December 3, 2020

Anna Holzscheiter Julian A. Hettihewa

2019 will go down in history as the year with the largest transnational youth-led movement of all times: the global climate protests spearheaded by Fridays for Future. A year later, in the midst of an unprecedented global health crisis, the voices of these millions of politically active young…

November 24, 2020

Sofia Galani

As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to affect people around the world, the scholarly debate on how to uphold the rule of law amid the crisis remains relevant. A significant aspect of this debate has focused on the impact of Covid-19 restrictions on human rights (see, for example,…

October 14, 2020

Helmut Philipp Aust Prisca Feihle

The current COVID-19 pandemic has thrown the World Health Organization (WHO) into sharp relief. Views differ on the questions of whether the WHO has convincingly managed the pandemic, whether its International Health Regulations are up to scratch and whether it and its current leadership are under too heavy…

December 2, 2020

Gail Lythgoe

With Honduras being the 50th state to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) on the 24th of October 2020, the 90 day countdown has begun for the treaty to come into force. Honduras also happened to ratify the treaty on UN Day,…

November 26, 2019

Katie Johnston

  In a recent lecture, published as a post on this blog, Professor Dapo Akande analysed the diversity of the rules on the use of force in international law and the implications for the evolution of the law in this area. In this post I wish to…

November 11, 2019

Dapo Akande

Last month, I had the pleasure and honour to deliver one of the keynote lectures at the Canadian Council of International Law Annual Conference. The theme of the conference was "Diversity and International Law" and I chose to speak about the diversity of rules…

November 27, 2020

Misha Plagis Oliver Windridge

Since the MV Wakashio ship ran aground on 25 July this year, Mauritius has been facing an unfolding human and environmental disaster. Up to 100,000 Mauritians took to the streets in late August to protest against the State’s handling of the disaster, one of the largest protests…

March 30, 2018

Oliver Windridge

Without wanting to trivialise the hard work needed to litigate human rights cases, it is often implementation that is considered the pinnacle of achievement. Put simply, it is one thing to convince a commission or court that a countries’ policies or actions contravene a human rights instrument, it…

November 26, 2020

Melanie Fink

On Friday 23 October, a joint investigation conducted by Bellingcat, Lighthouse Reports, Der Spiegel, ARD, and TV Asahi revealed that the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) has been complicit in human rights violations at the Greek maritime border. Videos and satellite photos…

November 3, 2020

Merijn Chamon Thomas Verellen Szilárd Gáspár-Szilágyi

In a reaction to an EJIL: Talk! post by Baetens et al., Arcuri et al. claim that the Dutch parliament has the right to reject CETA and also argue in favour of it doing so. The post by Arcuri et al. raises important points that merit…

October 30, 2020

Joseph Weiler

Josep Borrell, High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the Commission of the European Union – the EU’s foreign affairs chief and effectively the ‘Minister of Foreign Affairs of the EU’ – completes in these days his first year in office. He granted…

November 23, 2020

Douglas Guilfoyle

On Thursday 19 November Australia faced a reckoning with its recent past in Afghanistan.* Australian political culture approaches our armed forces with a great degree of deference and respect. Three of our last four Governors General have been, for example, senior military leaders. The Australian Defence Force support…

November 21, 2020

Marko Milanovic

On this day 75 years ago, Justice Robert Jackson (who never finished college and did only one year of law school), on leave from the US Supreme Court while he served as the Chief US Prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal, delivered his opening statement in courtroom 600…

November 20, 2020

Douglas Guilfoyle

I have previously written on the Independent Expert Review (IER) of the International Criminal Court and its findings on questions of governance structure and culture. In this blog post I’d like to turn to two other running themes through the report: trust and tenure.* The…