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.

The application and interpretation of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 have developed significantly in the sixty 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 second volume. Its preparation was coordinated by Jean-Marie Henckaerts, ICRC legal adviser and head of the project to update the Commentaries. The Second Convention is a key text of international humanitarian law. It contains the essential rules on the protection of the wounded, sick and shipwrecked at sea, those assigned to their care, and the vessels used for their treatment and evacuation. This article-by-article Commentary takes into account developments in the law and practice 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, including naval experts. It is an essential tool for anyone working or studying within this field.

This book examines the challenges posed to contemporary international law by the shifting role of the border, which has recently re-emerged as a central issue in international relations. It posits that borders do not merely correspond to States' boundaries: indeed, while remaining a fundamental tool for asserting States' power, they are in fact a collection of constantly changing spatial limits. Consequently, the book approaches borders as context-specific limits and revisits notions traditionally linked to them (jurisdiction, sovereignty, responsibility, individual rights), while also adopting the innovative approach of viewing borders as phenomena of both closedness and openness. Accordingly, the first part of the book addresses what happens "within" borders, investigating the root causes of the emergence of spatial limits and re-assessing apparent extra-territorial assertions of State power. In turn, the second part not only explores typical borderless spaces, but also more generally considers the exercise of States' and international organisations' powers and prerogatives across or "beyond" borders.

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 book deals with the prosecution of core crimes and constitutes the first comprehensive analysis of the horizontal and vertical systems of enforcement of international criminal law and of their inter-relationship. It provides a global jurisprudential exposition in assessing the grounds for refusal of surrender to the International Criminal Court and of extradition to another State. It also offers insights into legal perspectives which improve the prevailing enforcement regimes of various models of criminal justice, including hybrid criminal tribunals, special criminal courts, judicial panels and partnerships, and other budding sui generis judicial and/or prosecutorial institutions. The book espouses a human rights law-oriented critique to the enforcement of domestic, regional and international criminal justice and is aimed at legal practitioners (prosecutors, defence lawyers, magistrates and judges), jurists, criminal justice experts, penologists, legal researchers, human rights activists and law students. Christopher Soler lectures Maltese criminal law, international criminal law and public international law at the University of Malta. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands.

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.

This new open access book provides a valuable restatement of the current law of armed conflict regarding hostilities in a diverse range of contexts: outer space, cyber operations, remote and autonomous weapons, undersea systems and devices, submarine cables, civilians participating in unmanned operations, military objectives by nature, civilian airliners, destruction of property, surrender, search and rescue, humanitarian assistance, cultural property, the natural environment, and more. The book was prepared by a group of experts after consultation with a number of key governments. It is intended to offer guidance for practitioners (mainly commanding officers); facilitate training at military colleges; and inform both instructors and graduate students of international law on the current state of the law.

Central to this book is the concept of humanity in international law. It traces the evolution of that concept within international law, studies the existing theories of crimes against humanity, and lays out its own theory based on an inclusive view of "humanity". Crimes against humanity are core crimes under international law; their modern definition is found in the Rome Statute. However, their protective scope remains unclear, with the exact meaning of "humanity" left undefined in law. The proposed theory argues that "humanity" should be understood as "humanness" and crimes against humanity should be criminalised because humanness constitutes these crimes' valid protected interest. This volume in the International Criminal Justice Series offers an analysis of the German doctrine of Rechtsgut to justify the penalization of crimes against humanity at both domestic and international levels. This is the first monograph on crimes against humanity written by an author from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) aimed at an international audience, and should constitute a useful tool for academics, students and practitioners of international law. Rustam Atadjanov, LLB, LLM, Dr.jur., attained his Ph.D. at the University of Hamburg in Germany and is a former Legal Adviser to the Regional Delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Central Asia, Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

This book explores the extent to which the International Criminal Court (ICC) has influenced peace processes in Co te d'Ivoire, Kenya and Uganda. It examines how the prosecution of those who bear the greatest responsibility for crimes committed in these countries may have negatively or positively influenced the process of making peace in their wake. It is concerned with how international accountability affects post-conflict countries and what the ICC brings to peace processes. The central question addressed by the book is whether justice spurs peace in post- conflict societies or whether justice complicates the peace process. If so, how? Relying on qualitative studies in these countries, this book comparatively analyses the impact of the interventions of the ICC in Uganda (2004), Kenya (after the 2007/2008 post-election violence), and Co te d'Ivoire. Its aim is to provide an evidence-based account of how the involvement of the ICC in these countries influences the processes of promoting peace. To gauge this, Malu develops an analytical framework which is based on four variables: deterrence, victims' rights, reconciliation and accountability to the law. This book will appeal to those interested in post-conflict reconstruction, transitional justice, peace studies, conflict transformation, and international criminal law, including peace practitioners and those working in the field of international justice.

