Symposia

[Ryan Gauthier is a PhD Candidate at the Erasmus University Rotterdam.] Mo’ Sporting Events, Mo’ Problems In June, the 2015 European Olympic Games took place in Baku, Azerbaijan. Did you watch? You might not have even been aware of them! This first edition of the European Olympic Games is a symbol of the growing number of sports mega-events, joining the Olympic Games, the Fédération Intenationale de Football Association (‘FIFA’) World Cup, and others, on an ever-crowded sporting calendar. However, all is not positive. Just before the 2015 Games began, the Netherlands declined to host the 2019 edition of the European Olympic Games, citing the almost €60 million price tag as too much. Sports mega-events have expanded not only in number, but also in geographic scope. Baku 2015 is an example of sports mega-events being held in developing countries. The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), and countries such as Argentina and Qatar have hosted the world’s premier sports mega-events (Olympic Games, FIFA World Cup, Commonwealth Games) since 2008. Unfortunately for the citizens of these countries, these events have also been prime examples of the worst problems caused by sports mega-events. Families have been evicted from their homes (sometimes forcibly), ecologically sensitive areas have lost their protected status so that infrastructure such as ski runs or golf courses can be constructed, labour rights abuses have run rampant on infrastructure projects, and civil dissent has been quashed. To add insult to injury, the same old negative legacies of ‘white elephants’, such as unused or half-empty stadiums, deserted parks, unused hotel rooms, and public debt have reared their head.   My PhD research focuses on the accountability of international sporting organisations for the worst outcomes of their events. What I hope to do with this blog post is outline one aspect of accountability, the use of a monitoring mechanism. I will outline the problem of an absent state and a weak mandate. I will then discuss a comparison with the World Bank, and lessons that might be learned by international sporting organisations. Where Does the Buck Stop? Many organisations are involved in putting on a sports mega-event. As a start, international sporting organisations such as the IOC and FIFA hold the intellectual property rights to the event. However, these organisations do not directly engage in preparations for the event, but instead provide varying levels of financial and logistical support. The actual preparation is carried out by a local organising committee (which may be public or private), who hires contractors for construction, and so forth. The state government also supports the preparations. When things go wrong, no party is held to account. This is due in part to the multiplicity of organisations involved, creating a ‘problem of many hands’. This situation is exacerbated because the state, the one organisation which is expected to provide a backstop to guarantee that its citizens are not harmed, is often unwilling or unable to hold anyone else to account. In some cases, particularly in regards to the eviction of individuals, and allowing construction in environmentally-sensitive areas, the government is actually complicit in the harm. Thus, with an absent state, my research examines how the international sporting organisations should be accountable, and should hold others to account, for the harms caused by hosting their sports mega-events. Baby Steps As part of its response to this situation,

[Remy Jorritsma (LL.M.) is a lecturer in public international law at the Department of International and European Law of Maastricht University. In September 2015 he will join the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg as a Research Fellow/PhD candidate. Contact at r.jorritsma@maastrichtuniversity.nl.] Armed conflicts involving e.g. Ukraine/Russia, Israel/Palestine, and the self-proclaimed Islamic State demonstrate legal ambiguities with regard to State responsibility as a...

[Nikolaos A. Ioannidis is a PhD candidate in Public International Law (University of Bristol).] On the verge of the 21st century, the discovery of “Noa”, a gas field offshore Israel, reinvigorated the Eastern Mediterranean (East Med) states’ interest in the sea. Additional hydrocarbon deposits were found in the sea waters adjacent to Israel, Gaza, Cyprus and Egypt, while the United States Geological Survey estimated that the Levant Basin alone contains 1.7 million barrels of oil and 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. These developments made the regional states realize that, in order to avail themselves of the immense underwater wealth, they should first demarcate their maritime space in conformity with the law of the sea rules. This post analyses the maritime boundary delimitation agreements concluded so far in the East Med. It should be pointed out that these are the first EEZ delimitation agreements to have been signed in the Mediterranean Sea. Perhaps the most noteworthy features of these arrangements is the use of the median line and the adherence of Israel to the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention (LOSC or the Convention) rules on the EEZ and maritime delimitation, despite the fact that it is not a state-party to the Convention. In particular, four East Med states proceeded with the conclusion of bilateral maritime boundary delimitation agreements; the first delimitation agreement between Egypt and Cyprus in 2003 was followed by another two between Lebanon-Cyprus in 2007 (pending ratification by Lebanon); and Israel-Cyprus in 2010. All three agreements are concise and comprise five virtually identical articles each. Undoubtedly, maritime boundary delimitation is a pivotal function within the realm of the law of the sea. As the Arbitral Tribunal in the Bangladesh/India Award stressed:
“The importance of stable and definitive maritime boundaries is all the more essential when the exploration and exploitation of the resources of the continental shelf are at stake… the sovereign rights of coastal States, and therefore the maritime boundaries between them, must be determined with precision to allow for development and investment (emphasis added).”
