Foreign Fighters Under International Law And Beyond

This book offers various perspectives, with an international legal focus, on an important and underexplored topic, which has recently gained momentum: the issue of foreign fighters. It provides an overview of challenges, pays considerable attention to the status of foreign fighters, and addresses numerous approaches, both at the supranational and national level, on how to tackle this problem. Outstanding experts in the field – lawyers, historians and political scientists – contributed to the present volume, providing the reader with a multitude of views concerning this multifaceted phenomenon. Particular attention is paid to its implications in light of the armed conflicts currently taking place in Syria and Iraq. Andrea de Guttry is a Full Professor of International Law at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy. Francesca Capone is a Research Fellow in Public International Law at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna. Christophe Paulussen is a Senior Researcher at the T.M.C. Asser Instituut in The Hague, the Netherlands, and a Research Fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague.

This book, a follow-up publication to the 2016 volume Foreign Fighters under International Law and Beyond, zooms in on the responses that the international community and individual States are implementing in response to (prospective and actual) returning foreign fighters (FFs) and their families, focusing on returnees from Syria and Iraq to European countries. As States and international organisations are still ‘learning by doing’, the role of the academic community is to help steer the process by bridging the divide between international standards and their implementation at the national level and between security concerns and human rights law. Furthermore, the academic community can and should assist in identifying ways forward that are both effective, sustainable and international law-compliant. Those are, ultimately, the goals that the present volume seeks to pursue. The observations, recommendations and warnings included in this book will be useful in future debates on (returning) FFs, both in the academic world and in the world of policy makers and practitioners, as well as to the public at large. Francesca Capone is Associate Professor of International Law at the Istituto DIRPOLIS of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa, Italy. Christophe Paulussen is Senior Researcher International Law at the T.M.C. Asser Instituut in The Hague, The Netherlands. Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi is Lecturer in International Law at the Manchester International Law Centre, University of Manchester, School of Law in Manchester, United Kingdom.

Foreign Fighters is the comprehensive study of foreign fighters examines patterns of recruitment using original data sets and detailed diverse case studies, and how recruiters use frames of existential threat to strengthen rebel groups.

The term ‘foreign fighters’ describes nationals of one state who – for whatever variety of reasons and motives – travel abroad to take part in a conflict in another state without the promise of financial reward. The majority of attention has so far been focused on the nationals of Western European states who have gone to fight for the so-called Islamic State in Syria. There exist, however, other examples of contemporary European foreign fighters whose travails, motivations and returns have been largely unnoticed and underappreciated. This books attempts to balance this state of affairs by bringing to the fore some lesser known cases of non-terrorist but foreign fighters related to the conflict in Ukraine, and situating them against the backdrop of the larger mobilization for the war in Syria. This book presents edited versions of the 12 papers presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) ‘Not Only Syria? Foreign Fighters: A Threat to NATO Allies and Their Neighbours’. The workshop was held in Chisinau, Moldova, in May 2016, and brought together researchers and experts in the field to discuss the differences, similarities and parallels between different groups of foreign fighters engaged in the conflicts in Syria and the Ukraine. The papers include contributions from the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Poland among others, and examine cases of foreign fighters from these and other countries. The book will provide an interesting context to researchers who have, up to now, looked only at a single set of such fighters, and will lead to tangible recommendations on how to develop policies to address the threat posed by returnees from any conflict.

The manual seeks to provide guidance on international legal instruments against FTF activities and techniques for digital investigation and evidence collection, especially concerning global financial transactions and social media activity. While it is tailored for judicial training institutes in South-Eastern Europe, it can be utilized in any jurisdiction seeking resources to address the FTF threat.

This edited collection provides a comprehensive, insightful, and detailed study of a vital area of public policy debate as it is currently occurring in countries across the world from India to South Africa and the United Kingdom to Australia. Bringing together academics and experts from a variety of jurisdictions, it reflects upon the impact on human rights of the application of more than a decade of the "War on Terror" as enunciated soon after 9/11. The volume identifies and critically examines the principal and enduring resonances of the concept of the "War on Terror". The examination covers not only the obvious impacts but also the more insidious and enduring changes within domestic laws. The rationale for this collection is therefore not just to plot how the "War on Terror" has operated within the folds of the cloak of liberal democracy, but how they render that cloak ragged, especially in the sight of those sections of society who pay the heaviest price in terms of their human rights. This book engages with the public policy strand of the last decade that has arguably most shaped perceptions of human rights and engendered debates about their worth and meaning. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, practitioners, and students in the fields of human rights law, criminal justice, criminology, politics, and international studies.

Customary International Humanitarian Law, Volume I: Rules is a comprehensive analysis of the customary rules of international humanitarian law applicable in international and non-international armed conflicts. In the absence of ratifications of important treaties in this area, this is clearly a publication of major importance, carried out at the express request of the international community. In so doing, this study identifies the common core of international humanitarian law binding on all parties to all armed conflicts. Comment Don:RWI.