective to existing theories of international law by focusing on how states respond to increased legalisation and rely on legal expertise to manoeuvre within and against international law. Through a number of case studies, covering a wide range of topical issues such as surveillance, environmental regulation, migration and foreign investments, the book argues that the expansion and increased institutionalisation of international law itself have created the structural premise for this type of politics of international law. More international law paradoxically increases states' political room of manoeuvre in world society.

With the arrival in Europe of over a million refugees and asylum seekers in 2015, a sense of panic began to spread within the continent and beyond. What is a Refugee? puts these developments into historical context, injecting much-needed objectivity and nuance into contemporary debates over what is to be done. Refugees have been with us for a long time -- although only after the Great War did refugee movements commence on a large scale -- and are ultimately symptoms of the failure of the system of states to protect all who live within it. Providing a terse user's guide to the complex legal status of refugees, Maley argues that states are now reaping the consequences of years of attempts to block access to asylum through safe and 'legal' means. He shows why many mooted 'solutions' to the 'problem' of refugees -- from military intervention to the warehousing of refugees in camps -- are counterproductive, creating environments ripe for the growth of extremism among people who have been denied all hope. In a globalised world, he concludes, wealthy states have the resources to protect refugees.And, as his historical account shows, courageous individuals have treated refugees in the past with striking humanity. States today could do worse than emulate them.

This book gives a compelling analysis and explanation of shifts in China's non-intervention policy in Africa. Systematically connecting the neoclassical realist theoretical logic with an empirical analysis of China's intervention in African civil wars, the volume highlights a methodical interlink between theoretical and empirical analysis that takes into consideration the changing status of rising powers in the global system and its effect on their intervention behaviour. Based on field research and expert interviews, it provides a rigorous analysis of China's emergent intervention behaviour in some key African conflicts in Libya, South Sudan and Mali and broadens the study of external interventions in civil wars to include the intervention behaviour of non-Western rising powers. Obert Hodzi is Visiting Researcher at the African Studies Center, Boston University, USA, and Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Helsinki, Finland.

This book argues that the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) the Libyan people played an important role in the U.S.'s decision to act, both in terms of how the language of deliberation was framed and the implementation of the actual intervention once all preventive means had been exhausted. While the initial ethos of the intervention followed international norms, the author argues that as the conflict continued to unfold, the Obama administration's loss of focus and lack of political will for post-conflict resolution, as well as a wider lack of understanding of ever changing politics on the ground, resulted in Libya's precipitation into chaos. By examining the cases of Rwanda and Darfur alongside the interventions in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, the book discusses how these cases influenced current decision-making with regards to foreign interventions and offers a triangular framework through which to understand R2P: responsibility to prevent, react and rebuild.

This book narrates the integration of consumer culture into transnational human rights advocacy and explores its political impact. By examining tactics that include benefit concerts, graphic imagery of suffering, and branded outreach campaigns, the book details the evolution of human rights into a mainstream moral cause. Drawing inspiration from the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, the author argues that these strategies are effective in attracting masses of supporters but weaken the viability of human rights by commodifying its practices. Consumer capitalism co-opts the public's moral awakening and transforms its desire for global engagement into components of a lifestyle expressed through market transactions and commercial relationships, rather than political commitments. Reclaiming human rights as a subversive idea can reconnect the practice of human rights with its principles and generate a movement bound to the radical spirit of human rights.

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention is the first comprehensive review of the contributions of this important institution to understanding arbitrary detention today. The Working Group is a body of five independent human rights experts that considers individual complaints of arbitrary detention, adopting legal opinions as to whether a detention is compatible with states' obligations under international law. Since its establishment in 1991, it has adopted more than 1,200 case opinions and conducted more than fifty country missions. But much more than a jurisprudential review, these cases are presented in the book in the style of a treatise, where the widest array of issues on arbitrary detention are placed in the context of the requirements of multilateral treaties and other relevant international standards. Written for both practitioners and serious scholars alike, this book includes five case studies and a foreword by Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu.

