![handle is hein.journals/jufoint8 and id is 1 raw text is: JOURNAL ON THE USE OF FORCE AND INTERNATIONAL LAW Routiedne
2021, VOL. 8, NO. 1, 1-3
https://doi.org/10.1080/20531702.2021.1917857 Taylor &Francis Group
ntrod uction
For scholars and practitioners interested in the area of international law con-
cerning the use of force 2021 certainly got off to a bang, with two events of
particular note. On 25th February the Biden administration resorted to its
first use of military force against a group of buildings used by 'Iranian-
backed militant groups, including Kait'ib Hezbollah and Kait'ib Sayyid al-
Shuhada' within Syrian territory on the Iraqi-Syrian border. The strikes,
taken in response to an attack on 15 February against Erbil airport in
Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, were justified by the Biden administration
by reference to the right of self-defence as contained within Article 51 of the
UN Charter. Somewhat ironically, the preceding day the UN Security
Council held an Arria-formula meeting on '[u]pholding the collective secur-
ity system of the UN Charter: the use of force in international law, non-state
actors and legitimate self-defense'. The meeting, organised by Mexico and of
significance due to the rare collective opportunity it provided for states to
voice their legal views on this controversial issue, shed light on the wide
range of views held by states, from those of a very restrictive nature to
those representing a very expansive one, with a great deal of ambiguity in
between, highlighting the controversy surrounding the issue and the fact
that it is yet to find anything resembling a consensus position. The
Editors-in Chief of JUFIL welcome contributions for future issues on these
two events.
Moving on to this current issue of JUFIL, as my co-Editor-in-Chief, James
Green, mentioned in the introduction to the previous issue, following on
from our conference in Ghent in December 2019, we found ourselves with
the 'problem' of being in receipt of a wealth of papers of high quality for
the special issues of the journal on the important and underexplored topic
of 'military assistance on request'. The decision was therefore taken to
extend the special issues on this important topic beyond volume 7 to issue
8(1) as well. As such, this first issue of 2021 partly continues with this
theme of the previous two issues, combining several further contributions
on this topic with additional articles from notable scholars on other impor-
tant topics and themes.
The issue opens with an interesting article by Luca Ferro on the so-called
doctrine of 'negative equality', a doctrine which provides for a complete
abstention from intervention in support of any of the parties to a civil
© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/jufoint8&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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