The Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission (EECC) is one of a pair of commissions established by the Peace Agreement of 12 December 2000 that ended a costly war between Ethiopia and Eritrea that had begun in May 1998. That war, which was sparked by disputes over the countries' common border, caused much damage and many thousands of casualties on each side. It also proved terribly expensive, as each party spent large amounts of money and incurred large debts to acquire modern weapons of war and the related munitions. Given the causes and the consequences of the war, it was, perhaps, not surprising that the Peace Agreement created a boundary commission to determine for the parties a common boundary that they would be obliged to accept, and a claims commission to resolve the claims of each party against the other for any acts arising out of the war that injured that party, including injury to its nationals, and that were in violation of international law.

However understandable in the context of the war, the creation of an international commission charged with determining which actions of the parties to a war violated the applicable international law is a rare event. While we have seen very recently the establishment of international criminal tribunals for the punishment of war crimes by individuals, we have not seen the creation of any other international tribunal that has the task of deciding the legal responsibility of a state for violations of the laws of war.

This article analyses jus ad bellum questions arising from the 2006 war in Lebanon between Israel and Hizbollah. In particular, it examines Israel's claim to self-defence. Part 1 describes the scene of events and the actors. Part 2 explores whether the events of 12 July qualify, in themselves, as an armed attack. Part 3 concerns Hizbollah's and Lebanon's international responsibility for the attack. Part 4 examines whether Israel's actions complied with the legal requirements for a lawful act of self-defence.

With the passing into law of the War Crimes Act of 1991, the United Kingdom joined common law states such as Canada and Australia in conferring upon its domestic courts jurisdiction to try individuals suspected of having committed war crimes in Europe during the Second World War. Under the 1991 Act, proceedings for murder, manslaughter or culpable homicide may be brought, with the consent of the Attorney-General, against any person who, on 8 March 1990 or later, became a British citizen or resident in the United Kingdom, providing that the offence charged is alleged to have been committed between 1 September 1939 and 4 June 1945 in a place which was, at the material time, part of Germany or under German occupation. The Act further provides that the offence charged must have constituted a violation of the laws and customs of war under international law at the time it was committed. In addition, the Act stipulates that the nationality of the alleged offender at the time the alleged offence was committed is immaterial.

In October 2008, upon the request of the Afghan government, NATO Defence Ministers meeting in Budapest agreed that ‘ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] can act in concert with the Afghans against facilities and facilitators supporting the insurgency, in the context of counternarcotics, subject to the authorization of respective nations’. In explaining the scope of the contemplated actions, NATO officials noted that drug producers and traffickers who aided the ongoing insurgency could now be attacked. NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), US General Bantz Craddock, justified the policy on the ground that the Taliban reaped over $100 million annually from the drug trade. US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates likewise defended the decision as sound strategy.

It soon became clear that other key figures were less enamoured with the new approach, or the subsequent guidance issued to effectuate it. On 5 January 2009, Craddock instructed General Egon Ramms, the German Commander of Allied Joint Force Command Brunssum, which overseas NATO operations in Afghanistan, ‘to attack directly drug producers and facilities throughout Afghanistan’. The threshold for engagement seemed to require little connection to the insurgency. According to SACEUR's guidance, it was ‘no longer necessary to produce intelligence or other evidence that each particular drug trafficker or narcotics facility in Afghanistan meets the criteria of being a military objective’ because the alliance ‘has decided that (drug traffickers and narcotics facilities) are inextricably linked to the Opposing Military Forces, and thus may be attacked’.

The human suffering caused by the political ideology of apartheid in South Africa during the Apartheid era (1948–1994) prompted worldwide condemnation and a variety of diplomatic and legal responses. Amongst these responses was the attempt to have apartheid recognised both as a crime against humanity in the 1973 Apartheid Convention as well as a war crime in Article 85(4) (c) of Additional Protocol I. This article examin'es the origins, nature and current status of the practices of apartheid as a war crime and its possible application to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Probably more has happened in the past five years to the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide than in the previous 50, that is, in the half-century following its adoption by the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948.

