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‘Vote leave, take control’ was the slogan of almost fiendish simplicity that helped win the Brexit referendum, masking the mendacity and absence of vision that underlay it. The impulses it captures—wresting sovereignty back from remote elites to Westminster, with its proud democratic tradition—echo those that have for years underpinned the opprobrium directed at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in British public debate.
In preparation for the European Society of International Law (ESIL) 12th Annual Conference, we asked some of our authors to reflect on this year’s conference theme ‘How International Law Works in Times of Crisis’. What are the major challenges facing the field, and is international law effective in addressing these issues? What role do international lawyers play in confronting crises, both old and new?
After decades of tension over Japan’s failure to address atrocities that it perpetrated before and during World War II, the island nation’s relations with its regional neighbors, China and South Korea, are improving. Last month, for the first time in years, representatives of Japan’s Upper House resumed exchanges with Chinese parliamentarians.
While exciting topics such as autonomous weapons and cyberwarfare may at first blush seem like the most “important new frontiers” in international humanitarian law, there is another more immediate and complex challenge confronting those engaged in current and looming wars, a challenge with a human face. Today and unfortunately tomorrow, professional militaries find, and will continue to find, it increasingly difficult to determine who is friend or foe in the modern battle-space.
It's been another exciting year for international law at Oxford University Press. We have put together some highlights from 2015 to reflect on the developments that have taken place, from scholarly commentary on current events to technology updates and conference discussions.
The 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10th this year prompted some reflections and grounds for concern about international human rights law.
The fifth annual ASIL Research Forum is taking place 23-24 October 2015 in Washington, DC. Attendees will present and discuss works-in-progress that explore many topics in international law including energy, financial regulation, international criminal courts, trade, and treaty practice.
Since its inception, the Islamic State (IS) has engaged in continuous behavior that violates the law of armed conflict (LOAC). These acts include the torture and killing of civilians; inhumane treatment of detainees generally, and in particular, women; forced compliance with religious and cultural practices; and, most recently, the systematic destruction and/or illegal sale of important cultural property.
Where and when did the history of international law begin? Many scholars have argued about the definitive date and periodisation of certain dynamic developments, let alone which treaties, institutions, and figures have shaped the field's core doctrines.
August 19th is World Humanitarian Day, declared by the UN General Assembly in 2008, out of a growing concern for the safety and security of humanitarian workers who are increasingly killed and wounded direct military attacks or infected by disease when helping to combat global health pandemics.
Which Nordic state had sovereignty over Iceland until 1918? Which state was allowed to discriminate against a transgender woman by annulling her marriage? Who disputed ownership of Eastern Greenland before the Permanent Court of International Justice? In preparation for the European Society of International Law's 11th annual conference, this year held in Oslo, test your knowledge of Nordic countries in international law with our quiz.
The factual backdrop to this affair is well-known. FIFA, world football’s governing body has, for a number of years, been the subject of allegations of corruption. Then, after a series of dawn raids on 27 May 2015, seven FIFA officials, of various nationalities, the most famous being Jack Warner, the Trinidadian former vice president of FIFA, were arrested in a luxury hotel in Zurich where they were staying prior to the FIFA Congress.
Customary international law arises from the practices of nations followed out of a sense of legal obligation. Although long an important source of international law, there continues to be debate and uncertainty about customary international law’s status in the US legal system.
Taiwan easily satisfies the traditional requirements for statehood: a permanent population, effective control over a territory, a government, and the capacity to interact with other states. Yet the realities of global power politics have kept Taiwan from being recognized as such.
The American Society of International Law’s annual meeting (8 – 11 April 2015) will focus on the theme ‘Adapting to a Rapidly Changing World’. In preparation for this meeting, we have asked some key authors to share their thoughts on the ways in which their specific areas of international law have adapted to our rapidly changing world.
Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 was a watershed in international relations because with this act, Moscow challenged the post-Cold War international order. Yet what has been fascinating is that over the last years, Russia’s President and Foreign Minister have repeatedly referred to ‘international law’ as one of Russia’s guiding foreign policy principles.
To speak of sovereign equality today is to invite disdain, even outright dismissal. In an age that has become accustomed to compiling “indicators“ of “state failure,” revalorizing nineteenth-century rhetoric about “great powers,” and circumventing established models of statehood with a nebulous “responsibility to protect,” sovereign equality seems little more than a throwback to a simpler, less complicated era.
To be sure, as a general principle, sovereign equality remains foundational to both customary and conventional international law. Article 2(1) of the UN Charter retains its nominally sacrosanct status, a foundational point of reference for a modern international law that promised to do away with the “standard of civilization”. Similarly, all the other classic articulations of independence and non-interference, especially the 1970 Friendly Relations Declaration, continue to be invoked, often with much the same spirit of solemnity.
Yet a great deal has also changed in recent decades. We have grown familiar to hearing that borders are no longer what they once were (or what, at any rate, they were once imagined to be). Traversed by goods, services, people, and capital, not to mention information, territorial frontiers have been characterized by wave upon wave of globalization theory as “fluid” and “porous”. Likewise, conventional legal models of recognition and jurisdiction have come under intense criticism. Among other things, the colonization of large chunks of international law scholarship by political science has generated a large literature on “rogue states”.
Not surprisingly, such developments have put the very idea of sovereign equality under pressure. And this, in turn, has had significant systemic consequences for international law as a whole.
