From drawing traces within the sand to drawing prophets within the press, the final two weeks have run the gamut. Discussions of the failed coup in Benin and civilian arms at sea run alongside analyses of varied regional and worldwide developments: Italy’s criminalisation of femicide, proposals for migration and the rights of the kid, numerous sovereignty disputes (Sapodilla Cayes, Chagos, Taiwan), and the primary conviction of a mercenary for struggle crimes in Ukraine.
Questions of sovereignty: Sapodilla Cayes, Chagos, Taiwan
Three disputes had been again in focus, elevating very totally different questions of internatioal legislation.
In Belize and Honduras’s sovereignty dispute over the Sapodilla Cayes/Cayos Zapotillos, Sanmay Moitra examines Guatemala’s try to intervene on the ICJ. Arguing that though the appliance is procedurally flawed, Guatemala could also be an indispensable occasion below the Financial Gold precept. He exhibits how the Courtroom faces a paradox: deciding the deserves dangers prejudging Guatemala’s sovereign claims, but admitting the intervention raises unresolved jurisdictional defects. The case might power the ICJ both to halt the proceedings or to rethink consent and intervention in multi-party territorial disputes.
Pulling give attention to a outstanding however simply ignored improvement within the Chagos Archipelago negotiations, Elodie Tranchez examines CERD’s December 2025 determination on the UK–Mauritius Settlement. She argues that this determination is a pivotal human rights intervention that challenges the UK–Mauritius Settlement for excluding Chagossians from session and thereby successfully barring their return. She concludes that decolonization can’t be lawfully accomplished via a bilateral treaty that entrenches displacement and ignores the participatory and resettlement dimensions emphasised by worldwide human rights legislation.
From the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea, Jean-Baptiste Dudant and Charles-Emmanuel Detry unpack the authorized controversy sparked by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks {that a} Chinese language blockade of Taiwan may represent an “existential disaster” for Japan. They argue that her assertion is rooted in Japanese constitutional follow and doesn’t alter Japan’s authorized place on Taiwan’s standing. They then study whether or not worldwide legislation would allow Japan to behave in collective self-defence, concluding that such motion would activate Taiwan’s standing as a State or, at minimal, the worldwide authorized significance of the Taiwanese folks’s proper to self-determination.
Depictions of the Prophets
N. Betül Haliloğlu Pakdil analyses Turkey’s prosecution of Leman journal over a satirical cartoon depicting Prophet Muhammad and Prophet Moses, assessing the case towards ECtHR and Turkish Constitutional Courtroom jurisprudence on non secular offence and freedom of expression. She argues that the cartoon is neither a transparent depiction of prophets nor gratuitously offensive, and that it contributes to public debate on struggle and peace. Given the severity of the sanctions imposed, the measures are more likely to represent a transparent violation of freedom of expression below each nationwide and European human rights legislation.
Criminalising femicide
Alessia Nicastro and Emanuele Corn analyse Italy’s 2025 determination to criminalise femicide as a definite offence, situating it inside worldwide and comparative frameworks on violence towards girls. Whereas the reform symbolically aligns Italy with international norms, it adopts a predominantly punitive, life-imprisonment mannequin that departs from the holistic, preventive method required by devices such because the Istanbul Conference. With out sustained funding in prevention, safety and structural reform, the legislation dangers being extra rhetorical than transformative.
Proposals: The Conference on the Rights of the Baby and migration below the ECHR
Two proposals had been in focus final fortnight.
Elena Patrizi examines debates throughout the UN working group tasked with proposing a fourth Optionally available Protocol to the Conference on the Rights of the Baby, which might explicitly assure early childhood training and free public pre-primary and secondary training. Whereas many States assist the Protocol as a essential improve to an incomplete authorized framework, others warn towards duplication, restricted ratification, and shifting focus away from implementing current obligations. The initiative thus exposes a core rigidity between authorized innovation and efficient enforcement within the worldwide proper to training.
Andrew Forde and Alice Donald critically consider a joint initiative launched on Worldwide Human Rights Day by 27 Council of Europe states to slim the appliance of the ECHR in migration instances. They argue that proposals to “rebalance” Articles 3 and eight and invoke the residing instrument doctrine danger regressive erosion of absolute rights, judicial independence, and the Conference’s integrity. Framing migrants as the issue might undermine the ECHR system itself, with penalties far past migration management.
Failed coup in Benin
Julien Antouly analyses the failed coup try in Benin and the following regional navy response, assessing whether or not intervention might be legally justified below ECOWAS authorisation or worldwide legislation. He argues that ECOWAS lacks the facility to authorise power with out UN Safety Council approval, even in instances of coups. As an alternative, the intervention is finest understood as lawful navy help by invitation, albeit one strictly restricted by the scope of Benin’s consent and broader ideas of worldwide legislation.
Civilian arms at sea
Can we take arms towards a sea of troubles? Revisiting the largely forgotten idea of levée en masse, Pornomo Rovan Astri Yoga asks whether or not civilians may ever lawfully take up arms at sea towards an invading power. He exhibits that, whereas not excluded by the Geneva Conventions and briefly contemplated in early naval doctrine, the maritime model stays legally undeveloped and deeply problematic inside fashionable naval warfare guidelines. This silence creates actual humanitarian and operational dangers in an more and more civilian and contested maritime area, and requires severe doctrinal engagement moderately than continued neglect.
Struggle crimes in Ukraine
Sorcha MacLeod and Iryna Marchuk study Finland’s landmark conviction of Yan “Voislav Torden” Petrovsky, the primary profitable universal-jurisdiction case to condemn a member of a mercenary group to life imprisonment for struggle crimes dedicated in jap Ukraine in 2014. They spotlight the judgment’s broader significance, together with affirmation of a world armed battle in Donbas and the rising evidential function of digital materials in prosecuting mercenary violence. On the similar time, they present how the case exposes the restricted avenues for sufferer treatments in war-crimes trials, even because it marks a significant step towards accountability.
Worldwide Legislation within the Present Second
Persevering with the collection of reflections, Yussef Al Tamimi and Kerttuli Lingenfelter interrogate claims that “worldwide legislation is useless”. Studying them via Nietzsche’s proclamation of the demise of God, they deal with worldwide legislation as a perception system whose authority is determined by sustained religion. They argue that the genocide in Gaza exposes a disaster of which means akin to the theological drawback of evil, revealing a stark dissonance between worldwide legislation’s guarantees and its lived actuality. Whereas worldwide legislation might persist institutionally, its ethical authority erodes as perception falters, leaving survival with out credibility more and more hole.
EJIL Podcast
And at last, Victor Kattan (College of Nottingham; additionally adviser to Britain Owes Palestine marketing campaign) is joined by Mona Rishmawi (inter alia, visiting professor on the Geneva Academy of Worldwide Humanitarian Legislation and Human Rights) and Sonia Boulos (Antonio de Nebrija College, Spain; co-editor of Palestine/Israel Evaluation). Collectively, they got down to survey the wide selection of authorized questions shaping Palestine’s previous, current, and future, from worldwide to native dimensions. They cowl UN and EU developments, accountability and third-state duty, together with less-discussed points affecting Palestinians, together with land registration, expanded use of the demise penalty, and allegations of torture in detention.
As ever, discover the final fortnight’s bulletins right here — and because the yr involves an finish, dip into Joseph Weiler’s annual decide of ten good reads for 2025.
