Principle of Non-Intervention

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Must States Control Their Borders? The Ceuta Crisis and International Law

August 18, 2026

Ceuta, a Spanish city on the North African coast with a population of approximately 80,000, experienced an unprecedented mass influx of people during the last week of July. Around 70,000 people, mostly Moroccan nationals but also persons from other countries, entered the territory irregularly. Although the precise causes remain uncertain, the immediate trigger appears to have been a wave of false information on social media claiming that Spain’s border was open. That claim was partly based on a distorted reading of a 29 June 2026 judgment of the Spanish Supreme Court concerning the so-called “rejection at the border” (rechazo en frontera) regime applicable at the Ceuta and Melilla fences.

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The Twice-Coerced Zambia and the Synergy Between Human Rights Violations and Prohibited Intervention

May 13, 2026

Last week, like many other scholars and activists, I was due to participate in RightsCon, the leading conference on human rights in the digital age. This year it was supposed to take place in Zambia, with thousands of participants. The conference is organised by Access Now. They had for many months directly cooperated with the…

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U.S.’s moves to label Brazilian crime syndicates as “terrorist organizations”: a prelude to the use of force?

March 18, 2026

On March 6th, 2026, the United States re-ignited their pressure on Brazil to designate two major Brazilian crime syndicates, PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital) and Comando Vermelho, as “terrorist organizations”. In this post, I will introduce the U.S. practice to label Latin American drug syndicates “terrorist organizations”, and outline how this raises issues in relation…

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Two Weeks in Review: 23 February—6 March 2026

March 8, 2026

Here we go again? Last weekend saw yet another shock to the system, as the US and Israel launched an armed attack on Iran: the last week on the blog has seen some initial reactions. These are joined by analyses of the hard-fought (and already faltering?) EU-Mercosur trade agreement, regional shifts in dispute settlement under UNCLOS, an apparently…

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Expropriation, Oil and the Prohibition on the Use of Force: Justification Narratives and the Effectiveness of International Law in the Venezuela Crisis

January 13, 2026

The US military intervention in Venezuela amounts to a manifest breach of the prohibition on the use of force under international law. Neither self-defence nor authorization by the UN Security Council can be invoked to justify the use of military force under these circumstances. The operation also clearly violates the principle of non-intervention, as it was explicitly aimed…

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