Of course, sovereign equality is not without its problems. The principle has legitimated the very injustice it is purportedly designed to combat, enshrouding real inequality in a purely notional equality. After all, in itself, a bare assertion that states are equal and endowed with the same legal personality does remarkably little to rectify actually existing inequalities. Worse still, “rights of sovereignty” have been invoked to justify all manner of abuses, typically by national elites determined to augment and consolidate their class power.
Part of the difficulty here is that far from being inherently “progressive”, sovereign equality is a concept with a rather murky pedigree. While its roots reach back centuries, the principle assumed strong doctrinal form during the nineteenth century by way of the Concert of Europe’s commitment to the European balance of power. This commitment was typically premised upon the impermissibility of intervention in “civilized” states and the permissibility of intervention in “uncivilized” and “semi-civilized” regions. That is hardly an ideal foundation for an emancipatory principle.
All of this is true. But it is also worth keeping in mind that sovereign equality has frequently furnished politically and economically weaker states with a measure of protection against aggression and intervention. As a response to de facto inequality, international lawyers instinctively prioritize de jure equality. Absent such insistence on formally equal rights and obligations, it is often assumed, the will and interests of some states would be subordinated to the will and interests of other states, with predictably dire implications for international legal order.
To underscore the significance of sovereign equality today is not to cling to an outdated mode of conceiving international relations. Nor is it to deny that sovereign power has its “dark sides”. It is simply to stress the need for greater appreciation of the fact that sovereignty may under certain circumstances provide a buffer against some of the most direct and explicit forms of inter-state violence. It is worth recalling that the history of international law is to no small degree the history of attempts to secure recognition for (one or another account of) sovereign equality. This is anything but a puerile pursuit.
Headline image credit: Map of the world. CC0 via Pixabay.
International law has faced profound challenges in 2014 and the coming year promises further complex changes. For better or worse, it’s an exciting time to be working in international law at Oxford University Press. Before 2014 comes to a close, we thought we’d take a moment to reflect on the highlights of another year gone by.
We published a new comprehensive study into the development, proliferation, and work of international adjudicative bodies: The Oxford Handbook of International Adjudication edited by Cesare Romano, Karen Alter, and Yuval Shany.
In early April, we were finalizing preparations for ASIL-ILA 2014, as were many of our authors and readers. By combining the American Society of International Law and the International Law Association, the schedule was full of interesting discussions and tough choices.
David Caron, co-author of the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules 2nd edition with OUP’s very own Merel AlsteinAntonios Tzanakopoulos, author of Disobeying the Security Council: Countermeasures against Wrongful Sanctions, and OUP’s very own John Louth
We worked with the authors of The Locus Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the end of Violence, Gary A. Haugen and Victor Boutros, to develop an infographic and learn how solutions like media coverage and business intervention have begun to positively change countries like the Congo, Cambodia, Peru, and Brazil.
EJIL: Live!, the official podcast of the European Journal of International Law (EJIL), launched. Podcasts are released in both video and audio formats to coincide with the publication of each issue of EJIL. View all episodes.
The World Cup highlighted the global issue of exploitation of low and unskilled temporary migrant workers, particularly the rights of migrant workers in Qatar in advance of the 2022 World Cup and the abuses of those rights.
In advance of September’s 10th anniversary European Society of International Law meeting, we asked our experts what they thought the future of international law might look like.
On 30 August we put together a content map of international law articles in recognition of the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances. Click the pins below to be taken to the full text articles.
August saw the publication of the third edition of one of our best-regarded works on international criminal law — Principles of International Criminal Law by Gerhard Werle and Florian Jeßberge — as well as our latest addition to the Oxford Commentaries on International Law series — The Chemical Weapons Convention: A Commentary edited by Walter Krutzsch, Eric Myjer, and Ralf Trapp.
In September, Scotland voted in a referendum. Anthony Carty and Mairianna Clyde addressed what might it have meant for Scottish statehood had Scotland voted for independence? And Stephen Tierney addressed the question, what would an independent Scotland look like?
In celebration of ESIL’s 10th anniversary conference in September, we put together a quiz featuring the eleven cities that have had the honour of hosting an ESIL conference or research symposium since the first in 2004. Each place is the answer to one of these questions – see if you can match the international law event to the right city.
Ingo Venzke at the European Society of International Law meeting in Vienna
September saw the release of Human Rights: Between Idealism and Realism by Christian Tomuschat, an unique and fully updated study on a fundamental topic of international law.
Amal Alamuddin, Barrister at Doughty Street Chambers, co-editor of The Special Tribunal for Lebanon: Law and Practice, and contributor to Principles of Evidence in International Criminal Justice, married the actor George Clooney. Congratulations, Amal!
On 21 September we celebrated Peace Day. We put together an interactive map showing a selection of significant peace treaties that were signed from 1648 to 1919. All of the treaties mapped here include citations to their respective entries in the Consolidated Treaty Series, edited and annotated by Clive Parry (1917-1982).
On 24 September Oxford Historical Treaties launched on Oxford Public International Law. Oxford Historical Treaties is a comprehensive online resource of nearly 16,000 global treaties concluded between 1648 and 1919 (between the Peace of Westphalia and the establishment of the League of Nations).
October
On 10 October, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi. In recognition of their tremendous work, we made a selection of articles on children’s rights free to read online for the month of October.
On 16 October, Ruti Teitel gave a talk on her new book Globalizing Transitional Justice, which published in May 2014, at Book Culture in New York. The event included a panel discussion with Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the first Prosecutor (June 2003-June 2012) of the new and permanent International Criminal Court, and Jack Snyder, the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science and the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia.
