The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) was a people's court consisting of intellectuals, human rights campaigners and non-governmental organizations, and was active from 2003 to 2005. Set up following the 2003 invasion of Iraq it sprung from the anti-war movement and is modelled on the Russell Tribunal of the American movement against the Vietnam War. [1] [2] [3] [4]
The most complete collection of the proceedings of the Tribunal has been collected in Sökmen, M. G. Roy, A., Falk, R. (eds.) 2008. World Tribunal on Iraq: Making the Case Against War. Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press.
See also: Borowiak, C. 2008. 'The World Tribunal on Iraq: Citizens’ Tribunals and the Struggle for Accountability'. New Political Science, 30:161-186. Cubukcu, A. 2011. ‘On Cosmopolitan Occupations. The Case of the World Tribunal on Iraq’, Interventions. International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 13:422-442.
J. Gerson and D. Snauwaert. 2021. Reclaimative Post-Conflict Justice: Democratizing Justice in the World Tribunal on Iraq. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
The Bush Doctrine refers to multiple interrelated foreign policy principles of the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush. These principles include unilateralism, preemptive war, and regime change.
The events surrounding the 2003 invasion of Iraq have led to numerous expressions of opinion with respect to the war. This article contains links to several topics relating to views on the invasion, and the subsequent occupation of Iraq.
Significant opposition to the Iraq War occurred worldwide, both before and during the initial 2003 invasion of Iraq by a United States-led coalition, and throughout the subsequent occupation. People and groups opposing the war include the governments of many nations which did not take part in the invasion, and significant sections of the populace in those that did.
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was a neoconservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. that focused on United States foreign policy. It was established as a non-profit educational organization in 1997, and founded by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. PNAC's stated goal was "to promote American global leadership." The organization stated that "American leadership is good both for America and for the world," and sought to build support for "a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity."
The 1958 Lebanon crisis was a political crisis in Lebanon caused by political and religious tensions in the country that included a United States military intervention. The intervention lasted for around three months until President Camille Chamoun, who had requested the assistance, completed his term as president of Lebanon. American and Lebanese government forces successfully occupied the Port of Beirut and Beirut International Airport. With the crisis over, the United States withdrew.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 678, adopted on 29 November 1990, after reaffirming resolutions 660, 661, 662, 664, 665, 666, 667, 669, 670, 674 and 677, the council noted that despite all the United Nations efforts, Iraq continued to defy the Security Council.
The Russell Tribunal, also known as the International War Crimes Tribunal, Russell–Sartre Tribunal, or Stockholm Tribunal, was a private People's Tribunal organised in 1966 by Bertrand Russell, British philosopher and Nobel Prize winner, and hosted by French philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre, along with Lelio Basso, Simone de Beauvoir, Vladimir Dedijer, Ralph Schoenman, Isaac Deutscher and several others. The tribunal investigated and evaluated American foreign policy and military intervention in Vietnam.
The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was an operation conducted by Iraq on 2 August 1990, whereby it invaded the neighboring State of Kuwait, consequently resulting in a seven-month-long Iraqi military occupation of the country. The invasion and Iraq's subsequent refusal to withdraw from Kuwait by a deadline mandated by the United Nations led to a direct military intervention by a United Nations-authorized coalition of forces led by the United States. These events came to be known as the first Gulf War, eventually resulting in the forced expulsion of Iraqi troops from Kuwait and the Iraqis setting 600 Kuwaiti oil wells on fire during their retreat.
The Iraqi Civil War was a civil war fought mainly between the Iraqi government along with American-led coalition forces and various sectarian armed groups, mainly Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Mahdi Army, from 2006 to 2008. In February 2006, sectarian tensions in Iraq escalated into a full-scale civil war after the bombing of the Al-Askari Shrine by the Sunni organization Al-Qaeda in Iraq. This set off a wave of reprisals by Shia militants on Sunni civilians, followed by Sunni counterattacks on Shia civilians.
The rationale for the Iraq War, both the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent hostilities, was controversial because the George W. Bush administration began actively pressing for military intervention in Iraq in late 2001. The primary rationalization for the Iraq War was articulated by a joint resolution of the United States Congress known as the Iraq Resolution.
Command responsibility, also called superior responsibility, the Yamashita standard, or the Medina standard, is the legal doctrine of hierarchical accountability for war crimes. At its core, the doctrine stipulates that a superior, defined as a military commander or a civilian leader, can be held responsible for war crimes committed by subordinates. The command responsibility doctrine has been leveraged in various international tribunals to hold military and civilian leaders accountable for war crimes.
The Syrian occupation of Lebanon began in 1976, during the Lebanese Civil War, and ended in 30 April 2005 after the Cedar Revolution and several demonstrations in which most of the Lebanese people participated, and the withdrawal agreement was signed by President Bashar al-Assad and Saad Hariri, son of Rafic Hariri. All of these changes were a result the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri.
The 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Poland and a coalition of other countries was a violation of the United Nations Charter, the bedrock of international relations in the post-World War II world. The then United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated in September 2004 that: "I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter. From our point of view and the UN Charter point of view, it [the war] was illegal".
French–Iraq relations refers to the relations between France and Iraq. France played a major role in Iraqi secession from the Ottoman Empire and eventual freedom from British colonial status. The Franco-Iraqi relationship is often defined by conflict and peace, with France supporting Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War, supporting intervention in Iraq in Operation Desert Storm, and opposing the 2003 US Invasion of Iraq. As of 2004, Iraq maintains an embassy in Paris and France maintains an embassy in Baghdad.
Iraqi nationalism is a form of nationalism which asserts the belief that Iraqis are a nation and promotes the cultural unity of Iraqis of different ethnoreligious groups such as Mesopotamian Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Yazidis, Mandeans, Shabaks, Yarsans, and others. Iraqi nationalism involves the recognition of an Iraqi identity stemming from ancient Mesopotamia including its civilizations and empires of Sumer, Akkad, Babylon and Assyria. Iraqi nationalism influenced Iraq's movement for independence from Ottoman and British occupation. Iraqi nationalism was an important factor in the 1920 Revolution against British occupation, and the 1958 Revolution against the British-installed Hashemite monarchy.
Khaled El-Khweldi El-Hamedi is a Libyan humanitarian peace activist and the founder of the Tripoli-based International Organisation for Peace, Care and Relief (IOPCR). He also has a degree in Computer Engineering.
Mohammad Gholi Majd, also known as M.G. Madjd, is an author whose primary field of work is modern history of Iran.
Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious or national group. The term was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin. It is defined in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) of 1948 as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the groups conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
Jennifer Trahan is an American legal scholar and academic. She is a Clinical Professor at New York University's Center for Global Affairs and directs their Concentration in International Law and Human Rights.
The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine violated international law. The invasion has also been called a crime of aggression under international criminal law and under some countries' domestic criminal codes – including those of Ukraine and Russia – although procedural obstacles exist to prosecutions under these laws. This article discusses the international and domestic legal provisions Russia is said to have violated, as well as Russia's legal justifications for the invasion and the responses of legal experts to those justifications. The legality of the Russian invasion per se is a distinct subject from whether individual political officials or combatants have engaged in war crimes or crimes against humanity.