[Lurilla Bereveskos is a human rights researcher and Princeton in Asia fellow. She has conducted research for the U.S. Department of State's Office to Monitor and Combat Human Trafficking and co-authored the report "How to Stop Disinformation in Democracy" which was submitted at the request of the UN Human Rights Council as inputs into the Council's work.] A typical wedding day...
[MohammadMehdi Seyed Nasseri is a researcher at the Center for Ethics and Law Studies and lecturer at Shahid Beheshti University (Tehran). He holds a PhD in public international law from Islamic Azad University, UAE Branch (Dubai).] Access to justice is one of the fundamental principles of the rule of law and a cornerstone in guaranteeing human rights, whose effective realization acquires...
[Theodore Hanna is an LL.M. candidate in International and European Law at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens] Introduction On 18 July 2025, the European Union adopted its eighteenth package of sanctions against Russia, one of its most robust to date, tightening measures on Russia’s energy, banking, and defense sectors. Uniquely, this package targets investor–State dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms, a system that...
[Angel Cabrera is a Mexican human rights lawyer and an Assistant Professor of international law and human rights at the University of Washington Tacoma. He holds an S.J.D. and LL.M. from Harvard Law School and an LL.B. from the University of Guadalajara.] In a request submitted last December, Guatemala asked the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (the “Court”) to issue an...
[Saparya Sood is a doctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods (Bonn, Germany). She is a lawyer qualified in India and received her postgraduate degree in law and economics as a recipient of an Erasmus Mundus scholarship. Views expressed are personal.] The European Commission recently introduced the Omnibus Package on 26 February 2025. While presented as...
[Joyce Claudia Choo was a fellow at the Department of Legal Affairs, UNWRA, during the 2024-2025 Gaza war. She has an LLM in international legal studies and LLB from NYU School of Law, where she was both a Transitional Justice Scholar and Lloyd N. Cutler Salzburg Fellow.] This post responds to Finkelstein and Votel’s January 2024 post at Just Security, which claims...
[Dr Sally Longworth is a researcher and Julia Dalman is an analyst at the Swedish Defence Research Agency] On 2 May 2025, a Ukrainian unmanned surface vehicle (USV) successfully engaged a Russian fighter jet close to a Russian naval base in the eastern Black Sea. The attack was likely carried out by a Magura-V7. The two-person crew of the fighter jet...
[Ole Aldag, LL.M. (Aberdeen) is a bar-registered lawyer in Düsseldorf (Germany) and a doctoral student at Bielefeld University] When international law’s core prohibitions are violated in full daylight, accompanied by strained legal justifications of actors showing no restraint in exercising their powers— what remains of its authority? The prohibition on the use of force has always operated in tension with global...
[Jinan Bastaki is an associate professor of legal studies at New York University, Abu Dhabi, and a visiting fellow at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford] On the 19th of July 2025, Keir Starmer, the UK’s Prime Minister, threatened Israel with recognizing a Palestinian state if Israel did not end the ‘appalling situation’ in Gaza. While the UK is effectively...
[Izza Drury is a Legal Fellow on the Border Justice Team at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights. She holds a JD from Harvard Law School and completed a post-graduate fellowship at the European Court of Human Rights.] On 1 July 2025 Dr. Marialena Tsirli, Registrar of the European Court of Human Rights, published a keynote speech titled “Developing...
[Timothy Fish Hodgson is a senior legal adviser for ESC Rights at the International Commission of Jurists (Africa). Valentin Büchi is a legal intern with the International Commission of Jurists (Africa).] On 23 April 2025, the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa (SCA) handed down a judgment in which it found that an eviction order against waste reclaimers had to fully consider...
[Petronella Mukaindo is an associate legal adviser at the International Commission of Jurists (Africa). Timothy Fish Hodgson is a senior legal adviser for ESC Rights at the International Commission of Jurists (Africa).] On 20 December 2024, the South African Constitutional Court handed down its judgment in O’Brien N.O. v Minister of Defence and Military Veterans and Others 2024 ZACC 30, affirming that...