Indeed, for the first five decades of its existence, the Convention was largely ignored by lawyers, viewed by most of them — as Georg Schwar-zenberger famously remarked — to be ‘unnecessary when applicable and inapplicable when necessary’. Over the years there had been attempts to apply the ‘g-word’ to a wide range of atrocities and gross violations of human rights, including those of China in Tibet, of Iraq against the Kurds, of the United States in Vietnam as well as towards its African-American and aboriginal populations, of Pakistan in Bangladesh, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and Israel in Lebanon. But in each of these cases, some interpretative flair was required in order to stretch the definition to fit the crimes, and the efforts were not always very convincing. In 1990 scholars Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn wrote that ‘the wording of the Convention is so restrictive that not one of the genocidal killings committed since its adoption is covered by it’.

Unlike 171 other nations, the United States is not a party to Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (hereinafter AP I). AP I complements and expands upon the 1949 Geneva Conventions. It is comprised of supplemental rules governing means and methods of warfare, combatant and prisoner of war status, treatment of detainees, and protections of civilians and civilian objects among other important matters within the law of armed conflict. The decision of the United States not to join AP I has resulted in what one prominent commentator describes as a “Great Schism” between the majority of nations bound by its provision and a “determined minority” who are not.

The nature of contemporary operations in Afghanistan reflect the complexities of their environment, particularly in the field of terrorism and insurgency and the reaction of states in combating those (new) forms of violence, generally referred to as counterterrorism (hereinafter CT) and counterinsurgency (hereinafter COIN).

The article by EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator Gilles de Kerchove and his adviser Christiane Höhn provides an inside view into the EU's practices and views related to counter-terrorism and international law. It explains the EU's criminal justice approach to the fight against terrorism and provides arguments for the effectiveness of this response in practice. The authors set out the tools for regional law enforcement and judicial cooperation the EU has adopted since 9/11, based on the principle of mutual recognition, as well as EU-US cooperation in this area. It also looks at the role of the military in the fight against terrorism. In a second part, the article deals with questions related to the international legal framework for the fight against terrorism, such as the existence of not of an armed conflict in the legal sense against Al Qaeda. It also explains relevant initiatives in the EU-US context, including the EU-US legal advisers' dialogue, the EU framework to support the closure of Guantánamo and the EU input to the implementing provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act.

‘Sentencing is an art and not a science’. This statement of Lord Lane expresses, with all due respect, what sentencing should not be. Although it cannot be denied that the process of determining a sentence is far from being a mathematical exercise, the result of which can be verified or falsified by reference to some unquestionable law of nature, both the legislator and the judiciary must strive for the development of a law of sentencing which is based on a comprehensive set of statutory provisions. The very term ‘law of sentencing’ indicates that the meting out of a sentence is more than the exercise of a skill that only judges are vested with. The use of the term ‘art’, conversely, to describe sentencing gives the impression that the act of sentencing is beyond objective understanding and control. When we speak of art, we acknowledge that while views on the outcome can be manifold, objective criteria for a ‘correct’ assessment are few: there's no accounting for taste. This is unacceptable when looking at the significance of the law of sentencing for the pursuit of various sentencing purposes. To base the determination of the sentence on legal grounds enhances the review possibilities with regard to sentencing judgments. This contributes to an even sentencing practice, which in turn leads to just and comprehensible sentencing judgments. Such a practice is necessary in order to achieve public acceptance of the criminal justice system in general and of sentencing verdicts in particular. Such acceptance is imperative for the achievement of several sentencing purposes, especially that of affirmative (or positive) general prevention.

From time immemorial, human beings have communicated using signs of one kind or another, among them gestures and graphic images. Knowledge of these different forms of communication gradually spread, and they became part of the common heritage of peoples and of humanity as a whole. The respect inspired by signs and symbols stems from the fact that they perform vital functions, such as channeling knowledge, helping survival and protecting individuals and their communities.