Ruti Teitel at Book Culture in New York
In October, we were preparing for the 2014 International Law Weekend Annual Meeting at Fordham Law School, in New York City (24-25 October 2014). We were also busy preparing for the FDI Moot, which gathers academics and practitioners from around the world to discuss developments and gain a greater understanding of growing international investment, the creation of international investment treaties, domestic legislation, and international investment contracts. Read more here.
In recognition of UN Day this year on 26 October, we created a free article collection featuring content from international law journals, the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, and The Charter of the United Nations.
In October we published the first in a major three-volume manual bringing together the law of the sea, shipping law, maritime environmental law, and maritime security law. Prepared in collaboration with the International Maritime Law Institute, the International Maritime Organization’s research and training institute, The IMLI Manual on International Maritime Law: Volume I: The Law of the Sea is edited by Malgosia Fitzmaurice, and Norman Martinez with David Attard as the General Editor.
November
In November we published our annual report on armed conflict around the world. The War Report: Armed Conflict in 2013, edited by Stuart Casey-Maslen, provides detailed information on every armed conflict which took place during 2013, offering an unprecedented overview of the nature, range, and impact of these conflicts and the legal issues they created.
In mid-November we published the second edition of Environmental Diplomacy: Negotiating More Effective Global Agreements, by Lawrence E. Susskind and Saleem H. Ali, which discusses the geopolitics of negotiating international environmental agreements. The new edition provides an additional perspective from the Global South and a broader analysis of the role of science in environmental treaty-making.
Judicial Review of National Security expanded our Terrorism and Global Justice Series in late November. Author David Scharia gave a book talk at NYU School of Law’s Center on Law and Security soon after the book published. The talk began with an introduction from President (ret.) Dorit Beinisch of the Supreme Court of Israel.
December
In celebration of Human Rights Day 2014, we asked some key thinkers in human rights law to share stories about their experiences of working in this field, and the ways in which they determined their specific focuses. These reflective pieces were collated into an article for the OUPblog. Additionally, we made a collection of over thirty articles from law and human rights journals free for six months, and promoted a number of books titles alongside the journal collection, on a central page. Finally, 50 landmark human rights cases were mapped across the globe.
For almost a hundred years, international law has been on the receiving end of relentless criticism from the policy and academic worlds. That law, sometimes called the law of nations, consists of the web of rules developed by states around the world over many centuries through treaties and customary practices, some bilateral, some regional, and some global. Its rules regulate issues from the very technical (how our computers communicate internationally or the lengths of airport runways) to areas of common global concern (rules for ships on the seas or ozone pollution) to the most political for individual states (like when they can go to war or the minimum standards for human rights).
The first challenge to international law comes from those politicians, pundits, and political scientists who see it as fundamentally ineffective, a point they see as proved ever since the League of Nations failed to enforce the Versailles Treaty regime against the Axis in the 1930s. But those who really know how states relate to each other, whether diplomats or academics, have long found this criticism an unrealistic caricature. While some rules have little dissuasive power over some states, many if not most important rules, are generally followed, with serious consequences for violators, like ostracism, reciprocal responses, or even sanctions. The list of routinely respected rules is enormous, from those on global trade to the law of the sea to the treatment of diplomats to the technical areas mentioned above. Most international cooperation is grounded in some legal rules.
The second challenge to international law has come from domestic lawyers and some legal scholars who asserted that international law is not really “law” because it lacks the structure of domestic law, in particular an executive or police force that can enforce the rules. But this too is a canard. As the British legal scholar H.L.A. Hart pointed out more than a half-century ago, one does not need to have perfect enforcement for a rule to be “law,” as long as the parties treat the rules as law. With international law, states certainly interact in a way that shows they treat those rules as law. They expect them to be followed and reserve special opprobrium and responses for law violators. Certainly, powerful states can get away with some law violations more easily than weak states, but that has nothing to do with whether international law is law.
Third, international law has faced a challenge from some philosophers and global leaders that it is fundamentally immoral. They claim that its rules reflect self-interested bargains among governments, but lack moral content. It is intriguing that this moral criticism actually comes from two opposite directions. On the one hand, so-called cosmopolitan philosophers, who think people’s moral duties to one another should not turn on nationality or national borders (which they view as morally arbitrary), condemn many rules for sacrificing concern for the individual, wherever he or she may live, for the mere interests of states. On the other hand, leaders of many developing world nations claim that many of international law’s rules are immoral for not privileging states enough, in particular because they see the rules as part of a move by Northern states to undermine poor nations’ national sovereignty.
One example shows the criticism. Consider the rule on secession, a rule that helps us evaluate, for instance, whether Crimea’s separation from Ukraine, and Russia’s engineering of that move, is illegal. International law has a “black-letter” rule that strictly limits the possibility for a group of people disaffected with their government to secede unilaterally from their state, only endorsing it if the government is severely denying them representation in the state. The point of the rule is to avoid the violence that comes from secessions – as we have seen from the break-up of Yugoslavia, the war between Sudan and the recently formed South Sudan, and the Ukraine-Russia conflict today. Cosmopolitan philosophers condemn the rule for not allowing individuals enough choice, by forcing people to remain tied to a state when they would prefer to have their own state, just for the sake of the stability of existing and arbitrary inter-state borders. Developing world leaders, often intolerant of minority groups in their state, criticize the rule for the opposite – for harming states by opening the door, however slightly, for some groups to secede and form their own states.
I think both of these criticisms miss the mark. In my view, many core rules of international law are indeed just because they do what all rules of international law must do – they promote peace, interstate or domestic, while respecting basic human rights. We need international rules to promote peace because the global arena is still characterized by a great deal of interstate and internal violence. At the same time, we cannot tolerate rules that trample on basic human rights, which are a sort of moral minimum for how we treat individuals.
