The US government has recently renounced the term 'Global War on Terror', pointing out that it does not describeaccurately the nature of the terrorist threat. While the change of terminology is a welcomed development, it should be noted that 'War on Terror' was not merely a political slogan. The war paradigm was accompanied with a number of legal arguments and claims which have a direct link to the perplexing policy outcomes of the Bush era. One of the trickiest questions before the Obama administration is related to the concept of an armed conflict.

The International Law Commission’s work on the protection of the environment in relation to armed conflicts has produced 28 draft principles with commentaries, which the Commission adopted in first reading in 2019. The article gives an overview of what the Commission has accomplished so far, the choices it has made and some of the challenges that have been encountered. The article discusses four general aspects that characterize the topic: the temporal approach, the interplay of several areas of international law, the reliance on the enhanced understanding of the environmental impacts of armed conflicts and the normative nature of the draft principles.

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Justice Rapid Response (JRR) is an intergovernmental mechanism that is designed to support and complement the international community’s efforts to ensure accountability for the most serious international crimes. It has grown out of the recognition, some ten years ago, that for all the talk of ending impunity for mass atrocities, the tools to come anywhere near this worthy goal were largely insuffi cient, and this in spite of the many political successes of the “project of international criminal justice.”