Even though the East Med states maintain variant positions on maritime affairs, they have perceived the utility of the law of the sea apparatus in facilitating hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation, hence they decided to act within its ambit and collaborate with a view to gaining multiple profits from the energy windfall. Legal analysis of the agreements In the Preambles of these instruments, the contracting parties set forth the desire for cooperation, note the importance of EEZ delimitation “for the purpose of development” and recall the relevant LOSC provisions. The invocation of the LOSC in the Israeli-Cypriot agreement is of utmost significance as it not only illustrates the universal application of the Convention, but, most importantly, highlights the willingness of Israel to act in conformity with the LOSC, despite not being a party to the Convention, at least in terms of the provisions relevant to the EEZ. In any event, the EEZ concept forms part and parcel of customary international law, thus, even non-member states to the Convention are entitled to use and are obliged to observe the relevant rules [Continental Shelf (Tunisia/Libyan Arab Jamahiriya) (Judgment) [1982] ICJ Rep. 18, para. 100; Delimitation of the Maritime Boundary in the Gulf of Maine Area [1984] ICJ Rep. 246, para. 94; Continental Shelf (Libyan Arab Jamahiriyia/Malta) (Judgment) [1985] ICJ Rep. 13, para. 34]. Perforce Article 1(a) of each agreement, the maritime limit between the contracting states is the median line, namely a line “every point of which is equidistant from the nearest points on the baselines of the two Parties” (Article 15 LOSC). The mutual acceptance and use of the median line evinces the establishment of a regional practice in the East Med favouring this method, contrary to the efforts of Turkey, which has diachronically been rejecting the median line/equidistance principle; instead, Turkey has been advocating the vague equitable principles/relevant circumstances method, which provides that all relevant factors should be considered so as to reach an equitable result. Paragraphs b-d of Article 1 address the definition of the coordinates of the maritime boundaries. Furthermore,

[Arthur Kutoroff is a graduate of Cornell Law School. He can be reached at Kutoroff [at] gmail [dot] com.] There is a fundamental asymmetry between the treatment of individuals and the treatment of states within international law: individuals may claim excuses for their violations of legal obligations, but states may not. Philosophers and lawyers distinguish between justifications and excuses: an action is justified if it is morally good or right (or at least not bad or wrongful); an action is excused if it is wrongful but the actor is not culpable for the wrongful action. This distinction affects the rights of third parties as well: third parties may lawfully assist a justified action, but may not assist an excused action because excuses are personal to the excused. This distinction has been widely influential in domestic criminal law, as many jurisdictions clearly distinguish between justifications such as self-defense and excuses such as insanity. International criminal law seems to recognize excuses as well. The Rome Statute provides defenses such as duress, insanity, and intoxication for defendants before the ICC, although the Rome Statute is not entirely clear about which defenses are justifications and which are excuses. Moreover, in the Erdemovic case the ICTY recognized duress as a defense, albeit in limited circumstances. International law does recognize defenses for states that breach their international obligations, but it does not clarify which defenses are justifications and which are excuses. For example, in the 1838 Caroline affair, British forces entered United States territory to destroy an American ship that was supplying Canadian rebels during the Upper Canada Rebellion. In response, United States Secretary of State Daniel Webster argued in a letter to the British government that the British failed to meet the standard of self-defense, which requires “necessity of self-defense, instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment of deliberation." This definition combines elements of excuse and justification. The requirement that an exercise of self-defense is necessary suggests that self-defense is a justification, since jurisdictions generally recognize that a necessary action is justified. Yet, as George Fletcher and Jens Ohlin explain, the requirement that one could not do otherwise invokes the idea of self-preservation, which is more an excuse than a justification. Moreover, that