The legal position of visiting forces transcends domestic and international law and is of growing importance in our increasingly globalized and insecure world. 'In area' and 'out of area' operations, both for the purpose of establishing and maintaining peace and in connection with the conduct of other military operations and training, are likely to become more frequent for a variety of reasons. Finding where the applicable law places the balance between the interests, sensitivities and needs of the host state and the requirements, often practical in nature, of the visiting force is a key objective in ensuring that the relationship between hosts and 'guests' is and remains harmonious. All of this must be achieved in an increasingly complex legal environment. This fully updated second edition of The Handbook of the Law of Visiting Forces addresses the issues surrounding visiting forces and provides a full overview of the legal framework in which they operate. Through an analysis of jurisprudence and historical developments, it offers a comparative commentary to the UN, NATO, and other SOFA rules. The Handbook then continues its analysis through cases studies of visiting forces in key countries, including a fully updated chapter on Afghanistan that considers the various stages of the conflict, before offering conclusions on the current state of the law and its likely future development.

This book is a tribute to the work of Professor Terry Gill, offered to him by friends and colleagues who are also academics and/or practitioners in the field of International Law of Military Operations (ILMO). ILMO is a distinct sub-discipline within public international law and domestic public law, covering all domains of military operations: land, sea, air and (cyber)space. As such, ILMO includes elements of other branches of public international law, such as international humanitarian law, human rights law, the law on the use of force, the law of the sea, the law of State responsibility, arms control law and the law of international organisations. Importantly, as a hybrid field of law, ILMO covers the legal basis for military deployment both nationally and internationally, as well as the subsequent international legal regimes applicable to the forces (once deployed) and the domestic administrative and constitutional issues related to the relevant forces. Control is a central notion of ILMO and is the leading theme of this book. The contributions in this book reflect the variety of legal frameworks applicable to military operations and offer an insightful view into the various legal and factual roles of control. The legal notion of control is considered, inter alia, in relation to restraints in the decision to deploy military forces and the legal basis for doing so. The impact of control is also discussed in relation to State and command responsibility and in different situations, including during peace operations, occupation and other situations of armed conflict. Additionally, control is considered over the armed forces themselves, over detainees migrants at sea and over the type or scale of force used in military operations, through targeting rules or rules of engagement. Furthermore, the book contains several discussions of control in the case law of international courts, within arms control law, weapons law and in the context of autonomous weapons systems. The editors of the book are all practitioners, academically affiliated to the Faculty of Military Sciences (War Studies) of the Netherlands Defence Academy and/or the Law Faculty of the University of Amsterdam.

This book analyses the relationships between tax treaties and domestic law from a constitutional and an international point of view, and how they can be improved in the fields of treaty override, treaty residence and anti-abuse measures. It also shows how the issues raised by these relationships are resolved by tax administrations and courts in selected European and non-European countries.

Kuwait has been pivotal to the decades-long U.S. effort to secure the Persian Gulf region because of its consistent cooperation with U.S. military operations in the region and its key location in the northern Gulf. Kuwait and the United States have a formal Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA), under which the United States maintains over 13,000 military personnel in country and prepositions military equipment to project power in the region. Only Germany, Japan, and South Korea host more U.S. troops than does Kuwait, which has hosted the operational command center for U.S.-led Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) that has combatted the Islamic State since 2014. Kuwait is a partner not only of the United States but also of the other hereditary monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman). Kuwait is participating militarily in the Saudi-led coalition that is trying to defeat the Shia "Houthi" rebel movement in Yemen, but Kuwait tends to favor mediation of regional issues over the use of military force. Kuwait has sought to resolve the intra-GCC rift that erupted in June 2017 when Saudi Arabia and the UAE moved to isolate Qatar. Kuwait has refrained from intervening in Syria's civil war, instead hosting donor conferences for victims of the Syrian civil conflict, Iraq's recovery from the Islamic State challenge, and the effects of regional conflict on Jordan's economy. Kuwait has not followed some of the other GCC states in building quiet ties to the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel. Kuwait generally supports U.S. efforts to counter Iran and has periodically arrested Kuwaiti Shias that the government says are spying for Iran, but it also engages Iran at high levels. U.S. government reports have praised steps by Kuwait to counter the financing of terrorism, but reports persist that wealthy Kuwaitis are still able to donate to extreme Islamist factions in the region. Kuwait has consistently engaged the post-Saddam governments in Baghdad in part to prevent any repeat of the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Experts have long assessed Kuwait's political system as a potential regional model for its successful incorporation of secular and Islamist political factions, both Shia and Sunni. However, since the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, Kuwait has followed other GCC states in incarcerating and revoking the citizenship of social media and other critics. Kuwait's political stability has not been in question but long-standing parliamentary opposition to the ruling Sabah family's political dominance has in recent years included visible public pressure for political and economic reform. Parliamentary elections in July 2013 produced a National Assembly amenable to working with the ruling family, but the subsequent elections held in November 2016 returned to the body Islamist and liberal opponents of the Sabah family who held sway in earlier assemblies. Kuwait has increased its efforts to curb trafficking in persons over the past few years. Years of political paralysis contributed to economic stagnation relative to Kuwait's more economically vibrant Gulf neighbors such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Like the other GCC states, Kuwait has struggled with reduced income from oil exports during 20142018. Kuwait receives negligible amounts of U.S. foreign assistance, and has offset some of the costs of U.S. operations in the region since Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

The U.S. has been party to multilateral and bilateral agreements addressing the status of U.S. armed forces while present in a foreign country. This report discusses these agreements, commonly referred to as Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs), which generally establish the framework under which U.S. military personnel operate in a foreign country, addressing how the domestic laws of the foreign jurisdiction shall be applied toward U.S. personnel while in that country. A SOFA may include many provisions, but the most common issue addressed is which country may exercise criminal jurisdiction over U.S. personnel. The U.S. is currently party to more than 100 agreements that may be considered SOFAs. Includes a list of current agreements.

In 1950, when he commissioned the first edition of The Armed Forces Officer, Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall told its author, S.L.A. Marshall, that "American military officers, of whatever service, should share common ground ethically and morally." In this new edition, the authors methodically explore that common ground, reflecting on the basics of the Profession of Arms, and the officer's special place and distinctive obligations within that profession and especially to the Constitution.

Considers legislation to revise the NATO Status of Forces Agreements and similar agreements.

This report by the Law Library of Congress examines Israel's current laws and regulations concerning reproductive rights, prenatal care insurance coverage, in vitro fertilization and extraction for personal use, ova donation, surrogate motherhood, regulation of abortion and penalties for illegal abortions, political context to the abortion debate in Israel, and government funding for reproductive care.