Harvard ILJ

Observers of the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have hotly debated the wisdom of using unmanned drone aircraft to carry out military operations.  These debates have taken place within the traditional laws-of-war rubric for assessing tactics and strategy: did the attack accomplish a military objective and did it minimize the risk of civilian casualties?  However, [...]

In a speech given at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy warned that protectionism is a recipe for a global economic slump.  Protectionist measures adopted by even one government, Lamy said, could lead to a domino effect of dire consequences. Lamy noted in his speech that shrinking world trade in 2009 will [...]

Landing in Europe after her recent tour of Asia, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov last Friday in Geneva. Reflecting the Obama Administration’s new policy of cooperation in international relations, the pair discussed initiating a new nuclear arms control treaty. Clinton called the project of “highest priority” and [...]

Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders continued UN-led negotiations this week to reunify Cyprus. The small Mediterranean island gained its independence in 1960 from Great Britain, but its population is divided between ethnic Greeks and Turks.  Violence has plagued the nation since that time, and a UN peacekeeping force has been in place since 1964.  [...]

Last Friday a United Nations tribunal found Emmanuel Rukundo, a former chaplain of the Rwandan Armed Forces, guilty of genocide, murder as a crime against humanity and extermination as a crime. The Tribunal, which was created to investigate the mass killings in Rwanda in 1994, sentenced Mr. Rukundo to 25 years in prison. He was [...]

The former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who faces 11 charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, refused to enter a plea at the Hague. He said that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) did not have the jurisdiction to try him, because he was offered immunity by US Diplomat [...]

Unnamed sources from the U.S. State Department have indicated that the United States will likely boycott an upcoming U.N. conference on racism. A State Department official paid a recent visit to Geneva in February to negotiate the conference’s final document. After looking over the draft document, the official stated that it is “unsalvageable” by U.S. [...]

President Obama traveled to Canada for his first international trip and met with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to discuss clean energy initiatives and the current economic crisis. In Ottawa, Mr. Obama reaffirmed his administration’s concern for global climate change and voiced support for an international system of carbon emission caps and carbon credits trading. [...]

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is expected to issue an arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan on March 4th, marking the first time the ICC has taken such action against a current state leader. While a panel of judges agreed to the issuance of an arrest warrant in January, the date was [...]

Russia and Georgia agreed this past week to improve communications between the two nations, as well as with separatists and international monitors, in an effort to prevent future conflicts from escalating.  The United States hailed it as a success but nonetheless cited the need for continued progress in other areas of the negotiations, especially humanitarian [...]

On Thursday, Belgium initiated proceedings at the International Court of Justice against Senegal over the state’s refusal to prosecute Hissène Habré, the former president of Chad. Habré was the leader of Chad from 1982-1990 and his government was notorious for massacring various ethnic groups and ordering the torture and murder of political opponents.  He was [...]

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) partially granted the prosecution’s motion to amend the indictment against Radovan Karadžic on February 16. The amended indictment charges Karadžic, former President of the self-proclaimed Republika Srpska, with two counts of genocide for atrocities committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1992-1995 war.  He is expected to enter [...]