This book investigates how, while children used as soldiers are primarily perceived as victims of offences against international law, they also commit war atrocities. In the aftermath of armed conflict, the mainstream justice system targets warlords internationally, armed groups and militias' commanders who abduct and enrol children as combatants, leaving child perpetrators not being held accountable for their alleged gross human rights violations. Attempts to prosecute child soldiers through the mainstream justice system have resulted in child rights abuses. Where no accountability measures have been taken, demobilised young soldiers have experienced rejection, and eventually, some have returned to soldiering. This research provides evidence of the potential of restorative justice peacemaking circles and locally-based jurisprudence - specifically the Baraza - to hold former child soldiers accountable and facilitate their reintegration into society.

At a time when many around the world are fleeing their homes, seeking refugee protection has become a game of chance. Partly to blame is the law that governs how refugee status decision-makers resolve their doubts. This long-neglected branch of refugee law has been growing in the dark, with little guidance from the Refugee Convention and little attention from scholars. By looking closely at the Canadian jurisprudence, Hilary Evans Cameron provides the first full account of what this law is trying to accomplish in a refugee hearing. She demonstrates how a hole in the law's normative foundations is contributing to the dysfunction of one of the world's most respected refugee determination systems, and may well be undermining refugee protection across the globe. The author uses her findings to propose a new legal model of refugee status decision-making.

In recent years, transitional justice has become increasingly international in its scope. Due to ongoing animosities, lack of political will, and the absence of credible governing or judicial institutions, international organizations, donors, and NGOs advocate for transitional justice initiatives like truth commissions or special tribunals - alongside national actors, like civil society and victims groups. This book examines how international assistance affects transitional justice, and where power truly lies in making decisions about justice for victims of massive human rights abuse. The book finds that government donors typically lack strategies for transitional justice, they struggle with information deficits, and they are constrained by short-term approaches that do not give enough attention to what is often a weak and divided civil society sector. All the authors have both practical and scholarly perspectives on transitional justice. Country case studies are provided, including descriptions of the challenges in developing data on transitional justice financing.

Human Rights, Democracy, and Legitimacy in a World of Disorder brings together respected scholars from diverse disciplines to examine a trio of key concepts that help to stabilize states and the international order. While used pervasively by philosophers, legal scholars, and politicians, the precise content of these concepts is disputed, and they face new challenges in the conditions of disorder brought by the twenty-first century. This volume will explore the interrelationships and possible tensions between human rights, democracy, and legitimacy, from the philosophical, legal, and political perspectives; as well as the role of these concepts in addressing particular problems such as economic inequality, catastrophic risks posed by new technologies, access to health care, regional governance, and responses to mass migration. Comprising essays arising from an interdisciplinary symposium convened at Harvard Law School in 2016, this volume will examine how these trusted concepts may bring order to the global community.

Policymakers, legislators, scientists, thinkers, military strategists, academics, and all those interested in understanding the future want to know how twenty-first century scientific advance should be regulated in war and peace. This book tries to provide some of the answers. Part I summarises some important elements of the relevant law. In Part II, individual chapters are devoted to cyber capabilities, highly automated and autonomous systems, human enhancement technologies, human degradation techniques, the regulation of nanomaterials, novel naval technologies, outer space, synthetic brain technologies beyond artificial intelligence, and biometrics. The final part of the book notes important synergies that emerge between the different technologies and legal provisions, existing and proposed, assesses notions of convergence and of composition in international law, and provides some concluding remarks. The new technologies, their uses, and their regulation in war and peace are presented to the reader who is invited to draw conclusions.

This book is based on the author's experience of working for more than two decades in over thirty conflict and post-conflict zones. It is written for those involved in UN peacekeeping and the protection of civilians. It is intended to be accessible to non-lawyers working in the field who may need to know the applicable legal standards relating to issues such as the use of force and arrest and detention powers on the one hand and the delivery of life-saving assistance according to humanitarian principles on the other. It will also be of interest to scholars and students of peacekeeping, international law and international relations on the practical dilemmas facing those trying to operationalise the various conceptions of 'protection' during humanitarian crises in recent years.

