Indigenous Peoples

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International Courts Against the Defunding of Climate Science? Revisiting the ICJ’s Climate Change Advisory Opinion

July 21, 2026

Anna Saunders

Introduction The first eighteen months of the second Trump administration have witnessed a sustained assault on scientific infrastructures enabling understanding of anthropogenic climate change. This has taken the form of cuts to national science agencies; freezes and dramatic reductions in grants to universities; and attempts to dismantle observation arrays and crucial monitoring stations. It has also extended to research jointly conducted with partners in other states, who have received questionnaires requiring them to disclose whether their work involves ‘climate’ or ‘environmental justice’. Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin has described the goal of the administration as ‘driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion’. The current government in the United States is not the first to pursue an anti-science agenda: publicly-funded science and the future conduct of scientific research has been under threat by far-right governments in Argentina and Brazil.

Forced Sterilisation before the Inter-American Court: Between Progress and Silence in Ramos Durand v. Peru

April 1, 2026

Anna Kohte

On 5 March, the Inter-American Court on Human Rights (IACtHR) notified its long-awaited judgment in Celia Edith Ramos Durand v. Peru. The case concerns the forced sterilisation of Celia Edith Ramos Durand and stands for thousands of predominantly Indigenous women who were sterilised under coercive conditions in Peru in the late 1990s. It is only the second…

Lupaka Gold v. Peru (2025) at ICSID: Indigenous Self-Determination and State Responsibility in International Investment Law

October 10, 2025

José Saldaña

On June 30th 2025, an international arbitration tribunal at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) held that Peru had breached its obligations under the Canada – Peru Free Trade Agreement (FTA) by failing to provide full protection and security (FPS) and fair and equitable treatment to the Canadian mining company Lupaka Gold Corp. The…

A new future for New Caledonia?

August 29, 2025

Ignacio Portela

New Caledonia, a French overseas territory in the Pacific, might become a state within France. The French government and six delegations representing pro- and anti- independence factions in New Caledonia have signed the Bougival Accord, a draft agreement setting a one-year timeline to reconfigure France’s constitutional system and its relation to its former colony. The accord is…

Legal Pluralism in Practice: Colombia’s New Framework for Indigenous Territorial Self-Government

July 3, 2025

Marzia Genovese

In May 2025, the Colombian government took a historic step toward realising a long-delayed constitutional promise: by means of a decree, it recognised the right of indigenous peoples to establish autonomous territorial entities with their own governments, legal systems and control over land and resources. This decree operationalises Articles 7 and 246 of the Colombian…

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The Right to Regulate for Public Morals Upheld (Somewhat): The WTO Panel Report in EC-Seal Products

January 27, 2014

Diane Desierto

There have been few interpretations of Article XX(a) of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT 1994) - the specific exception that justifies what would ordinarily be a State's GATT-inconsistent measure, unless such measure is deemed "necessary to protect public morals". As with any of the ten enumerated exceptions under Article XX of GATT 1994, a State invoking GATT…

Canada Avoids Indigenous Reconciliation and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

July 3, 2019

Michael Fakhri

If you believe that Canada is a country filled with self-effacing and polite people, you may miss the genocidal violence within its borders. First Nations, Inuit, and Métis have always known that the Government of Canada along with the Canadian provincial governments have deliberately implemented and enabled the continuous annihilation of Indigenous peoples. The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered…

The Ogiek Case of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights: Not So Much News After All?

June 16, 2017

Ricarda Roesch

On Friday, May 26, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Court) delivered its long-awaited judgement on the expulsion of the Ogiek people, a Kenyan hunter-gatherer community, from their ancestral lands in the Mau forest. As the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Commission) did not manage to settle the conflict, it was…

The Myth and Mayhem of ‘Build Back Better’: Human Rights Decision-Making and Human Dignity Imperatives in COVID-19

May 25, 2020

Diane Desierto

Human rights were already under siege everywhere around the world before COVID-19. But there is also a dawning race now against reaching the ‘twilight of human rights law’, due to: 1) authoritarian regimes’ dismissal of the relevance of human rights while using this pandemic to expand and consolidate their power, such as to silence speech,…