Security

Page 1 of 5

Filter category

Feature post image

How the war in Ukraine impacts the law and politics of security guarantees

The paradoxical revival of security guarantees Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has revived the concept of security guarantees. Their content and scope have been central to scholarly and political debates about Kyiv’s resistance to the Russian aggression (see here and here). Yet, this revival highlights a paradox: if existing arrangements had been effective, there would be no need for new ones. The 1994 Budapest Memorandum—signed by Ukraine, Russia, the UK, and the USA when Kyiv joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and registered as an international instrument with the UN in 2014—has proven toothless. Russia has violated its commitment to refrain from threatening or using force against Ukraine’s territorial integrity or political independence, and attempts by the other signatories to activate the UN Security Council to assist Ukraine have come to nothing—not least due to Russia’s veto. As States attempt to design new security guarantees for Ukraine and adapt Europe’s security architecture to new geopolitical realities, this paradox persists, raising…

Read more

A peace treaty for Ukraine: Mini-symposium on international legal issues

In the four years since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the prospects of a negotiated peace settlement have waxed but mostly waned. But the possibility of an agreement has been an ongoing focus for international lawyers. This is primarily because Russia has demanded territorial concessions from Ukraine that appear at odds with…

Read more

From “Blinking Red” to AMIA: An Emerging Standard of Intelligence Failure Under the Right to Life

On 1 September 2004, more than a thousand people were taken hostage in School No. 1 in Beslán, North Ossetia. Three days later, at least 334 of them — including 186 children — were dead. On 18 July 1994, a vehicle laden with explosives detonated in front of the headquarters of the AMIA — the Asociación Mutual…

Read more

The Court That Built the Advisory Opinion It Refused to Complete: OC-30/25 on Arms Trafficking, Corporate Immunity, and the Reach of Advisory Jurisdiction

Mexico’s effort to hold the gun industry to account has now encountered an institutional setback in San José. Its request for an advisory opinion raised six questions before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR). This post examines, against a more expansive account of OC-30/25 offered here, whether laws granting public or private arms-industry companies…

Read more

The Inter‑American Court’s Warning Shot: Illicit U.S. Firearms and the Hemispheric Duty States Keep Ignoring

Criminal organizations finance, procure, broker, transport, and illegally distribute U.S.‑made weapons throughout Latin America and the Caribbean to fuel political violence in the region. Latin America is experiencing a surge of violence that is neither spontaneous nor locally contained. It is engineered—manufactured, trafficked, and laundered through a hemispheric supply chain that begins overwhelmingly in the United States and…

Read more