Janina Dill

International Law in Gaza: 
Belligerent Intent & Provisional Measures

What are key implications of the current war in Gaza for international law? The coincidence of Israel’s compliance claim with catastrophic civilian suffering highlights the need for international law to discharge its functions in real time, distinguishing ex ante action-guidance and concurrent third-party evaluation while hostilities are ongoing from longer-term ex post accountability. We identify two doctrinal questions that underpin polarized evaluation of Israel’s conduct and that are critical for law’s functionality: first, how to conceptualize belligerent intent, and second, how to evaluate international courts’ early-stage engagement with ongoing conflict. Arguing that attention to the functional differentiation of law’s tasks helps to answer these questions, we (i) clarify the meaning of intent vis-à-vis the conduct of hostilities, starvation, and the genocide allegation and (ii) explore the significance of the ICJ’s indication of provisional measures in South Africa v. Israel for guiding third states’ evaluations of the conflict in real time.

Janina Dill is the Dame Louise Richardson Chair in Global Security at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, a Professorial Fellow of Trinity College Oxford, and Co-Director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict (ELAC). Her research concerns international law on the use of force. In 2021, she won a Philip Leverhulme Prize for work on the moral psychology of war. She also works on a multi-year study on cumulative civilian harm in war funded by a joint grant from the UKRI and the National Science Foundation

Date: 22 October 2024
Time: 6.00-7.00 pm CET
The presentation will take place online via Zoom. Please register below. The Zoom link and login data will be sent to those registered ahead of the event.

Registration:
Please mail jessica.oheim@student.uni-tuebingen.de to register or if you have any questions.