requirement that one has no moment of deliberation invokes the idea of provocation, which is arguably a partial justification and a partial excuse. Yet more recently international law has abandoned the language of excuse. The United Nations Charter authorizes the use of force if Security Council approves the use of force, and also maintains "the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations." In both of these circumstances, the use of force is justified, not merely excused: a state using force with UN Security Council approval or in self-defense has not committed a wrongful action. Since World War II, international law has continued to recognize defenses to breaches of international obligations, but it has not clearly distinguished between justifications and excuses. Yet defenses in international law seem more like justifications than like excuses. As an illustration, consider the Draft Articles on State Responsibility, which provides a set of defenses to breaches of international law. Consider the defense of necessity, which was described in the Draft Articles and recognized by the ICJ in the Gabčíkovo-Nagymaros Project case. The Draft Articles describe necessity as “a ground for precluding the wrongfulness of an act not in conformity with an international obligation,” which invokes the language of justification rather than excuse. Recently the UN General Assembly has commended the Draft Articles (now just "the Articles"), further solidifying their place in international law yet further entrenching the ambiguity between justifications and excuses. International law should consider recognizing excuses for states, as the theories that warrant the provision of excuses for individuals may apply to states as well. As an illustration, consider H.L.A. Hart's theory of excuses: agents should be punished for their actions only if they have “the normal capacity, physical and mental, for doing what the law requires and abstaining from what it forbids, and a fair opportunity to exercise these capacities.” Hart considers various excuses, such as duress, mistake, and insanity, and notes that in these circumstances the defendant “could not have done otherwise.” There are other theories besides Hart’s: scholars have advocated alternative theories of excuse grounded in causation, choice, character, utilitarianism, and other considerations as well. But given H.L.A. Hart’s influence, his theory is a useful starting point. Hart’s capacity and opportunity theory of excuse seems to apply to states as well as to individuals. Consider the prospects of a duress defense for states. States may be subject to coercive pressure from other states, and such coercive pressure may undermine the normal capacity of a government to act in conformity with international law. Moreover, coercive pressure from other states may deny a state a fair opportunity to conform their conduct to the requirements of international law. To an extent, international law already recognizes duress, as the Draft Articles recognize coercion as a defense. Yet international law should clearly recognize duress or coercion as an excuse, not a justification. The moral significance of coercion is not that coercion justifies an otherwise wrongful action, but rather that it transfers culpability to the coercive third party. Were international law to recognize duress as an excuse, it would open the conceptual space to condemn wrongful conduct without condemning those who lacked the opportunity and capacity to follow their obligations. As illustration of the effect of duress on state conduct,

[Bart L. Smit Duijzentkunst recently received his PhD in international law from the University of Cambridge. He will be teaching international law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, in the 2015 fall semester.] When, in December 2013, the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) opened its gates to thousands of civilians fleeing violence in the wake of an alleged coup, it also opened a new chapter on the UN’s commitment to the protection of civilians. Two decades earlier UN troops had received vague orders to protect “safe areas” in Bosnia and Rwanda—with disastrous consequences. Today UNMISS is explicitly authorised to use “all necessary means” to protect civilians. Yet while the language of UN mandates has evolved, so have developments on the ground. UN policy-makers originally envisioned protection of civilians measures as short-term, localised interventions to ensure the physical safety of persons in acute emergency situations. In South Sudan, however, 18 months after the outbreak of hostilities almost 140,000 people continue to reside in