In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Foreign Relations Law

27 Nov

[Dr. Jule Giegling is a Research Associate at the Ruhr-University Bochum as well as at Kümmerlein Rechtsanwälte mbB.] On 14 September 2020 the Co-Facilitators of the General Assembly’s Treaty Body Review 2020 issued their final report on the findings of the approximately six month co-facilitation process concerned with the strengthening of the UN human rights treaty body system (accessible here). The Treaty Body Review, which was...

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19 Nov

[Henning Lahmann is a Senior Researcher at the Digital Society Institute ESMT Berlin.] Back in May, the German Federal Constitutional Court (the Court) held that the law for Germany‘s Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND) was unconstitutional in its current form due to insufficient legal protections for journalists who are not citizens and who work outside of Germany’s borders against surveillance measures, a judgment widely lauded for its expansive...

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19 Nov

[Hadi Dadmehr is a PhD candidate in Public International law at the National University of Iran (SBU). Hadi was Head of the Department of Law at the University of Zabol, Iran,  for 6 years. You can find him on Twitter @HadiDadmehr.] Donald Trump, the 45th U.S. president, repeatedly claimed during his campaign rallies that the first call he would receive after winning the election would be...

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02 Nov

[Marko Svicevic is a post-doctoral research fellow at the South African Research Chair in International Law, University of Johannesburg.] Introduction The growing insurgency in Mozambique continues to worry its neighboring states and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) alike. Known as Ansar al-Sunna, the insurgency first arose in 2017 in Mozambique’s northern province of Cabo Delgado. By July 2019, it had pledged allegiance...

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28 Oct

[Dapo Akande, Antonio Coco, Talita de Souza Dias, Duncan B. Hollis, Harold Hongju Koh, James C. O’Brien and Tsvetelina van Benthem.] Election insecurity constitutes a dangerous global threat. Thirteen prominent intelligence experts stated, in a brief filed in U.S. federal court, that: “Over the last several years, evidence has emerged that Moscow has launched an aggressive series of active measure campaigns to interfere...

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28 Oct

[Adriano Iaria is a Humanitarian Advocacy Officer for the Italian Red Cross and a faculty member of the Master’s course in Intelligence and Security for Link Campus University in Rome, Italy. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to the author's employer, organization, committee or other group or individual.] Last May, in the midst of the ongoing...

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12 Oct

[Malcolm Wu is an LL.M. candidate at the London School of Economics and Political Science.] Introduction Ioane Teitiota is from the sinking island nation of Kiribati. In 2013, he made a historic application for refugee status in New Zealand on the grounds of risk of life due to the adverse effects of climate change in his home country. Nonetheless, the rejection of his application and appeal by the New...

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09 Oct

[Madhav Mallya is a lecturer at the Jindal Global Law School.] When a country dilutes its environmental and human rights protections in a bid to attract more investment, it is then said to be engaged in a “Race to the Bottom” competition.  A reading of India’s new Draft Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) notification makes it easier to get environmental clearances by excluding several projects from public consultation....

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25 Sep

[Agata Kleczkowska is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Law Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland.] Introduction On 9 August 2020, presidential elections were held in Belarus, governed since 1994 by Alexander Lukashenko. This time, however, Belarusians did not believe in the overwhelming victory of the authoritarian president, and, certain of the victory of the opposition leader, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, began mass...

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21 Aug

[Larry D. Johnson is an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Law School and the Former UN Assistant Secretary-General for Legal Affairs.] The US suffered a humiliating defeat on 14 August 2020 when the UN Security Council failed to adopt a US proposal to extend certain arms restrictions on Iran that are scheduled to be lifted soon pursuant to the “nuclear deal” (JCPOA) concluded in 2015 by China,...

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21 Aug

[Mona Ali Khalil is the Director of MAK LAW INTERNATIONAL; an Affiliate of the Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict; and a former Senior Legal Officer of the United Nations. She holds a B.A. and M.A. in international relations from Harvard University as well as a M.S. in Foreign Service and a Juris Doctorate from Georgetown...

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