Armed Conflict

Page 4 of 68

Filter category

Feature post image

On Binaries, Blind Spots, and Shades of Gray: The UN Report on LGBTQ+ Persons in Armed Conflict

November 28, 2022

“I'd prefer it if you shoot me in the head.” These were the words of a young gay man in Syria in 2015 who knew his fate was to be thrown from the roof of a high-rise building after being convicted by ISIS for sodomy. The persecution, targeting and rape of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and plus (LGBTQ+) persons in some provinces in Colombia was systematic and, often, part of a tactic of social control. In 2017, in the Eastern parts of Ukraine, LGBTQ+ persons have been persecuted and forced to flee their homes and in 2022 there have also been reports of Ukrainian transgender women who have been prohibited to leave their war-torn country during martial law as they were marked as men. In other conflicts and situations of violence, including in Yemen, Libya, Myanmar and Afghanistan, LGBTQ+ persons have been subjected to rape and other forms of gender-based violence. These and many other examples could be marshalled to illustrate that LGBTQ+…

Read more

Control in the context of chaos: the war in Ukraine and Russia’s jurisdiction under the ECHR

November 22, 2022

In January 2021, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (the Court) issued its long-awaited judgment in Georgia v Russia (II) related to the armed conflict that took place between Georgia and Russia in August 2008, and the continued Russian presence in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. A contentious aspect of the Court’s judgment concerned…

Read more

As Far As We Know, There Has Been No Armed Attack Against Poland

November 16, 2022

Yesterday a missile struck a village in Poland, near the Ukrainian border, prompting immediate fears of escalation and of a more direct entry of NATO states into the Russian/Ukranian armed conflict. As I write this it remains unclear whether the missile was fired by Russian or by Ukranian armed forces. However, US President Biden and other US officials…

Read more

Twenty Years of Drone Attacks

November 15, 2022

On November 2, 2002, the United States conducted its first targeted killings using a drone. CIA agents based in Djibouti launched the drone’s two Hellfire missiles at a vehicle traveling in rural Yemen, killing six. Several weeks later the Los Angeles Times reported details, including the fact that while the U.S. Air Force controlled the…

Read more

The Olympic Truce: Tradition or International Law?

October 20, 2022

Ekécheiria ("laying down of arms") was a noble tradition of antiquity, by which Greek city-states were to observe a sacred truce during the Olympics. This truce, born of a treaty between the polis of Elis, Pisa and Sparta, extended from one week before the start to one week after the end of the classical Olympic Games, to allow…

Read more