so-called “protection of civilians sites” across the country. As a result, UNMISS peacekeepers are not simply called upon to protect against external threats, but also to maintain public safety and security within protection of civilians sites. But does their mandate cover these activities? This post briefly discusses the evolution of peacekeeping mandates before offering some reflections on UNMISS’ authority. Protection of civilians mandates emerged in UN Security Council practice on the eve of the new millennium. In “traditional” mandates, the protection of civilians had been an afterthought, the fortuitous consequence of other peacekeeping objectives. For example, the mandate of UNPROFOR, operating in the Balkans in the mid 1990s, merely called upon the mission to deter attacks on so-called “safe areas”, to monitor cease-fires and to promote the withdrawal of military and paramilitary units from these areas. UNPROFOR could only take “all necessary measures”, including the use of force, in self-defence. Similarly, when UNAMIR in Rwanda was authorised to establish “secure humanitarian areas” in 1994, the UN Security Council recognised that the mission might be required to take action in self-defence to protect the areas, but did not explicitly authorise it to use force to do so. Propelled by the failures in Bosnia and Rwanda, and encouraged by the emerging idea that the international community held a “responsibility to protect” vulnerable populations, in 1999 the UN Security Council started to explore the protection of civilians as an objective of peacekeeping. It began passing dedicated resolutions and included protection of civilians clauses in operational mandates. These “robust” mandates reflect a recognition by the Security Council that impartiality of UN peacekeeping operations “is not the same as neutrality or equal treatment of all parties in all cases for all time” and that in certain circumstances “peacekeepers may not only be operationally justified in using force but morally compelled to do so.” In the same year, the UN Security Council vested certain missions with far-reaching administrative powers. UNMIK in Kosovo and UNTAET in East Timor were tasked to provide administrative functions while developing domestic institutions. In line with their “executive” mandates, these missions were empowered to draft local laws, implement domestic policies and administer justice, including arresting and sentencing alleged criminals, until these powers were transferred to local governments (in 2008 and 2002 respectively). With these differences between traditional, robust and executive mandates in mind, let’s return to the situation of UNMISS. Following South Sudan’s independence on 9 July 2011, UNMISS’ initial mandate focussed on state-building and conflict resolution efforts; the protection of civilians was buried deep in its sub-clauses. These political ambitions went up in flames with the outbreak of violence on 15 December 2013, when an alleged coup triggered a civil war between Government forces, led by President Salva Kiir, and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army – In Opposition (SPLM/A-IO), headed by former vice-President Riek Machar. In light of the persistent fighting and the massive influx of internally displaced persons and refugees onto UNMISS premises, the UN Security Council revised UNMISS’ mandate in November 2014 to make the protection of civilians its top priority. The new, robust mandate removes references to “imminent” threats, simply authorising UNMISS to “use all necessary means” to “protect civilians under threat of physical violence, irrespective of the source of such violence”. While housing, food and sanitation are principally provided by humanitarian organisations, UNMISS is in charge of “maintain[ing] public safety and security within and of UNMISS protection of civilians sites”. This is not the first time that the UN has provided shelter to civilians on its premises: from East Timor to Palestine, over the last decades civilians have flocked to UN bases in the face of violence. The UN has developed various policies to deal with these situations, which range from setting out general principles to providing specific guidelines on civilians seeking protection at UNMISS sites (the latter drafted prior to December 2013). All these documents stress the exceptional and temporary nature of these measures: they speak of protection in terms of hours or days, not weeks or months. Yet as the conflict in South Sudan persists and peace remains elusive, what might have seemed a temporary measure at first has turned into a prolonged situation with few prospects of resolution.

