international humanitarian law — Online Journal — Columbia Undergraduate Law Review

The Russian Invasion of Ukraine: Examining the Legality of US Interference

The Russian invasion of Ukraine initiated this past February was the culmination of significant regional tension that had been brewing for several years. Ukraine regained independence when the Soviet Union fell in 1991. A decade later, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) began expanding further into Eastern Europe; in 2004, former Soviet states Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia became members of the organization. NATO also adopted an “Open Door Policy,” meaning that any European State that wishes to embody the principles of NATO and its treaty can apply to join the organization. These developments implied that Ukraine, as a post-Soviet European state, could also one day join NATO—such a possibility was first put on paper at the 2008 Bucharest Summit. At this summit, the allies reaffirmed Ukraine’s right to determine its own security dispositions, a right that Russia had also accepted through treaties such as the NATO-Russia Founding Act in 1997. [1] The recent Russian invasion of Ukraine thus raises the question of whether the United States is legally allowed to interfere in the event that Russia takes over Ukraine; this question arises due to the conflict behind US military intervention. [2] Due to the violation of the law of aggression during armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine and the principle of collective self-defense, the United States is legally able to intervene in the conflict of the Russian occupation of Ukraine.

Reconciling Cyberwarfare and Big Data Rights: Do International Human Rights and Humanitarian Laws apply?

As cyberattacks and data leaks increasingly become a part of daily news, their impact is more noticeable across every field of society. More importantly, cyberattacks with significant political and civil implications have begun affecting electoral systems—a serious threat to democracy and international human rights. Indeed, the increasing number of cyberattacks has direct implications for the rights laid out in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR). For instance, the “Ghostwriter” attack of 2017 targeted elections of several European Union (EU) member states to foment distrust in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Following this series of attacks, the EU formally assigned responsibility to Russian operators in September 2021, implying undue external interference on political systems had occurred. Also in September 2021, a suspected internal cyberattack to Hungarian polling systems caused nationwide election interference, hindering free participation in public affairs, freedom of expression, and voting rights. [1] Thus, as data analytics can facilitate interference with civil and political liberties as well as enable armed attacks and military strategies, data and cybersecurity rights—the rights determining how to collect, process, use, or disclose personal and private data information—should be seen as a logical extension of human rights.

The Self-Defense Principle Re-examined: The Israel-Palestine Conflict in International Law

May 2021 clashes in the Gaza Strip between the Israeli Defense Forces and Hamas, Gaza’s de facto government, have caused the Israel-Palestine conflict to capture international attention yet again. The conflict can be dated back to the early 20th century, when the British Empire first took control over what was then known as the Palestinian mandate after the end of the First World War. Since then, the region has seen bitter disputes between the Arab majority and the Jewish minority over the ownership of the land. The conflict intensified after the United Nations (UN) proposal to partition the territory in 1948, which culminated in the eviction of more than 700,000 Palestinians in an event known as the Nakba, as well as increasing Israeli infringement upon the delineated Palestinian lands. Since 2005, Israel has committed to a process known as “distanciation,” in which Israel reduced its direct military occupation of Palestinian territories, leaving the strip of Gaza to stand alone.