It has been a packed fortnight, as commentators proceed to come back to grips with the US assault on Venezuela and start to grapple with the US’s escalating designs on Greenland. A joint symposium with Simply Safety on Negotiating a Treaty on Crimes Towards Humanity, the most recent situation of EJIL, and numerous developments on the ICC and the ICJ—to not point out area legislation, gender apartheid, and Russa sanctions—make for a considerable evaluate this week.
US assault on Venezuela
Julian Scheu pulls give attention to an extra facet of the US navy intervention in Venezuela, arguing that it can’t be justified by claims of previous expropriation of US oil corporations. He exhibits that worldwide funding legislation offered efficient, rule-based treatments via investor–state arbitration, which US buyers efficiently used to acquire compensation. Invoking historic expropriations serves solely as a political narrative to masks a return to resource-driven coercion in breach of the prohibition on the usage of power.
Turning to the person himself, Adrián Agenjo argues that the US seize of Nicolás Maduro violates each the prohibition on the usage of power and absolutely the private immunity (and inviolability) loved by an incumbent head of state underneath customary worldwide legislation. He exhibits that not one of the recognised exceptions to immunity ratione personae—crime-based, non-public acts, non-recognition, or waiver—can plausibly apply. Piercing private immunity on this method undermines the very perform of the immunity regime, even when it sits uneasily with broader accountability issues.
US threats to Greenland
Michael J. Kelly makes the case that Donald Trump’s problem to Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland is legally baseless and misunderstands trendy worldwide legislation. He explains that territorial title as we speak rests on efficient governance, judicial affirmation, and self-determination—not discovery or opportunistic decolonization claims—and that Greenland’s standing will not be an open query however has lengthy been settled by worldwide adjudication. Undermining that settlement would destabilize Arctic governance and weaken the rules-based order on which the US itself depends.
Marc Weller argues that the US’s zero-sum push for sovereignty over Greenland was legally unattainable and politically counterproductive, strengthening Greenland’s alignment with Denmark slightly than advancing US pursuits. The obvious compromise—granting the US sovereign base areas by analogy with Cyprus—might create long-term authorized vulnerabilities, particularly if Greenland later turns into impartial. Insisting on sovereignty, slightly than everlasting basing rights inside NATO frameworks, was pointless and dangers future self-determination challenges. The deal might undermine stability with out truly fixing the US’s strategic issues, except Greenland is totally concerned and stronger safeguards are inbuilt.
Gender apartheid
Nora Jaber critically examines the marketing campaign to recognise “gender apartheid” as a world crime in response to Taliban rule in Afghanistan. She argues that proposals to mannequin gender apartheid on the crime of racial apartheid dilute apartheid’s anti-colonial that means, summary race and gender as interchangeable classes, and danger reproducing racialised, salvationist logics. Feminist responses ought to transfer past criminalisation to handle the structural, geopolitical, and imperial circumstances shaping gendered oppression.
Joint Symposium: Negotiating a Treaty on Crimes Towards Humanity
Chiara Giorgetti and Franz Perrez introduce our joint symposium with Simply Safety on Negotiating a Treaty on Crimes Towards Humanity, arguing for the necessity to fill gaps in worldwide legislation, complement ICC and home prosecutions, and improve state cooperation. This symposium builds on an occasion organized on the 69th assembly of the Committee of Authorized Advisers on Public Worldwide Regulation on the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. The professional contributions on this sequence are printed within the lead as much as the negotiations, happening on the UN in New York from 19—30 January, to supply helpful insights to negotiators on excellent substantive points and challenges which will come up from the negotiation course of, with the purpose of contributing to the additional strengthening of the draft.
Within the first put up, Leila N. Sadat traces the lengthy effort to create a devoted worldwide treaty on crimes towards humanity, from the Nuremberg precedent via the ICC Statute, highlighting gaps in present legislation, together with the shortage of State obligations to forestall such crimes and restricted mechanisms for cooperation. She describes the Crimes Towards Humanity Initiative, the work of the UN Worldwide Regulation Fee, and the adoption of UN resolutions 77/249 and 79/122, which set a timeline and framework for treaty negotiations from 2026 to 2029. The implict recommendation to negotiators is to strengthen the treaty’s authorized and operational framework, guarantee inclusive participation of civil society, and steadiness ambition with practicality in areas like definitions, immunities, and dispute settlement. She highlights the significance of sustaining momentum over the multi-year negotiation course of and being strategic in managing consensus versus voting to attain a strong, implementable treaty.
Casting backwards, Guénaël Mettraux offers us a (very) brief historical past of crimes towards humanity. He traces the evolution from an 18th-century ethical concept to a totally fledged class of worldwide crimes, crystallised at Nuremberg and refined via trendy worldwide tribunals and the ICC. Because the idea developed to fill accountability gaps left by struggle crimes and genocide—particularly for large-scale, systematic violence towards civilians in peacetime or by states towards their very own populations—Crimes towards humanity have come to serve broad prosecutorial, stigmatic, and narrative features in worldwide felony legislation.
Shifting from previous to current, Jörg Polakiewicz explains why a conference on crimes towards humanity issues. The absence of a devoted conference on crimes towards humanity is a critical normative and sensible hole in worldwide legislation, undermining prevention, cooperation, and accountability for a number of the gravest crimes. The ILC draft articles and ensuing UN negotiations are a historic alternative to shut that hole by harmonising home legal guidelines, strengthening interstate cooperation, and embedding prevention alongside punishment. Extra broadly, the conference could be an ethical reaffirmation that crimes towards humanity are a collective concern of the worldwide group, not merely a technical train in codification.
Developments on the ICJ
The ICJ has come again underneath the lens from quite a lot of views.