[Janos Ferencz, LL.M., is a Visiting Research Fellow at The Minerva Center for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions at the Faculty of Law and Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Haifa and a Legal consultant at Panteia, the Netherlands.] The rapid proliferation of malicious cyber operations in recent years has underlined a growing concern about the risks presented by cyber space to international peace and security. The UN General Assembly noted in Resolution 69/28 (2014) the increasing concerns about the use of information technologies “for purposes that are inconsistent with the objectives of maintaining international stability and security” (UN Doc. A/Res/69/28, 2 December 2014, preambular para. 9). The importance of understanding when cyber operations represent a threat to international peace and security lies in the Security Council’s Chapter VII powers. Under Article 39 of the Charter, its powers to adopt non-forceful and forceful measures can only be activated once there is a determination that a cyber operation is a “threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression.” The academia has paid only limited attention so far to analysing the conditions under which cyber operations can reach this level. This post aims to fill this gap by assessing whether, and if so, under what conditions can cyber operations trigger the applicability of Article 39 of the Charter. Cyber operations and the threshold of Article 39 A cyber operation must be understood as a broad concept, incorporating “the employment of cyber capabilities with the primary purpose of achieving objectives in or by the use of cyberspace” (Tallinn Manual, para. 2, p. 15). The Tallinn Manual experts unanimously agreed that the Security Council possesses the authority to determine that a cyber operation constitutes a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression (Tallinn Manual, Rule 18). The question remains, however, what are the prerequisite circumstances for such an operation to attain the level of gravity required by Article 39? A breach of the peace is generally characterized by armed hostilities between States, while an act of aggression manifests through the direct or indirect use of force. The concept of “threat to the peace” is the broadest and most frequently used one by the Security Council. From a cyber perspective, the two former scenarios, although theoretically possible, remain less likely to occur in practice since the Security Council has yet to make a determination that an event amounted to an act of aggression, and only a handful of situations were found to have breached the peace (e.g. the invasion of South Korea or Kuwait). For this reason (and taking into account also spatial limitations) this post focuses on the circumstances qualifying cyber operations as a threat to international peace and security. The Security Council has broad discretion under Article 39 to conclude that any kind of conduct or situation amounts to a threat to international peace. Finding the lowest common denominator across the Council’s past practice falls beyond the scope of this post but suffice it to say that a “threat to the peace” is deemed a political concept (Tadić Decision on Interlocutory Appeal on Jurisdiction, 2 October 1995, para. 29) that builds on the Council’s interpretation of the concept of “peace”. Although the early practice of the Council has shown a narrow interpretation of this concept, viewing “peace” as the absence of use of force between States (J. Frowein, ‘Article 39’ in B. Simma (ed.) The Charter of the United Nations: A Commentary (2nd edn., OUP, 2002), at p. 720), the recent practice of the Council indicates its willingness to broaden that interpretation. This is best evidenced by the Council’s acknowledgement that the HIV/AIDS pandemic can pose a security threat (SC Res. 1308, 17 July 2000) as well as the determination on the existence of a threat to international peace and security in West-Africa due to the outbreak of Ebola (SC Res. 2177, 18 September 2014). Nonetheless, the Council has always been careful to consider the impact of an internal situation upon regional or international stability. This criterion is common across all Article 39 determinations, and entails that any event or phenomena that undermines regional or international stability by creating a risk for unrest or hostilities in the short or medium term could fall within the purview of Article 39. Thus, a cyber operation will amount to a threat to peace within the meaning of Article 39 when it creates the threat of jeopardizing regional or international stability. Cyber operations targeting the critical infrastructure of a State will likely fulfill this threshold. Similarly, the US DoD concluded that "computer network attacks that caused widespread damage, economic disruption, and loss of life could well precipitate action by the Security Council” under Article 39 (US DoD, An Assessment of International Legal Issues in Information Operations, May 1999, p. 15). The cyber operation itself need not be a violation of international law per se for it to fall within the ambit of Article 39. This raises interesting questions about the exploitation of cyberspace for the purposes of espionage, which is, in principle, not prohibited by international law. This question is particularly relevant in the aftermath of Edward Snowden’s revelations regarding the NSA’s surveillance programme in 2013. In my view, there are two main approaches to assessing cyber espionage under Article 39. Firstly, relying on the threshold set out above, cyber espionage could represent a threat to international peace and security when it creates destabilizing effects on regional or international stability to the extent that a potential risk of unrest and hostilities between States will arise. One example would be recourse to dual-use malwares that not only steal information but also produce widespread destructive or disruptive effects. However, it is unlikely that data breaches on their own would fall within the scope of Article 39 unless there is a prospect for hostilities as a result of the breaches. Furthermore, due to the threat of veto by any permanent member of the Security Council, it remains unlikely that in the near future cyber espionage incidents will be formally declared a threat to international security. The alternative approach is to