The International Criminal Courts Round-Up reports on the most interesting judgements and decisions rendered by international(ized) criminal courts and tribunals during the reporting period. In addition, important developments within the various organs of the courts are highlighted, such as the appointment of new judges and significant amendments to the procedural rules of the courts. The Round-Up presently covers issues concerning the International Criminal Court, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

The modern Law of International Armed Conflict is principally framed upon a linear notion of warfare. It classically anticipates massed armies engaging one another upon the battlefield where victory is achieved by way of decisive military defeat of one side by the other. The targeting philosophy underpinning this paradigm is that civilians are to be spared to the greatest extent possible during the course of the conflict. Concomitantly, military force is to be applied in a surgical and economic manner mainly against the sovereign forces of the enemy as well as defined ‘military objectives’, with the law being relatively comprehensive as to the character of each of these categories. Under the prevailing philosophy, the law nonetheless acknowledges that where civilians vitiate their protected status and elect to participate directly in hostilities, then they might also be targeted. The paucity of legal prescription in this area strongly suggests, however, that this is regarded as a somewhat exceptional phenomenon.

The adoption of the Statute of the International Criminal Court in July 1998 in Rome was the culmination of years of effort by the international community. Under Article 126, the Statute will enter into force once it is ratified by 60 states. As many states will have to enact national legislation or even change their constitutions before ratification to comply with the obligations of the Statute, the required number of ratifications will probably not be reached in the short term.

Besides, a number of tasks still remain to be undertaken by states, as indicated in the Statute itself, namely, drafting of a document called ‘Elements of Crimes’ (EOC), drafting of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence (RPE) and reaching agreement on the definition of the crime of aggression. Therefore, the UN General Assembly has mandated a Preparatory Commission (PrepCom) to prepare draft texts of the RPE and EOC and proposals for a provision on aggression, including its definition, elements and the conditions under which the International Criminal Court (ICC) shall exercise its jurisdiction with respect to this crime. The drafts of the EOC and RPE must be finalized by 30 June 2000, when they should be formally adopted. The definition of aggression does not have to be agreed on until the first review conference seven years after the entry into force of the Statute. In addition to these tasks, which this article will describe in greater detail, the PrepCom will work on a relationship agreement between the Court and the United Nations, basic principles governing a headquarters agreement and financial regulations and rules.

Responses to the recent extension of the list of prohibited weapons at the Review Conference of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in Kampala, Uganda have been rather mixed. Some have hailed the amendments to Article 8 of the Rome Statute as a milestone development. Others speak of a blatant manifestation of the Rome Statute's inability to deal with prohibited weapons in a meaningful and up-to-date manner. Certainly, the list of prohibited weapons has been extended in Kampala. But as constructed, does it adequately capture the realities of contemporary armed conflicts? In the pursuance of this question, in a first step, this contribution focuses on what actually happened in Kampala and why it had not already happened in Rome in 1998. In a second step, some light will be shed on what did not happen in Kampala. As is well known, initial proposals for the extension of the list of prohibited weapons had been far more extensive than the list that was ultimately adopted. Thirdly, in a final step this Comment concludes with an assessment of whether the Rome Statute's list of prohibited weapons in its amended form now better corresponds to the realities of contemporary armed conflicts.