This book investigates the use of duress as a defence in international criminal law, specifically in cases of child soldiers. The prosecution of children for international crimes often only focuses on whether children can and should be prosecuted under international law. However, it is rarely considered what would happen to these children at the trial stage. This work offers a nuanced approach towards international prosecution and considers how children could be implicated and defended in international courts. This study will be of interest to academics and practitioners working in international criminal law, transitional justice and children's rights.

Why do powerful intervening militaries have such difficulty managing comparatively weak local partners in counterinsurgency wars? Set within the context of costly, large-scale military interventions such as the US war in Afghanistan, this book explains the conditions by which local allies comply with (or defy) the policy demands of larger security partners. Analysing nine large-scale post-colonial counterinsurgency interventions including Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Yemen, Lebanon, Cambodia, and Angola, this book utilizes thousands of primary source documents to identify and examine over 450 policy requests proposed by intervening forces to local allies. By dissecting these problematic partnerships, this book exposes a critical political dynamic in military interventions. It will appeal to academics and policymakers addressing counterinsurgency issues in foreign policy, security studies and political science.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The 'Legal Pluriverse' Surrounding Multinational Military Operations conceptualizes and examines the "Pluriverse": the multiplicity of rules that apply to and regulate contemporary multinational missions, and the array of actors involved. These operations are further complicated by changes to the classification of the conflict, and the asymmetry of obligations on participants. Structured into five parts, this work seeks, through the diversity of its authorship, to set out the web of legal regimes applicable to military operations including forces from more than one state. It maps out the ways in which different regimes interact, beginning with the laws of armed conflict and their relation to international humanitarian and human rights norms, and extending through to areas like law of the sea and environmental law. A variety of contributors systematically compile and take stock of the various legal regimes that make up the pluriverse, assessing how these rules interact, exposing norm conflicts, areas of legal uncertainty, or protective loopholes. In this way, they identify and evaluate approaches to better streamline the different applicable legal frameworks with a view to enhancing cooperation and thereby ensuring the long-term success of multinational military operations.

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.

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.

Law and Morality at War develops a normative framework within which the law of armed conflict should be evaluated, interpreted, and reformed. The book defends existing protections for civilians, proposes new protections for combatants, and interprets vague and ambiguous rules - including discrimination, precautions, and proportionality - in their morally best light. The book makes original contributions to a variety of current debates in moral and legal philosophy, including the justification of legal authority, moral liability to defensive harm, and moral choice under uncertainty. At the same time, the book directly confronts the complex problems of the modern battlefield, including the use of human shields. Both theoretical and practical, the book aims to better guide combatants and better protect civilians. With a new preface addressing recent developments and continued armed conflict.

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.

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.

This book offers new insights and original empirical research on private military and security companies (PMSCs), including China's negotiation approach to governance, an account of Nigeria's first engagement with regulatory cooperation under the threat of Boko Haram, and a study of PMSCs in Ebola-hit Western Africa. The author engages with concepts and theories from IR, Political Economy, and African studies-like regime, forum shopping, and extraversion-to describe what shapes state choices in national and international fora. The volume clarifies and spells out the needed questions and definitions and proposes a synthesis of how regime formation is shaped by ideas, interests, and institutions, starting from the proposition that regulatory cooperation consists in facilitating the acceptance and use of a single identifier for private military and security companies.

This book discusses the many legal aspects arising in relation to the maintenance of peace in Africa. Over the past twenty years, the majority of peace operations have been deployed on this continent, most of them established by the UN Security Council, sometimes in cooperation with the African Union and other African regional organizations, with contributions from the European Union and NATO. In some cases, the African Union has invoked its 'primary responsibility for promoting peace, security and stability in Africa', thus questioning the legal partnership between UN and regional organizations provided for in Chapter VIII of the UN Charter. The peace operations deployed in Africa have sometimes received a very robust mandate, which also includes the use of force and the protection of civilians' human rights. The implementation of this broad mandate, which goes well beyond the traditional 'peacekeeping approach', requires considerable human and economic resources. Moreover, it raises several issues of concern with regard to the impact on the economic and political systems of the states in which the operations are deployed and, more generally, on the exercise of sovereignty over their territorial communities by these states. Offering an update for lawyers in practice and in academia interested in the field of international law, the book also contributes to the theoretical studies concerning the activities of international organizations, focusing on one of the most challenging issues to emerge in recent times.

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.