[Tsung-Ling Lee, (S.J.D (Georgetown)), is a post-doctoral fellow at  National University of Singapore.] “…I think we screwed up.” Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright's response to the Obama administration’s refusal to join the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the China-led initiative for financing infrastructure projects from Myanmar to Russia, suggests a deep anxiety about the world financial order. While many operational aspects and details about governance structure of the AIIB are yet to be publicly expressed, many commentators speculate that the AIIB may mark a new global economic order, particularly when viewed as part of Beijing’s broader economic agenda: the creation of new regional and global economic institutions, including the New Silk Road initiative and the BRICs-led New Development Bank, institutions which arguably will challenge the monopoly of the World Bank and the IMF — the two major international financial institutions within the Bretton Wood system. The AIIB, which came into existence after China’s frustration at the slow reform process of the International Financial Institutions (IFIs), set out as its goal to finance developmental projects in Asia, with China providing the majority of capital. The IFI reform stagnates largely due to the resistance from the US Congress, refusing to support the change of the Banks’ shareholder voting system currently privileges the US. Many critics thus perceive the Bank as a channel for the first world to promote and embed neoliberal orthodoxy abroad. The AIIB initiative highlights a shifting role of the Bank in an increasingly crowded international economic landscape. Some commentators even go further and suggest that the US’s sphere of influence in the global policy domain of finance is diminishing decisively, evident by the diplomatic success of China in attracting many of the US’s key allies in joining the AIIB. This blog post analyzes the AIIB through the lens of the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL). The IFIs’ Development Model Historically, TWAIL scholarship has been hostile towards IFIs, which are perceived as instrumental in protecting the interests of the first world at the expense of the third world. Critical TWAIL scholar B.S. Chimni, for instance, argues that the IFIs, as part of a growing network of international institutions, constitute a nascent global state that serves the interests of transnational capital and powerful states at the expense of third world states and peoples. Professor Makau Mutua, for example, argues that under the guise of sovereign equality, international law and institutions perpetuate existing structural inequality in furthering the interests of the first world. Despite that in theory both the IMF and the Bank are explicitly prohibited from engaging in any political affairs of its member states, in practice they have evolved from existing purely as apolitical institutions to having considerable powers in influencing economic policies of the developing countries. One notable example of the IFIs' penetrative power beyond global economic life is the Bank’s widely criticized Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) in the 1990s. As a condition of borrowing, countries that sought the IFIs' financial assistance were required to embark upon radical economic reform: reducing government spending, privatizing state-own enterprises, liberalizing trade and foreign investment. However, the neoliberal view embraced by the IFIs tends to neglect the specific social, economic, cultural and political contexts of the recipient state. The neglect has seen a widening of social inequalities, in addition to the apparent failure of SAPs in achieving its promised economic success. With many recipient states driven into debt, devastated by increased food and fuel prices, intensified unemployment, and crumbling of health services, the SAPs had worked in the interests of the first world, who are also the majority shareholders of the IFIs. With many recipient states worse off than they were initially, the uneven distribution of benefits and costs as consequences of the SAPs became a salient point of contention for critics of the IFIs, most vocally among TWAIL scholars. This is primarily because the IFIs reproduced the colonial experience for recipient states; they also relocate the decision-making process from recipient states to international civil servants. The latter is even more worrisome from a legal perspective, because the process occurred without an external check-and-balance, where the IFIs are hold responsible for their hegemony policies that have further disadvantaged weak states. The apparent failings of the neoliberal development model endorsed by the IFIs had seen an eruption of political discontent that prompted a sharp policy turn within the IFIs. Beginning in the 1990s, the Bank embraced a governance paradigm that relies on stable institutional environment as a foundation to equitable distribution of wealth and to remedy poverty. This had seen the IFIs engaged in law reform in many recipient countries under the rubrics of “technical assistance”. The shift to the governance model also occurred as part of the IFIs’ attempt to salvage their institutional credibility. The Bank’s focus on governance has opened a greater space for structural intervention. The Bank now embarks on reform projects with greater emphases on improving environmental sustainability, embedding the rule of law, and enhancing participation in the decision-making process. The World Bank Institute's Worldwide Governance Indicators and Doing Business, for instance, provide quantitative assessments on the openness of the regulatory environment for business. While both projects are not binding on the state, they are widely seen as authoritative, and increasingly are used as a proxy for the quality of a legal system. In the TWAIL view, the law reform projects undertaken by the Bank, which focus specifically on the ability of legal system to facilitate market transaction, further entrench a capitalist order. Problematically, for TWAIL scholars, the economic integration of market occurs without much political contestation from the affected community. Thus, not only the governance model masks the Bank’s actual reach beyond its legitimate realm of economic regulation, such reach is arguably barred under Article IV(10) of the Bank’s Article of Agreement, which explicitly prohibits the Bank from interfering in the political affairs of its member states. AIIB: Ending IFI hegemony?

