Brazil is back. After four years of retrenchment, the new Lula government seems ready to assume, once again, a key position in the international stage. This is a role that Lula knows how to play well. His previous government created the now defunct Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), meant as a counter-weight to a US-dominated OAS. By the time he left office, the region...
[Dr Cristiano d’Orsi is a Lecturer and Senior Research Fellow at the South African Research Chair in International Law (SARCIL), Faculty of Law, University of Johannesburg. He holds a Ph.D. in International Law from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. His research interests focus mainly on the development of Public International Law in Africa.] In its most basic...
[Dr Tibisay Morgandi is Assistant Professor of International Energy Law at Queen Mary University of London and the author of State Energy Agreements (CUP, forthcoming 2023). The views expressed in this paper are the author’s alone.] Introduction Energy - in the form of gas, nuclear and electricity - has in several different ways played a significant role in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Energy...
[Natasa Mavronicola is Professor of Human Rights Law at Birmingham Law School.] ‘it is the position of the State Party that, the acts complained of have neither the required level of intensity or cruelty nor the impermissible purpose to permit them to be defined as torture. Further, the acts complained of do not meet the standard so as to fall within...
[Máiréad Enright is Professor of Feminist Legal Studies at Birmingham Law School.] On October 31 2022, the UN Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) published its decision in Elizabeth Coppin v. Ireland. Mrs. Coppin is 73 years old and spent her early life in State-funded, religious-run carceral institutions. She was born in a county home to a teenage single mother. Aged two, she...
[Ruwadzano Patience Makumbe is a human rights lawyer. Edward Kahuthia Murimi is a Kenyan lawyer. They are both currently undertaking PhD research as part of the ‘DISSECT: Evidence in International Human Rights Adjudication’ Project (funded by ERC) at the Human Rights Centre, Ghent University (Belgium).] Introduction In November 2020, a conflict broke out in the Tigray region of Ethiopia pitting the Ethiopian...
Jennifer Trahan has a new post at Just Security entitled "Why a 'Hybrid' Ukrainian Tribunal on the Crime of Aggression Is Not the Answer." There are many problems with Trahan's post, but in this response I want to focus specifically on the most glaring one: namely, her claim that a hybrid tribunal would need to apply Ukraine's domestic crime of...
Support has been growing in recent weeks for creating a hybrid tribunal to address Russia's criminal act of aggression against Ukraine instead of an ad hoc Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression (STCoA). The German Minister of Foreign Affairs has endorsed a hybrid tribunal over an STCoA, as has the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary. Even the US War Crimes...
1 February marks the second anniversary of the coup d’état in Myanmar. In the past year, the situation for the population has only become more fraught and difficult. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights estimates that 2,890 individuals have been killed, likely an underestimation, 16,000 have been detained on spurious charges, scores have been tortured, many have been sentenced to death,...
To close this symposium on the life and work of Judge Cançado Trindade, the editors of Afronomicslaw, Opinio Juris and Agenda Estado de Derecho had the opportunity to interview the recently appointed and also Latin American Judge Leonardo Nemer Caldeira Brant in December 2022. The conversation focuses on the impact of Cançado Trindade's scholarship, case law, individual opinions, and his...
[Ata R. Hindi is Research Fellow in International Law, Institute of Law at Birzeit University.] In 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued its advisory opinion on the Wall and its associated regime. Nearly two decades later, Palestine is back at the ICJ, where the Court will have to address another paramount issue: the (il)legality of Israel’s occupation altogether as...
A few years ago, I was in a meeting with some Global North colleagues planning an international law conference. We were trying to make sure we had diverse panels and while gender-wise we were doing fine, I pointed out we still only had one person of colour. “Well, two”, said one of my co-convenors, “counting you”. I am sure my Northern colleagues must have...