Explainer
What Is Command Responsibility?
Command responsibility can make military commanders and other superiors criminally liable for crimes by subordinates when specific legal conditions are met.
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Topic: International criminal law
Explainer
What Is Universal Jurisdiction?
Universal jurisdiction allows national courts, under certain legal frameworks, to prosecute some grave international crimes even without the usual territorial or nationality link.
Explainer
What Is an Indiscriminate Attack?
International humanitarian law prohibits attacks that are not directed at a specific military objective or whose effects cannot be limited as the law requires.
Explainer
What Counts as an Armed Conflict? IAC vs NIAC Explained
When violence becomes an armed conflict under international humanitarian law—and why the classification changes which legal rules apply.
Explainer
What Is a War Crime? Meaning, Examples and Legal Tests
War crimes are serious violations of international humanitarian law that give rise to individual criminal responsibility. Here is what that means in practice.
Explainer
What Are Crimes Against Humanity?
How crimes against humanity differ from war crimes and genocide, and what “widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population” means.
Explainer
What Is Genocide Under International Law?
Genocide has a specific legal definition centred on intent to destroy a protected group. This explainer separates that test from the wider political use…
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What Is Military Occupation Under International Law?
Occupation is a factual legal category based on unconsented effective control by hostile foreign forces—not a synonym for invasion, annexation or sovereignty.
Explainer
Occupation vs Annexation: What Is the Difference?
Occupation concerns effective control of territory during conflict; annexation is a claim to incorporate territory into a State. The concepts are related but not…
Explainer
What Is Collective Punishment in War?
Collective penalties punish people for acts they did not personally commit. International humanitarian law prohibits collective punishment of protected persons.