Camille Lefebvre and Niko Pavlopoulos analyse the ICJ’s modification to Article 78 of its Guidelines, which is able to make events’ stories on compliance with provisional measures publicly accessible as a normal rule. They clarify how this departs from prior follow and will improve transparency and accountability. On the similar time, it poses dangers for state cooperation, litigation technique, procedural steadiness, and the sound administration of justice in extremely politicised disputes.
Khaled Elmahmoud and Natali Gbele take inventory of the ICJ’s latest advisory opinions and discover that the Courtroom has articulated the obligation to co-operate inconsistently, leaving its scope, supply, and content material unclear. Whereas co-operation is handled as a binding obligation in some contexts, notably critical breaches of jus cogens, the Courtroom usually supplies no concrete requirements or operational steerage. This fragmentation dangers undermining the normative authority and sensible effectiveness of co-operation as a authorized obligation.
Turning from substance to process, Nils Schneider makes the case that the ICJ was proper to confess Russia’s counter-claims within the Ukraine v. Russia genocide case, as a result of they’re sufficiently related actually and legislation to Ukraine’s principal declare and promote procedural financial system. Whereas accepting some criticism that the Courtroom’s reasoning was cursory—particularly on discretion and authorized connection—he rejects the dissents’ restrictive method to counter-claims. Total, the choice might complicate Ukraine’s litigation technique however doesn’t undermine its core goal of rebutting Russia’s genocide justification.
Developments on the ICC
Chuka Arinze-Onyia and Sarah Williams look at the ICC’s admissibility resolution in Beina, which held the case inadmissible on account of real ongoing proceedings earlier than the Central African Republic’s Particular Legal Courtroom. They welcome the ruling as reasserting Rome Statute complementarity over home makes an attempt to offer the ICC primacy via nationwide legislation. The choice clarifies that even hybrid tribunals can’t displace complementarity, and that the ICC should step apart the place home or hybrid courts are keen and capable of prosecute.
Gemmo Bautista Fernandez argues that the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber was appropriate to dismiss Duterte’s jurisdictional problem regardless of the Philippines’ withdrawal from the Rome Statute. He exhibits that the Courtroom’s jurisdiction was already engaged when the Prosecutor opened a preliminary examination—whereas the Philippines was nonetheless a State Get together—and that Article 127 preserves jurisdiction over such issues after withdrawal. Extra broadly, he defends a studying of the Statute (supported by VCLT ideas) that forestalls withdrawal from getting used as a defend towards accountability for crimes towards humanity.
Russia sanctions and ISDS
Toni Marzal argues that latest EU measures shielding Russia-related sanctions from investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) basically battle with the worldwide authorized framework underpinning ISDS. By excluding arbitral jurisdiction, blocking enforcement (together with of ICSID awards), and clawing again damages paid overseas, the EU is unilaterally carving sanctions out of funding legislation in methods that can not be reconciled with the ICSID or New York Conventions. This marks a profound weakening of ISDS and units a harmful precedent for future geopolitical exceptions by highly effective actors.
House legislation
Güneş Ünüvar units out how the 2025 UNCOPUOS Draft Ideas quietly however considerably reframe area useful resource governance by shifting the controversy from summary legality of extraction to conditional legitimacy primarily based on compliance with multilateral ideas. Relatively than totally endorsing the Artemis method, the Working Group on the Authorized Features of House Useful resource Actions pursues a technique of selective lodging: recognizing extraction as negotiable throughout the core ideas, whereas resisting practices that resemble de facto appropriation or pseudo-sovereignty. Total, the draft ideas are an incremental, soft-law effort to handle geopolitical tensions and engineer legitimacy with out forcing untimely consensus.
New Concern of EJIL, Vol. 36 No. 3
The brand new situation of EJIL can be printed shortly: Ana Luisa Bernardino walks us via the contents, and Anne Lagerwall and Doreen Lustig give a brief overview of the opinions.
Articles by Marius Pieterse on City Collectives as Victims of Worldwide Human Rights Violations, Robert Stendel and Alexander Wentker on Financial Gold within the Age of Public Curiosity Litigation, Michael Elliot and Felix Lüth on Company Legal responsibility Reforms in Transnational Anti-Corruption Regulation: Altering Course at a Time of Disaster or Persevering with Historic Trajectories?, and Orfeas Chasapis-Tassinis on Statehood and Worldwide Group: Rethinking Their Conceptual Relationship with Reference to Customary Worldwide Regulation.
Plus opinions by Françoise Tulkens of Linos-Alexandre Sicilianos. La dimension humaine du droit worldwide, Cours général de droit worldwide public, Recueil des cours, Tome 440, Lena Holzer of Giovanna Gilleri. Intercourse, Gender and Worldwide Human Rights Regulation: Contesting Binaries, Florian Couveinhes Matsumoto of Júlia Miklasová, Secession in Worldwide Regulation with A Particular Reference to the Publish-Soviet House, and Carl Landauer of Lauren Benton. They Referred to as It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence.
In her editorial, Sarah Nouwen calls into query overreliance on quantitative metrics and superficial CV-based assessments in educational hiring and promotion, arguing that they distort scholarly incentives and undermine honest analysis. She asks us to contemplate how quotation counts, publication numbers, status proxies, and the Matthew/Matilda results privilege visibility over substance, originality, and collective work, usually to the detriment of minorities and early-career students. What is required is a cultural shift towards qualitative engagement with concepts—via narrative CVs, analysis proposals, and asking the ‘why’ behind profession paths—slightly than outsourcing judgment to numbers or reputational shortcuts.
As ever, bulletins and upcoming occasions will be discovered right here.
