Two Weeks in Review: 1—12 December 2025

Sixty-five years in the past right now, the UN Common Meeting adopted the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Peoples and Nations. Fourteen years afterward the identical day, it set out its definition of aggression. Each—in several however associated methods—stay extremely pertinent, because the final two weeks at EJIL:Discuss! have proven. The final fortnight takes us from shadow tankers and AI-enabled weapons programs, to Ukrainian and US strikes on foreign-flagged vessels, the Bosnia and Herzegovina Structure at thirty, the reconstruction of Gaza, and an interview with the President of the ICJ. To not point out the following posts within the collection on Worldwide Legislation within the Present Second.

Ukraine

Marko Milanovic asks whether or not states that help a sufferer of aggression—right here, Ukraine—have a authorized proper to say reparations from the aggressor for the prices they incur in offering that help. Though precedent is sparse and causation doctrine malleable, helping states can plausibly qualify as “specifically affected” injured states and their monetary losses are legally attributable to Russia’s ongoing aggression, even when the choice to help was voluntary. He concludes that such claims are cheap in precept, extra convincing than the counter-arguments primarily based on damaged causation or lack of harm, and according to the construction and objective of the regulation of state accountability. However what any court docket would in the end resolve stays unsure—the difficulty will probably be resolved politically relatively than judicially.

Strikes at sea

Wanting on the different aspect of the coin, Himanil Raina turns our consideration to latest Ukrainian strikes on foreign-flagged tankers. He argues that—opposite to a rising narrative—they can’t be justified as assaults on “war-sustaining” targets below the regulation of naval warfare. Whereas acknowledging the complexities of vessel classification in an period of shadow fleets, he stresses that neither Ukraine nor Russia have activated the belligerent rights regime that will allow financial warfare at sea, leaving Article 52(2) Extra Protocol I because the governing commonplace. The result’s a agency rejection of any try and stretch “army goals” to cowl distant financial contributions—such an growth would endanger one of many core tenets of contemporary naval warfare regulation.

These are usually not the one naval strikes elevating questions of worldwide regulation. Mary Ellen O’Connell turns to President Trump’s deadly assaults on small boats at sea—framed as strikes on “narco-terrorists”. She argues that they signify a pointy break from lawful maritime regulation enforcement and a harmful slide into extrajudicial killing. Neither self-defense nor armed-conflict guidelines justify the operations, and makes an attempt to resurrect post-9/11 authorized theories threat normalizing an illegal struggle footing throughout the Caribbean and Pacific. She requires a sustained, clear reaffirmation of the right-to-life framework to forestall these practices from changing into entrenched and to assist future administrations restore compliance with worldwide regulation.

Legislation of the ocean

From strikes at sea, to the regulation of the ocean extra broadly—UNCLOS has remained in focus, this fortnight just like the final.

Hannah Lily and Samantha Robb argue that the upcoming wave of nationwide legal guidelines to implement the BBNJ Settlement affords governments a uncommon probability to shut a serious UNCLOS hole: the dearth of home prohibitions on unauthorised deep seabed mining. Integrating UNCLOS Articles 136–139 into BBNJ laws would strengthen treaty compliance, deter illegal deep seabed mining—together with rising unilateral efforts—and reinforce coherence throughout the authorized regimes governing areas past nationwide jurisdiction.

The dangers of unregulated deep seabed mining for the system at massive are set out by Coalter Lathrop and Franka Nodewald. They argue that aspiring Canadian mining agency, The Metals Firm, is pursuing a twin, mutually incompatible technique—ISA-sponsored contracts and unilateral US permits—a method that threatens the integrity of UNCLOS and the Authority itself. They clarify why the ISA should deal with the TMC Group as a single, successfully Canadian-controlled entity and use its full enforcement powers to disclaim extensions, droop contracts, or terminate them outright. They conclude that solely decisive motion—quarantining TMC from the UNCLOS system—can stop a systemic breach of the “widespread heritage of humankind”.

Darkish doings are usually not restricted to the oceanic depths. Henning Jessen turns his consideration to “shadow fleet” tankers. He argues that they exploit regulatory gaps in UNCLOS and IMO guidelines to evade sanctions, whereas their decentralised, opaque operations make enforcement troublesome and dangerous. He explains why proposed EU bilateral boarding agreements with flag States are impractical—too sluggish, too fragmented, and ill-suited to the fluid realities of those operations. And concludes that the one efficient technique is to focus on the monetary and logistical enablers of the commerce, treating sanctions evasion as organised financial crime relatively than a boarding downside.

