26 January 2013

Responsibility for peace, and responsibility in war: on the military operation in Mali

It has been almost two weeks since France began a military intervention to help the Malian army fight Islamist groups controlling the north of the country. The operation — code-named ‘Serval’ — was sparked by the ‘serious deterioration of the situation’ in Mali, after successful offensives by extremists who managed to take over the city of Konna, ‘a frontier town that had been the de facto line of government control’. The action of France, coming about after months of lengthy negotiations attempting to resolve the crisis in Mali, has been overall welcomed by the international community, and reportedly relatively successful in pushing back Islamists. In terms of international law, the military operation raises a number of issues, two aspects of which this blog post will address: the responsibility for maintaining peace, and the responsibility during the conduct of war. (more…)

8 July 2011

Judgments against the United Kingdom concerning Iraq

In its Grand Chamber judgment in Al-Skeini and Others v. the United Kingdom, the Court decided that the United Kingdom was required to investigate the deaths of six civilians killed in Iraq in 2003 in incidents involving British soldiers. The Court also delivered its Grand Chamber judgment in Al-Jedda v. the United Kingdom, in which it opined that the three-year internment of an Iraqi civilian by the British forces in Iraq had breached the Convention. In para. 80 of the latter case, dual or multiple attribution of the same conduct to the UN and a State was held to be possible. More information about these cases can be found in a blogpost on EJIL: Talk! by Marko Milanovic.

Source: http://www.echr.coe.int