This standard for a just system of international law is different from the more robust form of justice we might expect for a domestic society. The great theory of contemporary justice, that of John Rawls, demands both an equal right to basic liberty for all individuals within a state and significant redistribution of material wealth to eliminate the worst economic inequality. But we can’t really expect international law to do this right (particularly the second) now. Why? Because we cannot assume the domestic tranquility on which to build that more robust justice, and because the international arena does not have the same kind of strong institutions to force those sorts of rules on everyone (even though it can force some rules on recalcitrant states).
To return to my example about secessions, I think the rule we have strikes the right balance between peace and human rights. It promotes interstate and internal peace by disallowing merely unhappy groups to separate unilaterally; but it keeps the door open to that possibility if they are facing severe discrimination from the central government. So the Scots, Quebecers, or ethnic Russians in Ukraine do not have a right to secede, but Estonians did, and maybe Kurds still do. Other rules of international law will also meet this test, though I think some of them do risk undermining human rights.
Why should we care whether international rules are just? Because, as I stated earlier, those norms actually do guide much governmental action today. If a norm of international law is just, we have given global leaders and the public good reasons to respect it – as well as good reasons to be wary of changing it without careful reflection. And for those that are not, we can use an ethical appraisal to map out a course of action to improve the rules. That way, we can develop an international law that can promote global justice.
Today, 10 December, is Human Rights Day, commemorating The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action. In celebration, we’re sharing an edited extract from International Human Rights Law, Second Edition by Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch.
The modern state can be a source of both good and evil. It can do much good – protecting our security, ensuring our basic necessities, nurturing an environment in which people can flourish to the best of their abilities. But when it represses its people, shirks its duties, or misapplies its resources, it can be the source of much suffering.
International human rights law sets forth the core obligations of governments toward their people, prescribing the basic freedoms that governments must respect and the steps they must take to uphold public welfare. But the application of that law often differs from the enforcement of statutes typically found in a nation’s law books.
In countries that enjoy the rule of law, the courts can usually be relied on to enforce legislation. The rule of law means that courts have the independence to apply the law free of interference, and powerful actors, including senior government officials, are expected to comply with court orders.
In practice, there is no such presumption in most of the countries where my organization, Human Rights Watch, works, and where international human rights law is most needed. The judges are often corrupt, intimidated, or compromised. They may not dare hold the government to account, or they may have been co-opted to the point that they do not even try, or the government may succeed in ignoring whatever efforts they make.
International human rights law should be seen as a law of last resort when domestic rights legislation fails. Judicial enforcement is always welcome, but when it falls short, human rights law provides a basis that is distinct from domestic legislation for putting pressure on governments to uphold their obligations.
Human rights groups investigate and report on situations in which governments fall short of their obligations. The resulting publicity, through the media and other outlets, can undermine a government’s standing and credibility, embarrassing it before its people and peers and generating pressure for reform.
Beyond documenting and reporting violations of human rights law, human rights groups must shape public opinion to ensure that the exposure of government misconduct is met with opprobrium rather than approval. In part this is done by citing international law to convince the public of a global consensus about what is right or wrong in a given context. By presenting an issue in terms of rights, human rights groups help the public to develop a moral framework for assessing governmental conduct beyond public sentiment in any particular case or incident.
For the law to play this role of moral instruction, it is not enough simply to recite it. When people’s security or traditions are at stake, it takes more than a mere reference to the law to change the public’s sense of moral propriety. Human rights groups must be creative in moving the public to embrace what the law demands.
Sometimes it is difficult to convince a local public to disapprove of its government’s conduct. Thus, the great challenge facing human rights groups is often less concerned with arguing the law’s fine points or applying them to the facts of a case than with convincing the public that violations are wrong. That requires the hard work of helping the public to identify with the victim’s plight, making the law come alive, and generating outrage at its violation with some public of relevance. When human rights law can be made to correspond with the public’s sense of right and wrong, governments face intense pressure to respect that law. Shame can be a powerful motivator.
What are the ties that bind us together? How can we as a global community share the same ideals and values? In celebration of Human Rights Day, we have asked some key thinkers in human rights law to share stories about their experiences of working in this field, and the ways in which they determined their specific focuses.
* * * * *
“My area of research is complementary forms of international protection, which is where international refugee law and international human rights law merge. Since the beginning of time, there has been an element of compassion in customary and religious norms justifying the acceptance of and assistance to persons banned from their communities or forced to leave their homes for reasons of poverty, natural disasters, or other reasons outside their control. Based on a general conviction that the alleviation of suffering is a moral imperative, many industralized countries included in their domestic migration practice the possibility to grant residence permits to certain categories of persons, who seemingly fall outside their international obligations, but who they considered to deserve protection and assistance because of a sense that this is what humanity dictates. In the past twenty years, many of these categories have become regulated and categorized as beneficiaries of protection, either through a broad interpretation of the refugee concept or through the adoption of new legislation confirming the domestic practice of States, such as the EC Qualification Directive. I find this to be a fascinating area of international law because, it shows how human rights and the notion of ‘humanitarianism’ (i.e. reasons of compassion, charity or need) have generated legal obligations to protect and assist aliens outside their country of origin.”