[Vito Todeschini (LL.M.(Ferrara University); E.MA (EIUC, Venice)) is a PhD Fellow at Aarhus University, Denmark.] In 2013, the German Federal Constitutional Court and the Regional Court of Bonn issued their judgements in two cases ‒ Varvarin and Kunduz respectively ‒ concerning Germany’s participation in the NATO-led operations in Serbia/Kosovo and Afghanistan. These judgments confirm and exemplify a general trend in domestic case...

[Scott McKenzie has a Juris Doctorate from the University of Iowa and is a PhD Student in Resource Management and Environmental Studies at the University of British Columbia.] The human right to water has been making steady progress.  The right has become a fixture of international law and state constitutions frequently include the right.  Within a framework of legal pluralism, this post examines the relationship between the human right to water’s core obligation and specific normative goals and on-the-ground governance in two case studies.  Strong water governance is critical for residents who are dependent on state or private enterprise for the delivery of basic and essential services, meaning international law has a significant impact on daily habits for billions of people.  South Africa and Ireland want to provide water for their citizens but their approaches show striking differences.  South Africa constitutionally protects the right to water but implementation falls short, while Ireland’s new framework is beginning to reflect international guidelines but provides no domestic legal guarantee.  These experiences show value in a duel-track approach for international law, with expanded recognition of the human right at the global and state levels along with further detailed frameworks that solidify how citizens should experience these rights. Many discussions concerning the human right to water focus on the international level.  This is important, but can miss nuance in governance. Legal pluralism recognizes multiple sources of law in addition to the state.  Pluralism has been defined as “a situation in which two or more legal systems coexist in the same social field.”  (link is to a .pdf) These systems come from different sources and have their own “foundations of legitimacy, validity, power and authority.”  This approach can be used to recognize the human right to water as a concept, and examine its implantation at various systemic levels as a means to improve the realization of the right in international law. The Human Right to Water A United Nations report found that worldwide, water related disease was responsible for 3.7 percent of all deaths. Despite agreement on the importance of access to clean water for human health and a diverse history of state and local scale implementation, the international legal and governance community has slowly addressed the right to water. At the international law level, the human right to water can be divided into two elements: recognition of an obligation and a normative framework.  The obligation of the human right to water has been formulated in two ways. First, it has been “derived” from other codified rights such as health or quality of life because water is fundamental for the realization of those rights.  Second, it is mentioned explicitly in instruments such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child or United Nations Resolution 64/292 (“The General Assembly...Recognizes the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights”). The normative framework of the human right was explained by the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in General Comment 15.  This guidance for implementing the human right was not binding.  But, provides some structure for how the right should be realized; such as “in quantities…necessary” to meet basic needs or “affordable…for personal and domestic uses”.  However, fine-grained details such as the quantity necessary or the amount that can be charged are in debate and not clear in international law.  Some experts argue a lower quantity that covers basic human hydration, while higher estimates include hygiene, food-preparation, and sanitation.  Many experts gravitate towards 50 liters (L) per day. Similarity, affordability estimate range from 2-5% percent of household income but this aspect not yet settled. South Africa – Constitutional protections fall short

This summer we will host our Third Annual Emerging Voices symposium, where we invite doctoral students and early-career academics or practicing attorneys to tell Opinio Juris readers about a research project or other international law topic of interest. If you are a doctoral student or in the early stages of your career (e.g., post-docs, junior academics or early career practitioners within...

[Philip Allott is Emeritus Professor of International Public Law at the University of Cambridge.] Interpretation of any text – religious, political, historical, scientific, literary, artistic, legal – raises profound philosophical problems. Interpretation of a legal text is in a class of its own, because it can have direct and substantial social effects, determining people’s lives. The philosophy of legal interpretation is...

[Fuad Zarbiyev is an Associate in the International Arbitration Group of Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle LLP.] The interpretation discourse in modern international law is dominated by a textualist paradigm. This claim may seem empirically wrong if it is taken to mean that nothing other than eo nomine textual arguments features in the international legal discourse. After all, the interpretive regime...