The number of armed conflicts featuring extreme violence against the civilian population in areas with no or little state authority has risen significantly since the early 1990s. This phenomenon has been particularly prevalent in the African Great Lakes Region. This collection of essays evaluates, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the various traditional and alternative instruments for inducing compliance with international humanitarian law. In particular, it explores the potential of persuasion, as well as hierarchical means such as criminal justice on the international and domestic level or quasi-judicial mechanisms by armed groups. Furthermore, it evaluates the role and potential of human rights bodies, peacekeeping missions and the UN Security Council's special compliance system for children and armed conflicts. It also considers how Common Article 1 to the Geneva Conventions and the law of state responsibility could both potentially increase compliance with international humanitarian law.

Mediterranean states have developed various cooperation mechanisms in order to cope with the issues that arise from migration. This book critically analyses how institutional actors act and interact on the international scene in the control and management of migration in the Mediterranean. It highlights how, even though the involvement of 'universal' international organisations guarantees a certain balance in setting the goals of cooperation mechanisms and buttresses a certain coherence of the actions, the protection of migrants' fundamental rights is still an objective as opposed to a reality, and security imperatives and trends still prevail in the aftermath of the 2011 Arab Spring.

Private military and security companies (PMSCs) have been used in every peace operation since 1990, and reliance on them is increasing at a time when peace operations themselves are becoming ever more complex. This book provides an essential foundation for the emerging debate on the use of PMSCs in this context. It clarifies key issues such as whether their use complies with the principles of peacekeeping, outlines the implications of the status of private contractors as non-combatants under international humanitarian law, and identifies potential problems in holding states and international organizations responsible for their unlawful acts. Written as a clarion call for greater transparency, this book aims to inform the discussion to ensure that international lawyers and policy makers ask the right questions and take the necessary steps so that states and international organizations respect the law when endeavouring to keep peace in an increasingly privatized world.

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.

Rain Liivoja explores why, and to what extent, armed forces personnel who commit offences abroad are prosecuted under their own country's laws. After clarifying several conceptual uncertainties in the doctrine of jurisdiction and immunities, he applies the doctrine to the extraterritorial deployment of service personnel. Comparing the law and practice of different states, the author shows the sheer breadth of criminal jurisdiction that countries claim over their service personnel. He argues that such claims disclose a discrete category of jurisdiction, with its own scope and rationale, which can be justified as a matter of international law. By distinguishing service jurisdiction as a distinct category, the analysis explains some of the peculiarities of military criminal law and also provides a basis for extending national criminal law to private military contractors serving the state. This book is essential for scholars and practitioners in international and criminal law, especially in military contexts.

Over the past 150 years, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been one of the main drivers of progressive development in international humanitarian law, whilst assuming various roles in the humanization of the laws of war. With select contributions from international experts, this book critically assesses the ICRC's unique influence in international norm creation. It provides a detailed analysis of the workings of the International Red Cross, Red Crescent Movement and ICRC by addressing the milestone achievements as well as the failures, shortcomings and controversies over time. Crucially, the contributions highlight the lessons to be learnt for future challenges in the development of international humanitarian law. This book will be of particular interest to scholars and students of international law, but also to practitioners working in the field of international humanitarian law at both governmental and non-governmental organizations.

Like its Nuremberg counterpart, the Tokyo Trial was foundational in the field of international law. However, until now, the persistent notion of 'victor's justice' in the existing historical literature has made it difficult to treat it as such. David Cohen and Yuma Totani seek to redress this by cutting through persistent orthodoxies and ideologies that have plagued the trial. Instead they present it simply as a judicial process, and in so doing reveal its enduring importance for international jurisprudence. A wide range of primary sources are considered, including court transcripts, court exhibits, the majority judgment, and five separate concurring and dissenting opinions. The authors also provide comparative analysis of the Allied trials at Nuremberg, resulting in a comprehensive and empirically grounded study of the trial. The Tokyo Tribunal was a watershed moment in the history of the Asia-Pacific region. This groundbreaking study reveals it is of continuing relevance today.