Opinio Juris

Illia Chernohorenko served as Director-General for the Rule of Law Directorate at the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, consulted the President of Ukraine on legal reform, and worked at the Supreme Court, representing it in the ECtHR’s Superior Courts Network. He is currently pursuing a DPhil on repurposing state assets as redress for human rights violations. In recent years, he...

Cristián Correa is the Head of the Reparations Praxis Hub at the Global Survivors Fund (GSF), where he helps systematise and encourage learning from practical experiences of reparation for survivors of conflict related sexual violence. He also provides guidance to GSF work in Colombia, Syria, and Ukraine, where he helped design and implement the Pilot Project on Urgent Interim Reparation...

[Albina Basysta is an Associate Professor of International law at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Educational and Scientific Institute of International Relations. She advises a member of Ukrainian Parliament on human rights and international humanitarian law; co-author of Law 4067 on urgent interim reparation for CRSV survivors in Ukraine, developed in consultations with survivors] …

[Shuichi Furuya is Professor of International Law at Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan; and a former member of the UN Human Rights Committee. He has delivered lectures “Changing Aspects of Reparation for Victims of Armed Conflict” at the Hague Academy of International Law, Winter Session 2026] Reparations are often treated as something that comes after war: after the fighting has ended,...

[Julienne Lusenge is a prominent activist from eastern DRC who has dedicated her work to justice, peace, and gender equality. She co-founded SOFEPADI in 2000 and created the Fonds pour les femmes congolaises in 2007, focusing on women’s empowerment, political leadership, and combating sexual violence. She is widely recognised and earned major international awards and leadership roles, including b…

[Lucía Inés Xiloj Cuin is a human rights and Indigenous peoples’ rights lawyer in Guatemala. She has litigated several cases related to crimes committed during Guatemala’s internal armed conflict, including the case concerning the massacre at the Spanish Embassy and the Mujeres Achi case. She is also a member of the Red Latinoamericana de Litigio Estratégico en Género (RELEG)] This...

[Sirra Ndow is Country Director of ANEKED (The Gambia). ANEKED is a victim/survivor-led organisation advancing transitional justice, reparations, and human rights advocacy through survivor-centred initiatives, and contributes to global narratives on reparative justice from a survivor perspective] Too often, reparations processes focus on compensation, prosecutions, and institutional ref…

[Laura Posada-Orjuela is a Colombian lawyer with an LL.M. from McGill University, specializing in international human rights and transitional justice. She served as legal advisor to a commissioner at the Commission for the Verification of Identity and Kinship of Victims of the Patriotic Union (Comisión para la Constatación de Identidad y Parentesco de Víctimas de la …

[Kostiantyn Davydenko lived in Donetsk and worked in property valuation before the war. He was detained by officers of the FSB in Simferopol and accused of espionage. He remained in captivity from February 11, 2018, until August 24, 2025, after being released through an exchange procedure. After his release, he co-founded the Charitable Foundation “Civilians in Captivity”, and he cont…

[Ana Cutts Dougherty is a Legal Consultant at REDRESS, an NGO based in London and The Hague that seeks justice and reparation for survivors of serious international crimes and human rights violations. Katya Ravinska is a Legal Officer at REDRESS.  Alejandro Rodríguez-Díaz is a Legal Officer at REDRESS.  Julie Bardèche is a Senior Legal Advisor at REDRESS. Lyra Nightingale is...

[Milena Sterio is a Distinguished Professor of Law at Cleveland State University and Managing Director of the International Law & Policy Group.  Bhavani Fonseka is a human rights defender and transitional justice expert from Sri Lanka. Stephen Rapp is a former US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice and former international prosecutor at the Rwanda and Sierra Leone tribunals.] Intr…

[Kevin Bell is a former Judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria (Australia) and Adjunct Professor at Monash University.  Goran Lambertz is a former Judge of the Supreme Court of Sweden and former Chancellor of Justice of Sweden.] Introduction ‘The Court of the Citizens of the World organized by the Cinema for Peace Foundation, sat as an Ecocide Tribunal in Berlin,...

[Stephen Rapp is a former US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice and former international prosecutor at the Rwanda and Sierra Leone tribunals] Introduction by Stephen Rapp ‘The Court of the Citizens of the World organized by the Cinema for Peace Foundation, sat as an Ecocide Tribunal in Berlin, Germany, during 16-19 February 2026, to hear witnesses and receive documentary evidence....

I haven’t written about the “unwilling or unable” test for self-defence against non-state actors in a while, largely because I’ve said all I have to say about why the test is not part of customary international law. (See my many posts here.) But I would be remiss not to note the strangest invocation of the test I’ve ever seen, which...

[Anny Matamoros Pineda is a Doctoral student in public international law at Lund University] One of the central appeals of science fiction lies in its capacity to imagine worlds that move beyond present reality while still remaining consistent with the known laws of the universe. Within this genre, utopian visions serve a deeper function by questioning the inevitability of existing...

[Yaroslav Halieiev is a second-year PhD Candidate at the University of Tartu (Estonia)] The Context: Maymulakhin and Markiv v. Ukraine  In June 2023, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR or Court) issued a landmark decision in the case of Maymulakhin and Markiv v. Ukraine in which the Court addressed the lack of legal protection for same-sex couples under Ukrainian...

[Zahra Jafarbeklou is a researcher in international law based in Iran and an LL.M. candidate at the Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University] Introduction: The Paradox of “Permitted” Isolation The late 2025 snapback mechanism triggered the digital siege stifling Iran’s academic community. On paper, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has issue…

[Gerhard Kemp is professor of criminal law at UWE Bristol and serves on the board of directors and executive committee of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town] The recently adopted “Death Penalty for Terrorists Law” (unofficial translation, here) was met with widespread condemnation by governments (e.g., here, here), civil society and human rights groups (e.g., here), the UN.…

[Harry Mwesigwa is an LLM candidate in human rights and democratisation in Africa at the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, and a research assistant at the Human Rights and Peace Centre, Makerere University] Introduction In March 2025, Uganda deployed its troops to South Sudan at the invitation of the South Sudanese government which requested ‘urgent military support in...

[Dr Xudong Zhang is a lecturer at the School of Law, Shanghai Maritime University] From the South China Sea to the East China Sea, Asia’s waters are witnessing an unprecedented intertwining of fisheries and geopolitics. When Chinese fishing vessels are detained by Japan’s Fisheries Agency in waters off southwest Nagasaki prefecture, when the Korea Coast Guard uses force against Chines…