An examination of the growing literature on the topic of the geography of armed conflict suggests that the differences of opinion, between and among academics, policymakers and military lawyers, for example, are nearly intractable. Statements about the propriety of a certain target under the law of armed conflict are often met by pronouncements regarding the role of jus ad bellum in cabining the use of force in the territory of another state or the restrictive parameters of the international human rights/law enforcement regime for addressing individuals who pose a threat or danger to others. Indeed, one might easily conclude that the participants in these debates are simply operating in entirely separate analytical paradigms, leading to interesting and challenging intellectual discussions but not to productive conversations that advance the analysis and move beyond the debate to effective potential resolution of a complicated and multi-layered issue. However, unlike pornography or terrorism, where notwithstanding a myriad of different definitions, “you know it when you see it”, little agreement exists even on whether there is a specific, definable geography of armed conflict at all. To help move beyond this impasse, this article explores the presumptions underlying the ongoing debates regarding the geography of armed conflict, in an effort to untangle the debates and provide new opportunities and venues for discussion—and thus to help advance the development of the law of armed conflict and other relevant bodies of law. These presumptions appear in particular in four dichotomies that inherently help drive the debates but are brushed aside or not taken into consideration: law versus policy; authority versus obligation; territory versus threat; and submission of the collective enemy versus elimination of an individual threat. For each or any of these dichotomies, the lens through which one views the contrasting positions will then have a significant—if not determinative—effect on considerations and conclusions regarding questions of geography and the battlefield. As a result, recognizing these dichotomies and understanding how they impact the current discourse is critical to any effective conversation, whether in the academic or policy arenas.

Since the breakthrough adoption in 1977 of Protocols I and II Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, the major issue and biggest challenge facing international humanitarian law (IHL) has been its implementation. The two Additional Protocols addressed many, though not all, of the lacunae left in IHL after the adoption of the Geneva Conventions in 1949. As one commentator has noted: ‘There is, however, aparticularly acute contrast between humanitarian law's highly developed rules, many of which enjoy nearly universal acceptance, and the repeated violations of those rules in conflicts around the world.’

The aim of this article is to discuss the three defences raised by Erich Priebke for his participation in the killing of 335 civilians at the Ardeatine Caves which took place on 24 March 1944, and for which Priebke was tried by the Italian Military Tribunal which rendered its second judgement on 22 July 1997. The defences were: (1) the characterisation of the shootings at the Ardeatine Caves as lawful belligerent reprisals, (2) the defence of superior orders, and (3) duress.

Reports of cyber operations have increased so dramatically in recent years that they have become commonplace. The reality that most attacks to date have resulted in relatively benign consequences—inconvenience and offence through defacement of government websites and/or temporary suspension of access—only serves to heighten awareness of the damage that could result from much more serious attacks on networks controlling, for example, vital public transport and emergency infrastructure, the financial system and sensitive communications networks. The threat of apocalyptic consequences has galvanized States into proactive cyber defence measures—spawning an entirely new category of bureaucracy that until recently might readily have been cynically dismissed as manipulative fear-mongering to justify yet more human and financial resources allocated to the public sector.

That governments should proactively mitigate emergent and potentially catastrophic risks is an a priori notion. Citizens of a State whose government did not take cyber defence seriously would be entitled to feel aggrieved—particularly in the aftermath of a serious cyber attack where the lack of proaction on the part of central authorities was exposed. In contrast, expectations should be significantly lower for any proactive clarification of the applicable international law. The making of new, or even the clarification of the content of existing, international law has tended to be more reactive—requiring a major catalyst to expose the need for either clarification or regulation. It has been rare in the history of international law for new development to pre-empt subsequent catastrophe.

I took office seven years ago as the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Over those years, I have seen remarkable developments, the creation of a global judicial institution from scratch, the development of our operations in all regions of the world, mainly in conflict areas, the setting up of key jurisprudence on modes of liability, complementarity, criminal procedure as well as on victims' participation before the Court. Today I would like to focus on how the work of this Court can contribute to the prevention of massive crimes. Crimes we thought, over and over, would never happen again, only to see them occur, again and again, before our eyes: genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. How can we maximize the preventive impact of our work? How can we ensure that the crimes committed in Georgia during the summer of 2008, in Guinea in the fall of 2009 are not repeated? How can we stop current crimes in Darfur? How can we prevent a new cycle of violence during the next elections in Kenya scheduled for 2012? How can we support Colombia's efforts to end half a century of violence?