“My work focuses on the forms and functions of the law when faced with contemporary mass crimes and their traces (testimony, archives, and the (dead) body). It questions the relationship between law, memory, history, science, and truth. To do so, I call into question the various legal mechanisms (traditional/alternative, judicial/extrajudicial) used in the treatment of mass crimes committed by the State and their heritage, especially at the heart of criminal justice (national and international), transitional justice, international human rights law, and constitutional law. In this context I have explored the close relationship between international criminal law and international human rights law. These two branches of law, that have distinct objects and goals, are linked by what they have in common: the protection of the individual. Their interaction culminated in the 90s when international criminal law, and in a larger sense transitional justice, boomed: an actual human rights turn took place with the strong mobilization of human rights in favour of the ‘fight against impunity’ of the gravest international crimes. At the heart of this human rights turn lays the consecration of a new human right, namely, the ‘right to the truth’, which is the object of my current research.”
“I decided early on to focus in my work on how rights perform when they are put under some kind of strain. That could be panic and fear emerging from a terrorist attack, or resource limitations at national or international level, or political structures that make effective enforcement of rights (un)feasible, for example. It seemed to me to be important to think about the resilience of the language and structures, as well as the law, of human rights because in the end of the day we rely on states to deliver rights in a meaningful way and this raises all sorts of challenges around legitimacy, will, embeddedness, international relations, domestic politics, legal systems, constitutional frameworks, and so on. These are factors that have to be accounted for when we think about what makes human rights law work as a means of ensuring human rights in practice; as a means of limiting the power of states to do as it wishes, regardless of the impact on individual and group welfare, dignity, and liberty. Thus, rather than specialise in any particular right per se, my interest is in frameworks of effective rights protection and understanding what makes them work, or makes them vulnerable, especially in times of strain or crisis.”
“I have always been interested in the protection of individual rights from undue interference by executive authority. So, my scholarly roots arguably originate in classic social contractarianism. In my work, I have been mostly focusing on civil and political rights, whether in the context of constitutional law, criminal justice, or international (human rights) law. An important part of my research examines the (alleged) tension between ‘liberty’ and ‘security’ and explores how this tension plays out in both domestic and international contexts, often addressing the interface between the two dimensions. National security issues, such as terrorism, have featured prominently in my scholarship, but my human rights-related work also extends to the field of preventive justice, including questions relating to the post-sentence detention of ‘dangerous’ individuals for public safety purposes. A fascinating development that has captured my attention recently concerns the expansion of executive power of international organisations. International bodies such as the UN Security Council have become increasingly active in the administration and regulation of matters that once used to be the exclusive domain of States. This shift in governance functions, however, has not been accompanied by the creation of mechanisms to restrain or review the exercise of executive power. I suspect that it is in this area that much of my research will be carried out in the years ahead.”
“I specialize in the interaction between international financial markets and human rights, both in relation to (a) understanding international legal obligations relating to socio-economic rights in the context of financial processes and dynamics; and (b) the business and human rights debate as it applies to financial institutions. My focus on these areas resulted from an awareness that as the world economy globalised over the last twenty years, the financial markets changed beyond all recognition to become a predominant force shaping economic processes. Therefore, although they are generally seen as remote from immediate human rights impacts, they set the context of socio-economic rights enjoyment. The practical challenges involved in realising these rights can only be fully understood by accepting the way financial markets shape economic and policy making options, and outcomes for individuals. As this is a huge field of enquiry and many of the connections have not so far been extensively explored from a human rights point of view, my focus tends to be determined by (a) a desire to bring new areas of the financial markets into a human rights framework, and (b) a desire to respond to issues of importance as they arise, such as financial crisis and austerity.”
— Mary Dowell-Jones, Fellow, Human Rights Law Centre, University of Nottingham, and author of ‘Financial Institutions and Human Rights’ in the Human Rights Law Review
* * * * *
“My research covers a variety of human rights issues, however I have a particular interest in the analysis of domestic violence as a human rights issue. Domestic violence affects vast numbers of people in every state around the globe. The practice of domestic violence constitutes a breach of internationally recognised rights such as the right to be free from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment; the right to private and family life; and, in some circumstances, the right to life itself. However it is only relatively recently that domestic violence has been analysed through the lens of human rights law. For example, it is only since 2007 that judgments of the European Court of Human Rights have been issued which directly focus on domestic violence. Nevertheless, there is now an ever-increasing awareness of domestic violence as a human rights issue, and there have been a number of important recent developments, such as the adoption of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, which entered into force on 1 August 2014.”
“Human rights discourse has been proliferating. Yet I feel that the proliferation of the discourse of human rights does not contribute to the success of implementing human rights on the ground. Perhaps one reason is that human rights scholarship and activism has great appeal to idealists and while idealists whom I admire are good in articulating ideals, they are less capable of carrying out these ideals. I believe that a major difficulty in implementing human rights is the costs of implementation. Human rights organizations may be justifiably appalled by police brutality and urge states to restructure their police forces, but such a restructuring is not costless and it may be detrimental to other urgent concerns including human rights concerns. The good intentions of activists and the scholarly work of theorists (to which I have been committed in the past) may ultimately turn out to be detrimental to the protection of human rights. What I think is urgently needed in order to carry out the lofty ideals is not more human rights scholarship but scholarship which will focus its attention on the best ways to implement the most urgent and basic humanitarian concerns. This is not what I have been doing in my own work but I am convinced it is what needs at this stage to be done. In doing so one ought to constrain idealism in favor of modest pragmatism. Ironically those who can most effectively pursue modest pragmatism are not human rights activists or theorists.”
