The EU has added airlines to its greenhouse gas reduction scheme, but the United States and the aviation industry say this violates international law.

This module features teaching notes by former CFR senior fellow Lee Feinstein, the author of Darfur and Beyond, along with other resources to supplement the text. In the report, Feinstein argues that the new UN secretary-general should take the General Assembly's endorsement of responsibility to protect as a mandate and outlines steps the United States and others must follow to bolster UN action. 

The United States needs the ICC to help restore its global credibility, discipline its own decision-making, and strengthen judicial intervention against atrocity crimes.

The White House is pressing for Senate ratification of the Law of the Sea treaty. Some worry it will endanger national security and harm U.S. industry.

The U.S. State Department’s legal adviser says Washington remains concerned about the prosecutorial reach of the ICC but wants to help it pursue some war criminals.

James Jay Carafano of the Heritage Foundation and Gabor Rona of Human Rights First debate the merits of shutting down the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.

Mona Yacoubian, a former intelligence analyst for the State Department, says the special UN tribunal to investigate the assassination in 2005 of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri is linked to the politics of Lebanon and Syria, with the Syrians trying to sow enough chaos to prevent the tribunal from ever getting underway.

Some analysts want U.S. forces to raid suspected terrorist camps in Syria, but legal experts say such raids might not square with international law.

At the third annual Arthur C. Helton Memorial Lecture, Jan Egeland, Special Adviser to the Secretary-General, discusses his work at the United Nations handling the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

CFR.org’s latest Crisis Guide examines the tragedy in Sudan’s Darfur region. Introduced through a compelling multimedia essay comprised of original and some never-before-seen footage from seven of the world’s leading photojournalists, Crisis Guide: Darfur depicts the human, political, military, and historical realities in the region, and provides links to deeper resources from the Council’s think tank and other organizations around the world.

The release of fifteen British military personnel mitigates one source of tension with Tehran, but questions remain about the chances for nuclear compromise.

The standoff between Britain and Iran may affect other issues in the region, from nuclear negotiations to the security conference on Iraq.

Number 21 in Amnesty International’s case sheets on the individual detainees at Guantanomo Bay, Cuba. This case concerns Sudanese national Adel Hamad who was taken at gunpoint from his home in Peshawar, Pakistan on 18 July 2002. Pakistani agents, led by a US agent, took him to a Pakistani prison where he was held for six and a half months before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay via Afghanistan.

Report from the Nieman Foundation of Harvard University that details the efforts by the Los Angeles Times to conduct a parallel investigation to the one being undertaken by the Army's Criminal Investigation Command (CID) into how a small U.S. Special Forces detachment in Afghanistan could be tied to two detainee deaths and two apparent cover-ups in less than two weeks. He says that the cases raise questions about the relatively low number of successful military prosecutions in criminal homicide and prisoner abuse cases and about whether the military is capable of policing itself in times of war.

David B. Rivkin, a legal expert and author, and Karen J. Greenberg, executive director of NYU’s Center on Law and Security, debate the appropriate venue for prosecuting “enemy combatants.”