Until silence
Children and babies—whether born or unborn—suffer immensely in any armed conflict. Mental trauma from witnessing human wasting, which no person should really be exposed to anymore. Physical injuries...
View Article1996 ICJ advisory opinion on nuclear weapons: reflections
The Asahi Shimbun (Japan) is publishing a set of four articles on the Advisory Opinion on the legality of nuclear weapon use in armed conflict issued by the International Court of Justice in 1996....
View ArticleThe banalisation of tear gas
I am not the only person who is concerned by the banalisation of tear gas as a riot control agent. Over the past few years, the intensity with which such agents have been used has increased markedly,...
View ArticleÜzümcü: “After Syria I do not see any country able to use chemical weapons...
The last day of October, a sunny Friday in The Hague, I met with Ambassador Ahmet Üzümcü to reflect on the previous year and a half, during which the civil war in Syria suddenly thrust the...
View ArticleThe Geneva Protocol at 90, Part 1: Discovery of the dual-use dilemma
Today, 17 June, the Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare celebrates its 90th anniversary. Short as the...
View ArticleInnocence Slaughtered: Introduction
Innocence Slaughtered will be published in December 2015 In November 2005 In Flanders Fields Museum organised and hosted an international conference in Ypres, entitled 1915: Innocence Slaughtered. The...
View ArticleThe Meaning of ‘Emergency Assistance’
Origins and negotiation of Article VII of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention A new research report Article VII of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) belongs to the more...
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Impunity through knowledge management: The legacy of South Africa’s CBW...
Book review: Brian Rappert and Chandré Gould, The Dis-Eases of Secrecy: Tracing History, Memory & Justice (Jacana Media: Johannesburg, 2017), 261p. It took me almost a year to write this book...
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From irritant to tear-gas: the early story of why a toxic agent became...
With the recent international attention to riot control agents (RCA) people have raised the question how their use against protesting civilians can be legal when the toxic agents are internationally...
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Before the 1925 Geneva Protocol: First (mis)steps to constraining chemical...
17 June is the anniversary of the signing in 1925 of the Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, more...
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