Two Weeks in Review, 20 June – 3 July

Kateryna Busol argues that any international law response and analysis of the situation in Ukraine and Russia’s actions needs to go beyond 2022, given ‘Russia’s neo-imperial fixation on Ukraine spiked in 2014’. Busol offers an overview of Ukraine’s domestic and international legal response to Russia’s aggression and outlines how the international community should understand what is happening. Read Busol’s post here.

Florian Kriener discusses the recent decision of the ECtHR in Case of Ecodefence and Others v. Russia which concerns the Russian Foreign Agents Act. The ECtHR found five interferences with Article 11, the right protecting freedom of assembly and association, and that restrictions upon NGOs were not “necessary in a democratic society”. Kriener concludes that

The ECtHR’s judgment comes too late for Russian civil society. The space for civil society had already been shrinking continuously throughout the last years … [However],it clarifies that the societies of the ECHR member states are interconnected and cannot be shielded from one another on the grounds of protecting sovereignty.’

Read Kriener analysis here.

Marko Milanovic offers a blistering critique of the Draft British Bill of Rights. Milanovic concludes by saying:

Simply put, this is not a bill about genuinely protecting individual rights, on this issue or the others I discussed. This is a bill that sets the stage for future showdowns between Britain and the European Court, which will inevitably harm the integrity and authority of the Convention system, and serve as another vehicle for the ‘culture wars’ that the present British Government seems to be so interested in waging.  

Read his full analysis on the draft Bill here.

Kyle Johnson and Juan Pappier discuss whether there is an armed conflict between the Colombian government and the Comandos de la Frontera to which IHL might apply. They conclude ‘that IHL does not appear to be applicable to the fighting between the Colombian armed forces and the Comandos since it appears to fall short of the relevant threshold.’ Read their analysis here.

Linnéa Nordlander and Alessandro Monti offer their analysis on a new case lodged before the ECtHR that challenges 12 states for their membership of the Energy Charter Treaty ‘on the grounds that it unjustly protects fossil fuel investors’. They conclude by arguing that ‘by highlighting the potential human rights violations that the ECT could entail, the ECT case may incentivize parties to the Convention to further prioritise success in the ECT reform process, while the claim awaits judicial assessment.’

All recent Events and Announcements can be found here.

The European Journal of International Law has new advance articles and advance reviews available to read online.