[Sergey Sayapin is an Associate Professor and Associate Dean at KIMEP University’s School of Law (Almaty, Kazakhstan).] The recent days have seen what is likely the most flagrant breach of the prohibition of the use of force since the Second World War. Commentators have already discussed a few aspects of this blatant act of aggression – such as the importance of...
Events Society of Legal Scholars Workshop: The SLS International Law Section will host its online PhD Workshop on Responding to Complex Relationships in International Law on 13 May 2022. The programme includes perspectives on global governance, climate change, international criminal justice, and technology and is available here. Attendance is free but the organisers strongly encourage attendees to consider joining the Society of...
By now, many readers -especially those who follow me on Twitter, will have figured out that I have a weird hobby: I like keeping track of who says what about international law in times of crisis. I’ve done it for the Syria strikes of 2018, the Venezuelan elections of 2018, the recognition of Juan Guaidó as President of Venezuela in 2019, the attack on Qasem Soleimani...
[Stefano Palestini is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Political Science, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.] Imposing sanctions is a common practice in the contemporary international order. As Erica Moret (chapter 2: 23-24) shows, since 1990, the United States and the European Union (EU) have imposed 150 and 75 sanction regimes respectively. Furthermore, more than half of EU sanctions have been imposed autonomously...
[Elin Hellquist is a researcher in the Department of Political Science at Stockholm University.] If you want to take the temperature on international relations (IR), study sanctions. Competing understandings of core IR-concepts such as sovereignty, power, legitimacy and justice are embodied in the politics of sanctions, classically described as an instrument ‘between words and wars’ (Staibano & Wallensteen 2005). Moreover, the empirical universe of sanctions is an...
[Larissa van den Herik is a professor of public international law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies at Leiden University.] As the balance of world power is tilting east with China’s economic might and its increased international political power ending US hegemony, it is said that we are entering into a new geoeconomic world order in which economic instruments follow the logic of conflict rather than...
[Alexandra Hofer (a.s.hofer@uu.nl) is an assistant professor in public international law at Utrecht University and affiliated researcher at the Ghent Rolin-Jaequemyns International Law Institute (GRILI).] Note to reader: most of this piece was written on Friday, 25 February. Given the speed at which the situation is evolving it may not be up-to-date at the time of publication, though it tried to take into account some of the additional measures...
[Jennifer Trahan is Convenor of the Global Institute for the Prevention of Aggression, and Clinical Professor at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs.] Let us be clear why the United Nations is largely paralyzed in the face of one of the clearest cases of aggression since 1939: it is because of the veto power of a permanent member of the UN Security...
[Carsten Stahn is Professor of International Criminal Law and Global Justice at Leiden Law School.] ‘In times of war, the law falls silent’ (silent enim leges inter arma). This famous maxim by Cicero is often used to illustrate the lack of power of law in the face of conquest and occupation. In the discourse over the war in Ukraine, we witness...
[Ryan Thoreson is a researcher in the LGBT Rights Program at Human Rights Watch.] For most children, nationality is clear-cut. Most countries pass nationality down to children who are born to at least one of their citizens, while a smaller number grant nationality to any child born on their territory. But citizenship laws are by nature more exclusive than inclusive. For children whose parentage or family structure...
As of 23:00 CET on 21 February 2022, media outlets and journalists have begun to report on an announcement by Russia that it will send troops for "peacekeeping operations" in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in Eastern Ukraine. This followed Russia's announcement earlier the same evening that it would recognize those regions as independent entities, triggering threats of sanctions from...
Events Diakonia International Humanitarian Law Centre virtual event: IHL and the protection of persons with disabilities: Even though about 15 percent of the population have some form of disability, this group is largely ignored when an armed conflict breaks out. International humanitarian law (IHL) does not include specific provisions for the protection of people with disabilities. At a virtual side-event on...