Prior to the 20th anniversary of the catastrophic attacks on September 11, 2001, the U.S. Navy’s Mideast-based 5th Fleet announced that a new task force would be launched, including airborne, sailing, and underwater drones (A.P., 2021). In this regard, Navy officials refused to reveal the specifications of systems that would be used in the newly established task force. However, it …

In recent weeks, major legal-political shifts have taken place in Afghanistan’s environment. The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan has now gone, with its security forces mostly abandoned, and the elected president Ashraf Ghani fled from the country. Now, following the US withdrawal, Taliban fighters dominate most of the country and have declared to restore the so-called “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” which …

The most restrictive and radical abortion legislation seen in half a century in the US came into effect last week (1Sept.) in Texas after the US Supreme Court declined to intervene. The law, introduced as Senate Bill 8 or SB8, prohibits abortions when embryonic cardiac activity is detected which can occur at six weeks, before many know they have become …

By Mahmoud Refaat: The European Institute for International Law and International Relations. Contribution: Georgios Mavrodimitrakis, The European Institute for International Law and International Relations. The ethnically diverse Himalayan region of Jammu and Kashmir continues to be a major source of tension between the regional rivalries, India, Pakistan and to a lesser extent China. Despite the numerous wars and periodical conflicts …

By Mahmoud Refaat: The European Institute for International Law and International Relations. Contribution: Georgios Mavrodimitrakis, The European Institute for International Law and International Relations. The current diplomatic dispute between Morocco and Spain over Madrid’s decision to hospitalize the Covid-19 infected leader of the Western Saharan independence movement, Brahim Ghali, has been the “tip of the iceberg” of the rising tensions …

By Mahmoud Refaat: The European Institute for International Law and International Relations. For one week now, rocket exchanges between Israel and Hamas are intensifying in what appears to be an uncontrollable escalation of violence. After the end of Ramadan, several Palestinian families were threatened with expulsion from East Jerusalem, the occupied part of the city, leading to demonstrations in this …

By Mahmoud Refaat: The European Institute for International Law and International Relations. Last month, the President of the U.S. Joe Biden announced the withdrawal of all the remaining 2.500 U.S. troops from Afghanistan by September 11, the 20th anniversary of the al-Qaida terrorist attacks on New York and Washington (Borger & Sabbagh, 2021). A few days later however, Ankara was …

 By Georgios Mavrodimitrakis, The European Institute for International Law and International Relations. Introduced by the European Commission in 2019, the European Green Deal (EGD) has been characterized as the leading mechanism for the green transition of the European economy that would combine the elements of sustainability and prosperity.  Besides its vast impact on the economy and climate, the EGD would also …

Myanmar is losing its democratic momentum. How should the international community react? After a decade of the establishment of an unstable democracy, Myanmar has fallen once again on the hands its military, on the 1st of February.  Daily images show not only the tremendous inhumanity of the bloodthirsty junta but also a remarkable wave of democratic resistance all over the …

China, the Uyghur, and mass surveillance Whether public or private, institutions for a long time have been interested in individual data (Rule 2007, p. 10). The advent of surveillance is not new and has been brewing in more developed countries for some decades now (ibid, p. 11; Brayne 2017, p. 977). Fueled by the events of 9/11, and the subsequent …