Comment archive

Friday, 31 Jan 2025
Migrant deaths in the name of law

Image byJim BlackfromPixabay In international political sociology, a variety of scholars following Agamben and the so-called state of exception emphasize the routes of violence against migrants in the light of their privation of rights or “suspended law”. While acknowledging that law creates at times violent conditions, this scholarship tends to ...

Monday, 21 Mar 2022
The Taliban, International Law and the Rest of the World

The population of Afghanistan is facing a humanitarian catastrophe. Twenty-three million Afghans, more than half of the population, are starving. The UN warns of a risk that a million Afghan children will die. In this situation, there is no way of avoiding cooperation with those in control of the country, namely ...

Saturday, 5 Mar 2022
Forced Displacement from Ukraine: Notes on Humanitarian Protection and Durable Solutions

The Russian invasion of Ukraine February 24 2022 marks the start of a new displacement crisis. In a statement on February 24, Filippo Grandi, the High Commissioner for Refugees, emphasized that ‘The humanitarian consequences on civilian populations will be devastating. There are no winners in war, but countless lives will ...

Wednesday, 2 Mar 2022
Russia Has Violated the Fundamental Rules of International Law. What Are the Consequences?

Vladimir Putin’s speech on 24 February was not only a formal announcement of his invasion of Ukraine, but also a defence of this use of force under international law. The fact that Russia is relying on international law is no surprise – Russia has always done so. The question is ...

Thursday, 24 Feb 2022
How Did Europe Get into This Predicament? We Must Look in Our Own Backyard

It’s easy to condemn the opposing party in a polarized situation. But it’s more difficult to exercise self-criticism. It’s easy to condemn the opposing party in a polarized situation. Particularly when there are good reasons for such condemnation, as in the current situation. It’s easy to state that Russia’s lust ...

Friday, 17 Dec 2021
Disharmony in Harmonized EU Rules

In 2019, the European Union (EU) passed regulations for the aviation safety of civilian drones. They are aimed to foster innovation and ensure the safe integration of drones, of all sizes, into European airspace. This move was made to also harmonize drone rules throughout the EU as the previous framework ...

Thursday, 2 Dec 2021
22 July 2011: Contested Closures

As part of PRIO’s contribution to the 10 year commemoration of 22 of July, the author challenges perceptions of justice after mass atrocity that equates justice with law and criminal justice with closure. After mass violence, “the promised exercise of legal justice — of justice by trial and law — ...

Wednesday, 24 Nov 2021
European Union-Belarus Border Crisis: Why the narrative of “hybrid warfare” is dangerous

The 2021 EU-Belarus border crisis was preceded by a rapid deterioration of the already strained European Union (EU)-Belarus relations, in most part due to the Ryanair 4978 incident and the concomitant wide-ranging sanctions imposed by the EU on the authoritarian government of the Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has often been referred by the media ...

Monday, 6 Sep 2021
Artificial Intelligence, Warfare, and Bias

When you think about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and war, you might find yourself thinking about killer robots, like those we have seen in movies such as The Terminator. In reality, AI and warfare looks quite different from these popularized images, and today we see many countries around the world exploring ...

Friday, 26 Mar 2021
Why Digital Vaccine Passports are a Bad Idea: the Norwegian Perspective

Expanding the use of Covid-19 digital vaccine passports to domestic purposes would in practice represent a return to the checkpoint permit (in Norwegian ‘passerseddel’, in German “Passierschein”), a form of internal passport. This type of document is associated with authoritarian regimes and with war and conflict, last used in Norway ...

Tuesday, 23 Feb 2021
Tech-Based States of Emergency: some key takeaways

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered the acceleration of pre-existing technological trends. As states introduce new rules and technological solutions to fight the pandemic, it can be tempting to view these technological applications as neutral scientific decisions. However, we must critically examine these decisions because times of crisis set standards which ...