Raul Castro Indictment under international law: civil aviation rules, U.S. jurisdiction, immunity, state responsibility, and enforcement limits.

The death penalty under international law became harder to defend after Amnesty International’s Death Sentences and Executions 2025 report recorded at least 2,707 executions in 2025, the highest figure Amnesty has reported since 1981, excluding China.

Diplomatic Immunity sits at the point where sovereign equality, peaceful relations, and individual accountability collide. The rule is easy to state but difficult to defend in hard cases: a diplomat may be protected against local prosecution or civil proceedings even when the alleged conduct appears private, harmful, or morally indefensible.

Common Article 3 is the treaty provision that provides minimum humanitarian protection to people caught in a non-international armed conflict. It applies when violence is no longer mere disorder, criminality, riot, or isolated terrorism, but has reached the level of armed conflict involving State forces and organized armed groups, or organized armed groups fighting each other.

State Responsibility explained clearly: attribution, breach, reparation, countermeasures, and how international law holds States accountable.

On 18 March 2026, Colombia’s defence minister, Pedro Sánchez, said Colombia and Ecuador were jointly examining whether Colombian sovereignty had been violated after President Gustavo Petro alleged that Ecuadorian military action had crossed the border and caused deaths on Colombian territory.

The protection of journalists in armed conflict lies at the intersection of civilian protection, military operations, public accountability, and control over wartime information. Journalists document facts that parties to conflict may prefer to conceal, including civilian casualties, detention practices, sieges, forced displacement, attacks on protected objects, and alleged international crimes.

The Minab School Strike has already emerged as one of the most legally significant incidents reported during the 2026 Iran war. On 28 February 2026, during the opening phase of joint United States and Israeli attacks on Iran, the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in Minab was struck during school hours.

The Right to Nationality is one of the basic legal guarantees of contemporary international law because it defines the formal bond between the individual and the State. That bond is not merely symbolic.

The Strait of Hormuz Closure is a legal problem before it is a strategic one. The Strait of Hormuz is not merely a sensitive shipping route. It is a strait used for international navigation, and that legal character places it within a specialized body of rules governing passage, coastal-State powers, and the protection of international maritime traffic.

Cross-Border Data Flows are now a structural feature of economic life, public administration, and social interaction. Data moves across borders when businesses process payroll in foreign cloud environments, when banks clear international payments, when hospitals rely on remote data storage, when social media platforms route user content through distributed server networks, and when law-enforcement authorities seek electronic evidence held abroad.

The Principle of Non-Refoulement is one of the most fundamental safeguards in contemporary public international law because it imposes a clear legal limit on the sovereign power of States to remove individuals from their territory, borders, jurisdiction, or effective control.

Neutrality in International Law refers to the legal status of a state that abstains from participation in an international armed conflict while maintaining defined rights and duties toward the belligerents. It is not simply a political choice but a structured legal regime grounded in treaty law, customary rules, and judicial recognition.

The principle of proportionality in international law operates as one of the most significant constraints on the exercise of power by states, international organizations, and other actors within the international legal system. At its core, it requires that legal measures—whether coercive, regulatory, or military—must not exceed what is justified by a legitimate objective.

Self-Defense in International Law constitutes one of the most important doctrines regulating the lawful use of force between states. The contemporary international legal order is structured around the prohibition of force established in Article 2(4) of the Charter of the United Nations, which requires states to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of other states.

The Principle of Self-Determination of Peoples is one of the foundational norms of contemporary international law. It expresses the idea that people have the right to determine their political status and pursue their economic, social, and cultural development. The principle plays a decisive role in the structure of the modern international system, particularly in the legal processes that shaped decolonization, state formation, and political autonomy.

The principle of territorial integrity occupies a central place in the architecture of modern international law. It protects the territorial unity of states and prohibits external interference aimed at fragmenting, annexing, or otherwise altering recognized borders through coercion.

The principle of sovereign equality of states stands at the core of the contemporary international legal order. It represents one of the fundamental organizing ideas of the system of states and is expressly affirmed in Article 2(1) of the Charter of the United Nations, which declares that the Organization is founded on the sovereign equality of all its members.

The Assassination of Ali Khamenei presents a precise legal question under public international law: can a sitting head of state lawfully be targeted and killed during an armed conflict? The answer depends neither on political judgment nor on the symbolic weight of the office involved.

The USA-Iran War of 2026 represents one of the most significant interstate confrontations of the contemporary era and a direct test of the legal framework governing the use of force. The conflict began on 28 February 2026 with coordinated military strikes conducted by the United States and Israel against targets within Iranian territory. These operations marked the transition from prolonged geopolitical tension to open armed hostilities between sovereign States.