ICC jurisdiction: Darfur

The place are the bounds of a UN Safety Council referral? Gabriel M. Lentner turns to Darfur to argue that the ICC lacks a stable authorized foundation to analyze atrocities dedicated since 2023. These occasions are usually not sufficiently linked to the scenario referred by the UN Safety Council in 2005. He explains how ICC observe applies a “adequate hyperlink” check to find out the temporal attain of referrals, highlights judicial disagreement over how strictly that check must be interpreted, and reveals why the present Sudan battle fails to fulfill it. He concludes that solely a brand new Safety Council referral—or Sudan’s consent—can lawfully authorize ICC jurisdiction over the latest crimes.

Gaza reconstruction plan

Constructing on final fortnight’s submit by Michelle Burgis-Kasthala, Helmut Philipp Aust and Alejandro Rodiles Breton argue that UNSC Decision 2803 breaks new floor—and units a harmful precedent—by endorsing Trump’s Gaza “reconstruction” plan. This plan repackages immense destruction right into a libertarian, investor-driven real-estate scheme impressed by charter-city and SEZ ideology. They present how the plan displays Trump’s broader fascination with privately ruled “new cities”, sidesteps Palestinian rights, and dangers entrenching exclusion, displacement, and corporate-style governance below a Safety Council-created entity with worldwide authorized persona. They conclude that, carried out or not, the decision ushers libertarian private-ordering into UN observe in ways in which threaten each Palestinian self-determination and the foundations of worldwide regulation.

AI-enabled weapons programs

From the destruction in Gaza to the programs that make it potential: Marco Di Donato examines AI-enabled weapons programs, arguing that they pose important environmental dangers all through their lifecycle: from mineral extraction for {hardware}, to energy-intensive AI coaching and eventual deployment. These processes contribute to ecological harm, excessive carbon emissions, and potential deliberate environmental hurt, highlighting the necessity for worldwide authorized frameworks to set limits, implement accountability, and regulate non-public actors concerned of their improvement and use.

Bosnia and Herzegovina

On the thirtieth anniversary of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Structure, Nedim Hogic argues that the so-called Dayton Structure endures not as a result of it enjoys democratic legitimacy, however as a result of fragmented home politics and competing international patrons have frozen the post-war constitutional order in place. He reveals how three many years of shifting worldwide intervention, ethnic veto politics, and foreign-targeted lobbying have entrenched an externally created constitutional regime relatively than changing it. He concludes that this deadlock stabilizes the state at a really low bar—stopping secession and renewed violence—whereas suspending the inclusive, democratic constitution-making course of the nation nonetheless wants.

Genocide

Selecting up from Paola Gaeta’s latest submit, Tolga Dogan continues the evaluation of Sweden’s first appellate-level genocide conviction in opposition to an ISIS-affiliated perpetrator and attracts our consideration to a different hanging improvement: Swedish courts now deal with a “actual menace” to a bunch’s survival—and thus a collective genocidal context—as a principled requirement for genocide. In doing so, the judgment dangers elevating contextual proof to a component of the crime itself, successfully edging the “lone genocidaire” past the realm of authorized risk.

Interview with Decide Yuji Iwasawa

Edward Haxton speaks to the President of the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice, Decide Yuji Iwasawa. This wide-ranging interview charts Decide Iwasawa’s path from academia to the Courtroom and units out his priorities: safeguarding the standard of ICJ judgments, bringing the Courtroom nearer to the general public, and modernising its working strategies. He displays on an unprecedented caseload, mounting pressures on the worldwide authorized order, and the bounds of what the Courtroom can ship amid political tensions and price range constraints. The result’s a candid image of a decide steering one of many world’s oldest courts by means of a interval of speedy change.

Worldwide Legislation within the Present Second

The collection of reflections on the state of worldwide regulation right now continues with two posts.

Megan Donaldson argues that treating worldwide regulation as a language helps clarify each its generative energy and its present strains, from double requirements to outright abandonment by highly effective states. She reveals how technological shifts, casual governance, and modifications in political speech are reshaping the circumstances for shared authorized communication, urging students to rethink the metaphor itself and the infrastructures wanted to maintain—or certainly remake—the language of worldwide regulation.

From how we converse to how we train, Idriss Fofana displays on the dilemmas of educating worldwide regulation in a second when college students are confronted with atrocity, great-power impunity, and deep scepticism in regards to the self-discipline’s authority. He sees two predominant pedagogical instincts: treating crises as revealing moments that expose regulation’s political character; or “holding the road” by defending core authorized guidelines. However each in the end slender the sphere by casting attorneys as guardians of a set order and by obscuring how worldwide regulation is regularly remade by means of contestation. Educating right now requires shifting the body towards longer histories of on a regular basis authorized wrestle: how legality is produced, appropriated, and undone over time.

And as ever, bulletins and occasions of the final fortnight could be discovered right here and right here.

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