Occupation

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Applying International Environmental Law Conventions in Occupied Territory: The Azerbaijan v. Armenia Case under the Bern Convention

May 12, 2023

Introduction  On 18 January 2023, Azerbaijan announced that it had launched against Armenia an inter-state case under the dispute settlement provision in the 1979 Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats (Bern Convention).  Azerbaijan notified the Bern Convention Secretariat of the dispute by letter on 27 March 2023, stating that negotiations would have failed to resolve it and that the dispute had been submitted to arbitration. This is another episode in a fiery exchanges of legal proceedings between the two states, in particular in relation to the contested area of Nagorno-Karabakh. At the time this post is written, there is a pending case brought by Azerbaijan against Armenia before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), a pending case brought by Armenia against Azerbaijan before the same Court,  a number of inter-state proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights, and, most recently, an arbitration initiated by Azerbaijan under the Energy Charter Treaty. Azerbaijan’s Bern Convention initiative has reached mainstream media…

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Will history repeat itself? Anticipating the ICJ advisory opinion on the legal status of Israel’s occupation and its consequences

January 30, 2023

The Request for Advisory Opinion On 30 December 2022 the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution A/RES/77/247, containing the annual indictment of Israeli practices in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. In addition, the resolution contains one novelty, a request addressed to the ICJ to render an Advisory Opinion on the following…

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Occupation of Minds: IHL Response to Russian Education Policies in the Occupied Ukrainian Territories

October 12, 2022

Into the eighth month of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia has rushed to implement its plan to annex and assimilate newly occupied southern-eastern regions of Ukraine via sham referenda and attempted absorption of territories through respective domestic laws. The areas in question include parts of the Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and…

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Who Has Effective Control in Azerbaijan’s Karabakh Region?

July 4, 2022

Following the so-called “44-Day War” between Armenia and Azerbaijan in late 2020, the conflicting parties continue several legal battles before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), alleging various violations of international law. The war saw Azerbaijan liberate a significant part of its territories under Armenia’s three-decade-long occupation,…

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The Rhetoric of ‘Denazification’ of Ukraine from the Perspective of the Law of Occupation

April 26, 2022

From the onset of the illegal (see, e.g., Milanovic, Wilmshurst, Spagnolo, Roscini, Green/Henderson/Ruys) invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 by Russia, Russian officials, and in particular, President Vladimir Putin, have employed the word ‘denazification’ as one of the aims of the invasion (or ‘special military operation’, in the Orwellian language employed by…

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