— Alon Harel, Professor in Law, Hebrew University Law Faculty and Center for Rationality, and author of ‘Human Rights and the Common Good: A Critique’ in the Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies
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“It had long been assumed that the best protection of human rights was a strong, Western-style democracy – if it came to the test, the people would always decide in favour of human rights. Recent developments, however, have challenged this assumption: human rights restrictions introduced after 9/11 in the United States and other Western democracies had strong popular support; the current British government’s plans to weaken (or even withdraw from) the ECHR system seem primarily designed to gain votes; Swiss voters have approved several popular initiatives that conflict with international human rights guarantees. Is the relationship between democracy and human rights not as symbiotic as it is often thought? Do direct democratic systems lend themselves more to tyranny of the majority than representative democracies? What is needed so that the human rights of those in the minority can be effectively protected? These, I believe, are among the most pressing questions that human rights lawyers must confront today.”
Today is United Nations Day, celebrating the day that the UN Charter came into force in 1945. We thought it would be an excellent time to share thoughts from one of their former Commissioners to highlight the work this organization undertakes. The following is an edited extract by Navanethem Pillay, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, from International Human Rights Law, Second Edition.
I was born a non-white in apartheid South Africa. My ancestors were sugarcane cutters. My father was a bus driver. We were poor.
At age 16 I wrote an essay which dealt with the role of South African women in educating children on human rights and which, as it turned out, was indeed fateful. After the essay was published, my community raised funds in order to send this promising, but impecunious, young woman to university.
Despite their efforts and goodwill, I almost did not make it as a lawyer, because when I entered university during the apartheid regime everything and everyone was segregated. However, I persevered. After my graduation I sought an internship, which was mandatory under the law; it was a black lawyer who agreed to take me on board, but he first made me promise that I would not become pregnant. And when I started a law practice on my own, it was not out of choice but because no one would employ a black woman lawyer.
Yet, in the course of my life, I had the privilege to see and experience a complete transformation in my country. Against this background it is no surprise that when I read or recite Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I intimately and profoundly feel its truth. The article stated that: ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood’.
The power of rights made it possible for an ever-expanding number of people, people like myself, to claim freedom, equality, justice, and well-being.
Human rights underpin the aspiration to a world in which every man, woman, and child lives free from hunger and protected from oppression, violence, and discrimination, with the benefits of housing, healthcare, education, and opportunity.
Yet for too many people in the world, human rights remain an unfulfilled promise. We live in a world where crimes against humanity are ongoing, and where the most basic economic rights critical to survival are not realized and often not even accorded the high priority they warrant.
The years to come are crucial for sowing the seeds of an improved international partnership that, by drawing on individual and collective resourcefulness and strengths, can meet the global challenges of poverty, discrimination, conflict, scarcity of natural resources, recession, and climate change.
United Nations Building. Photo by Ashitaka San. CC BY-NC 2.0 via mononoke Flickr.
In 2005, the world leaders at their summit created the UN Human Rights Council, an intergovernmental body which replaced the much-criticized UN Human Rights Council, with the mandate of promoting ‘universal respect for the protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all’. The Council began its operations in June 2006. Since then, it has equipped itself with its own institutional architecture and has been engaged in an innovative process known as the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). The UPR is the Council’s assessment at regular intervals of the human rights record of all UN member states.
In addition, at each session of the Council several country-situations are brought to the fore in addresses and documents delivered by member states, independent experts, and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Today, the Office of the High Commissioner is in a unique position to assist governments and civil society in their efforts to protect and promote human rights. The expansion of its field offices and its presence in more than 50 countries, as well as its increasing and deepening interaction with UN agencies and other crucial partners in government, international organizations, anad civil society are important steps in this direction. With these steps we can more readily strive for practical cooperation leading to the creation of national systems which promote human rights and provide protection and recourse for victims of human rights violations.
In the final instance, however, it is the duty of states, regardless of their political, economic, and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms. Our collective responsibility is to assist states to fulfil their obligations and to hold them to account when they do not.
When the UN General Assembly endorsed the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in 2005, the members of the United Nations recognized the responsibility of states to protect the basic human and humanitarian rights of the world’s citizens. In fact, R2P articulates concentric circles of responsibility, starting with the individual state’s obligation to ensure the well-being of its own people; nested within the collective responsibility of the community of nations to assist individual states in meeting those obligations; in turn encircled by the responsibility of the United Nations to respond if necessary to ensure the basic rights of civilians, with military means only contemplated as a last resort, and only with the consent of the Security Council.
The Responsibility to Protect is a response to war crimes, genocide, and other crimes against humanity. But R2P is also a response to pattern and practice human rights abuses that include entrenched poverty, widespread hunger and malnutrition, and endemic disease and denials of basic health care — all socio-economic conditions which themselves feed and exacerbate armed conflict. In fact, socio-economic development is a powerful mechanism for guaranteeing the full panoply of human rights, just as the Millennium Development Goals are a means of fulfilling the Responsibility to Protect.
While Responsibility to Protect is often misconstrued as a mandate for military action, it is more intrinsically a call to social action, and the embodiment of the joint and several responsibilities of the community of nations to seek a coordinated global response to life-threatening conditions of armed conflict, repression, and socio-economic misery. While diplomats and public servants debate the legality and prudence of military responses to criminal uses of military force against civilians, we must not neglect the legality, prudence, and urgency of non-military responses to public health and poverty emergencies throughout the world.
The United States has put out a call to like-minded nations to join forces, literally and figuratively, in the degradation and destruction of the criminal militancy of the so-called Islamic State [ISIL or ISIL]. Despite concerns that the 2003-2011 US war in Iraq itself may have led to the inception and flourishing of ISIS, and despite warnings that the training, arming, and assisting of Iraqi forces, Shia militias in Iraq and non-ISIS Sunni militants in Syria may inflame sectarian violence and threaten civilians in both countries, the United States is contemplating another open-ended military intervention in the Levant.
