In the early hours of Wednesday morning on 31 July 2024, it was confirmed that Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, who had traveled to Tehran for the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s new president, was killed in Iran's capital as a result of a strike in his place of temporary residence. The specifics of this strike are not exactly clear. At the time of writing, different reports point to conflicting scenarios regarding how this operation was carried out (see e.g. here and here). Both Iran and Hamas have blamed Israel for this attack. Targeting Haniyeh in Tehran provokes a plethora of sophisticated questions regarding territoriality in armed conflicts. Such questions are compounded when taking into consideration that strikes in Tehran seem to stand at the intersection of two conflicts, namely, the Israel-Hamas conflict and the Iran-Israel conflict. To state the obvious, characterizing the nature of these conflicts is crucial for any inquiry focused on the imperatives of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) in such extraterritorial operations. Of the two conflicts in question,…
Non-State Actors
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Does Israel Have the Right to Defend Itself?
This is a deceptively simple question. It has several possible answers, each of which rests on different (and highly contested) assumptions. In this post I will try to explain what these possible answers are, and what are their implications. I don’t myself know what the ‘correct’ answer here is. It is not my intention to argue for one.
The Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty for Core Crimes: Filling the Gap?
Since 2011, work has been underway in the Mutual Legal Assistance Initiative (MLAI) to create a modern, procedural, multilateral treaty on mutual legal assistance and extradition, which better facilitates cooperation between states in the prosecution of international crimes. However, recent drafts of the Convention on International Cooperation in the Investigation and Prosecution of the Crime of…
The European Commission’s proposal for a directive on corporate sustainability due diligence: two paradoxes
On 23 February 2022, the European Commission (EC) published a proposal for a directive on corporate sustainability due diligence (proposal). The proposal has already attracted much scholarly and stakeholder commentary. In this blog we focus on two significant issues not yet addressed. First, the proposal does not refer to European regional human rights instruments such as the…
“Friends of the court” making the most of Amicus Curiae with UN Treaty Bodies
The practice of submitting Third Party Interventions (TPIs) – also known as Amicus Curiae briefs - is well established in Commonwealth jurisdictions, and it has become common practice within regional mechanisms such as the Inter-American and European Courts of Human Rights, and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ rights. Similarly, most of the eight UN…
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