Conflict Law Centre

International law is best understood as a system of positive law that is embedded within culture. It is not removed from humans or human society nor does it exist in a vacuum separate from the social contexts within which it operates.

On 24 December 2014, the Arms Trade Treaty (“ATT”) entered into force with the object of ‘establish[ing] the highest possible common international standards for regulating or improving the regulation of the international trade in conventional arms’ for the purpose of ‘reducing human suffering’.

Prior to 2014, “foreign fighters” and “terrorists” represented separate categories of individuals that fell under the jurisdiction of different international law regimes, namely international humanitarian law and the international counter-terrorism regime. However, after the landmark UNSC Resolution 2178 (2014) was passed in response to the influx of third-state fighters in support of ISIL and Al-Qaeda…

After over 18 years of war in Afghanistan, the US and the Taliban, the two parties to the conflict i.e. a State and an Insurrectional Movement respectively, concluded the “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan” (“Doha Accord”) with a view to end the war.[1] This article will engage in a two part inquiry. It will…

after growing hostilities between the US and Iran, President Trump threatened to attack Iran’s cultural sites. He tweeted that the US had identified 52 Iranian sites some of which were “at a very high level and important to Iran and the Iranian culture” warning that they would be hit if Tehran conducted any revenge attacks. The Pentagon has since ruled out the targeting of Iranian cultural sites with the Defense Secretary acknowledging that this would be a war crime.[1] This article will analyse the protection provided to cultural sites during an armed conflict in IHL and any possible repercussions under the law of state responsibility as well as international criminal law.

Countries are already utilizing artificial intelligence based weapons in armed conflicts and this use has changed the scope of warfare from being a solely human endeavor. For instance, the United States has operated robots named SWORDS (Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Direct Action System) in Afghanistan used to detect and disable improvised explosive devices. However, these…

After the killing of Qasem Soleimani, chief commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force, by US forces on January 3, 2020 in Iraq, the Iraqi Council of Representatives (“CoR”) passed a Resolution calling on the government to seek the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.

Iranian-US relations have been turbulent recently to say the least, and while we are yet to see whether there will be military consequences to these frayed ties, the economic effects on Iran are already being felt in the form of crippling sanctions. In July 2019, President Trump tweeted that Iran had “made a very big mistake” in shooting down a US military surveillance drone that had entered Iranian airspace on 20th June 2019.

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound ?” Following the recent armed stand-off between two nuclear-armed states with a combined population of 1.5 billion people earlier this year, the felling of 15 pine trees might seem the least of anyone’s problems. Not…

The US Presidential elections will be held in November 2020, but with party primaries around the corner, the Democrats are really feeling the heat. One candidate who stands out for her progressive and liberal approach is Senator Elizabeth Warren. She is currently making headlines for her special Green deal which proposes an investment of $2 trillion to promote clean, green and renewable technology for the US military.