Thank you very much, Monica, and thank you very much for the invitation to speak on the panel. I was a senior legal advisor in Australia from 2013 to 2017, so, in fact, during this time. I think it is a terrifically conceived panel because it is one of the most pressing and problematic issues with which we have to deal, I think, as international legal advisors.

But Australiav's position on this is quite clear and quite well articulated, and that is that our view and our interpretation of Article 51 of the UN Charter is that the inherent right of self-defense applies to armed attacks from both state and non-state actors. And we think that Resolutions 1368 and 1373 make that quite clear too. That is our quite clear position.

In terms of non-state actors, too, we do subscribe to the unwilling and unable approach that you outlined, Monica. We think that where there is a non-state actor operating in the territory of another state, and there is a reasonable and objective basis for concluding that that other state is unwilling or unable to halt or repel attacks emanating from its territory that you can act in self-defense against that non-state actor. That does not mean, of course, that you can act against the third state, but specifically, and limited to, the non-state actor.

The conflicts you have identified, Iraq and Syria, are the most obvious recent conflicts to discuss when we are talking about this particular issue. In the case of Iraq, it is probably a more straightforward analysis, legally, because, of course, Iraq invited other countries to help it defend itself against attacks from Daesh. There was express invitation there and the consent of the country was quite clear, and the basis was self-defense. Australia, like many other countries, operated in Iraq against ISIL, at the request of Iraq, for the collective self-defense of Iraq.

Of course, the situation in Syria is less clear-cut in that the attacks were on Iraq coming from the territory of Syria, so a non-state actor in this case, Daesh, ISIL, was operating from a safe haven in Syria, attacking Iraq. Iraq did make that clear and Iraq did ask the international community for help. Australia chose to take action in Syria, based on the collective self-defense of Iraq, following Iraq's request, and on the basis that it was our objective assessment that Syria was unable or unwilling to repel or halt those attacks. And that assessment was an objective, fact-based assessment, by looking at what was happening on the ground at the time.

That decision pre-dated Resolution 2249. In fact, our letter to the Security Council, under Article 51, was done in September and the resolution, as you say, was in November, so it pre-dates it by two months. I do have our letter here so I just might—as you say, all of the letters are slightly different. We can come back to this. I was the Senior Legal Advisor at the time that this was drafted and sent so I am very familiar with the letter and the rationale and the internal conversations we had around it.

But it is a very clear letter, I think, setting out, deliberately so, the legal basis for our activities in Syria. I will not read it all because you can all find it easily enough, but it explicitly states, in paragraph one, that our action is collective self-defense of Iraq as part of the international efforts led by the United States, and recall that Iraq requested the United States to lead those efforts. We then refer, in paragraph two, to those requests by Iraq, again, to highlight that there were requests from Iraq for international action. And we note that those attacks are coming from safe havens in Syria, so we established, if you like, the factual situation.

We then state, quite clearly what our interpretation of Article 51 of the UN Charter is, and then say, quite explicitly, that the government of Syria has, by its failure to constrain attacks upon Iraqi territory originating from ISIL bases within Syria demonstrated that it is unwilling or unable to prevent those attacks. We very explicitly lay out our legal basis for that. And then, for good measure of course, we throw in, as a reminder that this is an unconstrained right, but rather, of course, any military action that is undertaken must be necessary and proportionate. That, I think, is from the Australian perspective, a very clear, we hope, articulation of our position.