The Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the International Criminal Court (ICC) launched a public consultation on its Draft Policy on Complementarity and Cooperation (‘Draft Policy’) on 6 October 2023. The Draft Policy contains four pillars which are meant to form the basis for deepening the OTP’s engagement with national authorities —creating a community of practice, technology as an accelerant, bringing justice closer to communities, and harnessing cooperation mechanisms. This post briefly examines the latter two given their relevance to the meaningful participation of victims of core internati ..read more

On 14 November 2023, a French court issued an arrest warrant for Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad on “charges of complicity in crimes against humanity and complicity in war crimes”. This decision might have come as a surprise to the majority of scholars who view the issue of head of state immunity through the lens of the judgment of the International Court of Justice, in the Arrest Warrant case. According to this judgment, foreign heads of state enjoy “full immunity” from foreign criminal jurisdiction. Thus, the prohibition to prosecute foreign heads of state extends to rulers who – like Bash ..read more

The post is based on my previous one “La missione EUNAVFOR Aspides dell’Unione europea e l’applicazione ratione temporis del diritto di legittima difesa”, published (in Italian) on SIDIBlog on March 19, 2024 Introduction On February 19, 2024 the European Union (EU) launched EUNAVFOR Aspides, a military maritime security operation in response to the current crisis in the Red Sea. The Mission is led by Greece, which provides the operation commander (military-strategic level), while Italy holds command of the forces (operational and tactical level). Aspides falls under the EU’s Common Security ..read more

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) establishes a comprehensive dispute settlement mechanism applicable to any dispute, subject to the exhaustive list of limitations and optional exceptions in Section 3, concerning the interpretation or application of UNCLOS. A complex topic that has arisen in several disputes regarding the application of UNCLOS is how to overcome jurisdictional challenges where disputes are of a mixed nature, i.e. disputes that are not limited to differences regarding provisions of UNCLOS but extend also to other rules of international law. It is axio ..read more

Article 437 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code outlaws planning, preparation or initiation of an aggressive war or an armed conflict, conspiring for any such purpose or waging of an aggressive war or aggressive hostilities. Yet, the domestic legislation is silent on the existence of a leadership requirement. On 28 February 2024, the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court (hereinafter, the GCSC) offered a long-awaited clarification of this conundrum. My blog post provides an overview of the facts and procedural history germane to the crime of aggression charges, as well as a brief analysis of judicial ..read more

Anyone who is a regular reader of EJIL will know that we publish statistics each year on the submissions we receive as well as on articles accepted and published. We consider this to be part of our responsibility as Journal Editors – to keep a keen eye on the “who and where” of authors submitting to EJIL and to inform our readers and authors accordingly. The tables below tell a clear story, one that is in fact not very different from those of recent years: the majority of our authors are based in European countries; the majority do not speak English as their first language; the majority, thoug ..read more

1. Call for Papers: The Use of Human Rights Language in International and EU Law. The Faculty of Law of the University of Trento is soliciting abstracts to participate in the XXI Conference of Young Scholars of International Legal Studies. This year’s Conference will be co-funded by the Horizon Europe’s project HRJust. The deadline for submission of abstracts is 20 June 2024. For more information, see here. 2. International Conference: Improving Supply Chain Accountability for Arms Exports. This conference, to be held at the Asser Institute in The Hague on 13 – 14 May, will broach du ..read more

We need to talk about hunger. After seven decades of a decline in mass death from starvation, starvation is now a reality for millions of people. And most of this starvation is not due to natural disasters but man-made. In this episode of EJIL: The Podcast, EJIL Editor in Chief Sarah Nouwen speaks with Michael Fakhri, the UN Rapporteur on the Right to Food and professor at the University of Oregon, and Alex de Waal, a leading thinker on humanitarian issues and Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation. Together, they discuss the strength and weaknesses of various areas of int ..read more

Two essays begin the review section, one by Alan Nissel and another by Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi. Nissel reviews Kathryn Greenman’s State Responsibility and Rebels: The History and Legacy of Protecting Investment Against Revolution, suggesting that it has ‘tremendous import for the philosophy of international law’ with its postcolonial critique and discussion of a better framework for the law of state responsibility. Mignot-Mahdavi meanwhile explores ‘the complex cartographies’ of global algorithmic governance in her essay on Claudia Aradau and Tobias Blanke’s Algorithmic Reason: T ..read more

This blog aims to unpack a recent ruling from the Israeli district court concerning the eligibility of an LGBTQ Palestinian to seek refuge under the Refugee Convention. This issue is of tremendous importance, as LGBTQ Palestinians are a vulnerable group within the Palestinian community, in terms of social acceptance and also, at times, their personal security and dignity. The LGBTQ community often faces the dangers of violence and persecution and with insufficient protection by the authorities, and in fact at times it is even the authorities themselves who pressure to expose the identities of ..read more