A military intervention against ISIS is not justified by the principles of Responsibility to Protect. Without the authorization of the Security Council or the consent of the Syrian government, military intervention is unlawful in Syria, offending both the UN Charter and the tenets of R2P. In either Syria or Iraq a military intervention, even with the permission of the responsible governments, is unlawful if it is likely to lead to further outrages against civilians. Military action that predictably causes the suffering of civilians disproportionate to any legitimate military objectives violates the principles of humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions, as well as the UN Charter and R2P.
UNICEF and partners visit the crowded Marché Niger to continue explaining to families how to they can protect themselves from Ebola. UNICEF have visited many markets, churches, mosques, schools, and community centers throughout Conakry and in the Forest region where the outbreak began. CC BY-NC 2.0 via UNICEF Guinea Flickr.
Alongside the criminal militancy of ISIS we face the existential threat of the Ebola virus in West Africa, endangering the people of Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and their neighbors. Over the past two months, approximately 5000 people have been infected by this hemorrhagic disease, and around 2500 have died, over 150 of them health care workers. At current rates of infection, with new cases doubling every three weeks, the virus could sicken 10,000 by the end of September, 40,000 by mid-November, and 120,000 by the New Year.
Ebola can be contained through basic public health responses: quarantining of the sick, tracing of exposure in families and communities, safe recovery of the bodies of the deceased, regular hand-washing and sanitation, and the all-important rebuilding of trust between effected community members, health care workers, and government officials. But the very countries impacted have fragile health care systems, insufficient hospital beds, and dedicated Red Cross workers, doctors, and nurses nearly besieged by the number of sick people needing care. By funding and supporting more health care and humanitarian relief workers at the international and local levels, more Ebola field hospitals and clinics, and more food, rehydration fluids, and safe blood supplies for transfusions, less new people will fall sick, and more of the infected will be treated and cured. At the same time, the fragile economies and political systems of the effected countries will be strengthened and the threat of regional insecurity will be addressed. Ebola in West Africa is calling out for a coordinated global public health intervention, which will serve our Responsibility to Protect at the local level, while furthering our collective security at the global level.
As the US Congress debates the funding of so-called moderate rebels in Syria in the pursuit of containing the criminal militancy of ISIS, we should turn our national attention to funding Ebola emergency relief in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Such action is consistent with our enlightened self-interest, and required by our humanitarian principles and obligations.
With the 10th European Society of International Law (ESIL) Anniversary Conference just around the corner some key thinkers share their thoughts on what they think the future of international law looks like.
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“International law traditionally flourishes with liberal hegemony, shared interests, or balance-of-powers parity. The first condition is visibly waning. The second and third conditions support regional and functional islands of multilateralism. While those islands may sometimes be shaky, they will continue to provide work for international lawyers. Beyond that, in the rough waters of war, peace, and even justice, the language of international law will also continue to pervade international relations. But it increasingly risks being perceived as an imprudent distraction. That is unless civil societies can unsettle the present monopolies that shape the terms of international legal discourse.”
“The future of international law will be somewhat as with its present: we will witness the continued expansion of international law’s reach into new and emerging areas of common concern, wrought by climate change, technology, and continued processes of international and regional integration that are changing the nature of State-to-State relations. I do hope, however, that there will be continued and sustained critical reflection in scholarship on the impact of law on the international space—on who it empowers and excludes, on the nature of legalisation and its purposes—for it is only through heightened scrutiny, and not unquestioned application, that international law may serve as a progressive force.”
“In my opinion, the international law of the future will be less influenced by the ‘Westphalian model’, for at least two reasons: the increasing role played by non-state actors, in particular armed groups and multinational corporations, which challenges existing state-centred rules of international law, and the emergence of cyberspace as a separate domain, that will entail a rethinking of traditional concepts like territory, sovereignty, and jurisdiction. With regard to the future of international institutions, it remains to be seen whether the United Nations will be able to survive in its outdated structure.”
“The future of international law is likely to be as its past: a vital, though often misunderstood, medium through which social actors at various levels and in various forms can structure and order their interactions, reflect their desires and manifest their concerns. It is neither static nor predictable. Following a period in which there have been high expectations of what international law can achieve, the next few years may be times of challenge as it struggles to deliver solutions which have become expected of it. But this is merely part of the endless re-calibration necessary to reflect the tasks to which it is being put and the realities which need to be faced. If international law does not disappoint from time to time it will cease to be a source of aspiration – and that would make for a far bleaker future.”
“International law has undergone dramatic change in the past fifty years, with issues from human rights to the environment to trade now the subjects of a wide range of hard and soft law instruments. Yet, many of the principles encapsulated within these documents remain unrealized due to the inability of international law to influence domestic law and national political priorities. Oftentimes, international law seems to remain distinct from domestic systems, treated with suspicion by national institutions.
“In the twenty first century, the national and international cannot be so easily separated. In areas such as refugee flows, arms proliferation, environmental degradation and combatting impunity, domestic initiatives and capability hold the key to international security. Agreement on and adherence to international standards is essential if global threats with national origins are to be managed effectively. International law must become not only the standard setter but the enabler and enhancer of domestic capacity. One of the key challenges will be to alter perceptions of international law itself. Rather than being viewed as something to be resisted or resented, side-stepped or paid lip service to, international legal standards must become part of domestic legislative and political agendas. The challenge is enormous, but essential, because, in the words of Anne-Marie Slaughter, the future of international law is domestic.”
