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12 J. Int'l Human. Legal Stud. 1 (2021)

handle is hein.journals/jihuleg12 and id is 1 raw text is: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LEGAL STUDIES 12 (2021) 1-3 HumAI BRILL EA TDS N IJ H O F F brill.com/ihs Editorial The COVID-19 pandemic continues to dominate our daily lives. Multiple vac- cines have been developed, and trials suggest that they are effective against the virus and, to date, its variants.1 While this gives cause for hope, the worldwide rollout of the vaccines remains slow and piecemeal, and COVID-19 continues to inflict significant humanitarian, economic and social costs across the world. It goes without saying that this issue of the Journal of International Humanitarian Legal Studies has been compiled under considerable pressures. Before introducing our readers to its contents, we would first like to express our enormous gratitude to the authors, reviewers and assistant editors who have worked tirelessly to produce it. Now, more than ever, it is important to shine a light on the humanitarian crises occurring in the world and to clarify how international law can be leveraged to help alleviate them. We are pleased that the Journal of International Humanitarian Legal Studies can contribute to this process. This issue opens with an article by Ianiv Garfunkel. Six American States parties to the Rome Statute Establishing the International Criminal Court (icc) have referred the situation in Venezuela to the icc under Article 14 of the Statute, which permits States parties to refer crimes to the Court where they have been committed outside their territory. Garfunkel examines whether the Venezuelan referral would meet the complementarity test under Article 17 of the Rome Statute. He argues that the application of this test is particu- larly tricky in the context of Venezuela given that the referring States appear to be under a duty to exercise their criminal jurisdiction over the international crimes committed in Venezuela but have failed to do so. Moving to the next article in this issue, Deniz Arbet Nejbir examines the legal status of the armed conflict between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers' Party under international humanitarian law. He demonstrates that the Kurdistan 1 For an overview of COVID-19 vaccines, see World Health Organization, 'cOVID-19 Vaccines' <www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2og/covid-g-vaccines>. © KONINKLIJKE BRILL NV, LEIDEN, 2021 1 DOI:10.1163/18781527-BJA10030