Analysis

Making sense of a duty for non-State armed groups to provide reparations

By / November 25, 2021

Reparations by non-State armed groups: why does it matter? Exploring whether and how non-State armed groups (NSAGs), as collective duty bearers, might contribute to reparations for their violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) might appear far-fetched to some or even controversial to others. However, recent developments show that the present-day realities of armed conflicts – …

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Peace Treaty Symposium: A Reaction to Mark Freeman’s Post

By / November 17, 2021

I want to start by saying that I have always maintained that international law should be a tool rather than an obstacle to peace negotiations; particularly in a world where there are still more that 74 non-international armed conflicts across 25 countries. But if we look at international law today, this is not exactly the …

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The Peace Treaty Initiative: Facilitating the pathway of negotiation through international law

By / November 17, 2021

The Peace Treaty Initiative aims to fill a “critical gap in international law” by “developing an international law of peace negotiation”, as Mark Freeman explains in the introductory post of this symposium. This ‘gap’, i.e., the absence of an overarching international legal regime that governs peacemaking, has attracted significant attention in the last decade or …

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Peace Treaty Symposium

By / November 17, 2021

When it comes to conflict prevention and resolution, a critical gap in international law is holding us back as a global community. While there is international law to regulate armed conflict and war, no clear counterpart exists to encourage and support peace negotiations. The Peace Treaty Initiative seeks to fill this gap by developing an …

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Protracted Armed Violence as a Criterion for the Existence of Non-international Armed Conflict: IHL, ICL and beyond

By / November 11, 2021

Introduction Both authors of this blog were born in Yugoslavia, a country that no longer exists. Its dissolution started with the so-called Ten-Day War, which was fought from 27 June to 7 July 1991 between the Slovenian Territorial Defence and the Yugoslav People’s Army, resulting in some 60 fatalities and 330 wounded. There is a …

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Blog Symposium: The International Criminal Court’s conviction of Dominic Ongwen, a former child soldier abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army

By / October 23, 2021

This blog symposium considers several socio-legal aspects arising from the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) judgment on 4 February 2021 in the case of the Prosecutor v Dominic Ongwen. At around nine years old, Mr Ongwen was abducted and used as a child soldier in the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), an armed group that has operated …

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Temporalities of Protection and the ‘End’ of Non-International Armed Conflict

By / October 23, 2021

The looming threat of a ‘forever war’, characterised by the so-called ‘Global Battlefield’ and the perpetual applicability of international humanitarian law (IHL), has thrust the question of when and how non-international armed conflicts (NIAC) end to the forefront of international concern and debate. In both practical and legal terms, identifying the end of a NIAC …

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Sustainable Development Goal 16: can armed non-state actors act, or only obstruct?

By / February 22, 2021

Deborah Casalin is a PhD researcher in the Law and Development Research Group at the University of Antwerp Faculty of Law. She previously worked for several years in the humanitarian and development sectors, mainly on issues relating to IHL and human rights, and has previously published on armed group detention under IHL. This contribution draws …

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Most Read Posts in 2020

By / October 23, 2021

Happy new year to our readers! We want to take this opportunity to wish you all a wonderful 2021 and thank you for reading the blog in 2020. Below is a list of the 5 posts that received the most views last year. We hope to have relevant discussions about armed groups and international law …

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