“In the security regime, the future of international law looks increasingly dim. Attributability is a prerequisite for accountability, and powerful governments are discovering new ways to mask innovative forms of coercion behind a veil of anonymity. “Little green men” with no visible identification, untraceable drone strikes, “NATO” bombings that conceal belligerents’ identities, cyber-attacks masked by false flags—these sorts of intrusions all erode the rule of law by making it difficult if not impossible to impute responsibility. Should this trend continue, the security regime could look increasingly like Ferguson, Missouri—a juridical black hole where lawless police hide their badges.”
— Michael J. Glennon, Professor of International Law, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, author of National Security and Double Government
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“In my opinion, the future of international law in the coming decades will continue to be shaped by the continued tensions between sovereignty and other interests of the international community, such as the protection of the environment, the development of the Responsibility to Protect and more broadly human rights.
“On the one hand, states will obviously have to continue to accept that the traditional Westphalian model of international law is facing challenges and that things cannot be as they were in the past.
“But on the other hand, activists in various fields need to accept that the world is not changing as fast as they would like everyone to believe and that sovereignty remains a key feature of the international legal order. To a certain extent, as a feature of any given community, sovereignty is in fact conceptually unavoidable in one shape or another, whether at the domestic or the international level. Testimony to this is the continued relevance in international affairs of national(istic) claims which find their legal cristalisation in concepts such as statehood, self-determination and the prohibition of the use of force in international law.
“Accepting this reality is key in shaping realistic, effective and intellectually sound policies that not merely focus on individual rights, however important they are, but also take into account the collective dimensions and interests of any human society.”
— Dov Jacobs, Associate Professor in International Law at the Grotious Centre, Leiden University, contributor to “Targetting the State in Jus post Bellum: Towards a theory of Integrated Sovereignties” in Jus Post Bellum: Mapping the Normative Foundations
On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were assassinated in Sarajevo, setting off a six week diplomatic battle that resulted in the start of the First World War. The horrors of that war, from chemical weapons to civilian casualties, led to the first forays into modern international law. The League of Nations was established to prevent future international crises and a Permanent Court of International Justice created to settle disputes between nations. While these measures did not prevent the Second World War, this vision of a common law for all humanity was essential for international law today. To mark the centenary of the start of the Great War, and to better understand how international law arose from it, we’ve compiled a brief reading list.
How did international law develop from the 15th century until the end of World War II? This 2014 ASIL Certificate of Merit winnor looks at the history of international law in relation to themes such as peace and war, the sovereignty of states, hegemony, and the protection of the individual person. It includes Milos Vec’s ‘From the Congress of Vienna to the Paris Peace Treaties of 1919′ and Peter Krüger’s ‘From the Paris Peace Treaties to the End of the Second World War’.
A detailed study into the 1922-34 exchange of minorities between Greece and Turkey, supported by the League of Nations, in which two million people were forcibly relocated. Check out the specific chapters on: Wilson and international law; US jurisprudence and international law in the wake of WWI; and the failed marriage of the US and the League of Nations and America’s reaction of isolationism through WWII.
How could the world repress aggressive war, war crimes, terrorism, and genocide in the wake of the First World War? Mark Lewis examines attempts to create specific criminal justice courts to address these crimes, and the competing ideologies behind them.
How did the upheaval of the first half of the 20th century impact the creation of public law within and across states? Germany offers an interesting case given its central role in many of the events.
What exactly did ‘neutrality’ mean before, during, and after the First World War? The newly independent Ireland exemplified many of the debates surrounding neutrality and multilateralism.
The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors, Versailles, 28th June 1919 by William Orpen. Imperial War Museum. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
The Treaty of Versailles marked the first significant attempt to hold an individual — Kaiser Wilhelm — accountable for unlawful resort to major military force. Mary Ellen O’Connell and Mirakmal Niyazmatov discuss the prohibition on aggression, the Jus ad Bellum, the ICC Statute, successful prosecution, Kampala compromise, and protecting the right to life of millions of people.
Following the First World war, there was a general movement in international law towards the prohibition of aggressive war. So why is there an absence of legal milestones marking the advance towards the criminalization of aggression?
What is the bridge between the International Military Tribunal, formed following the Treaty of Versailles, and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia? Mohamed Shahabuddeen examines the first traces of the development of international criminal justice before the First World War and today’s ideas of the responsibility of the State and the criminal liability of the individual.
When are sanctions doomed to failure? David J. Bederman analyzes the historical context of the demilitarization sanctions imposed against Iraq in the aftermath of the Gulf War of 1991 from the 1919 Treaty of Versailles through to the present day.
How did legal terminology and provisions concerning hostilities, prisoners of war, and other wartime-related concerns change following the introduction of modern warfare during the First World War?
“League of Nations” by Christian J Tams in the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law
What lessons does the first body of international law hold for the United Nations and individual nations today?
“Alliances” by Louise Fawcett in the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law
Peace was once ensured through a complex web of diplomatic alliances. However, those same alliances proved fatal as they ensured that various European nations and their empires were dragged into war. How did the nature of alliances between nations change following the Great War?
In the midst of tremendous suffering and loss, suffragists continued to march and protest for the rights of women. How did the First World War hinder the women’s suffrage movement, and how did it change many of the demands and priorities of the suffragists?
A brief overview of the development of international law during the interwar period: where there was promise, and where there was failure.
Headline image credit: Stanley Bruce chairing the League of Nations Council in 1936. Joachim von Ribbentrop is addressing the council. Bruce Collection, National Archives of Australia. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
