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52. Notes for the Next UN Secretary-General
- Author:
- Simon Adams
- Publication Date:
- 10-2016
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect
- Abstract:
- The United Nations faces an existential crisis. The norms that bind and ‘safeguard humanity’ are currently under threat. The deliberate bombing of hospitals and the indiscriminate killing of civilians has become almost routine in Syria and several other conflicts. Numerous governments and murderous non-state actors (like isis or Boko Haram) are defying international humanitarian and human rights law. This article argues that the solution to the current global exigency and a central challenge facing the next Secretary-General is to achieve an equilibrium shift away from crisis response and towards conflict prevention. This is especially true with regard to preventing mass atrocity crimes (genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing). Historically, no single issue has done more to tarnish the reputation of the un than the failure to halt atrocities. Under a committed Secretary-General, the un has unique capacity to prevent these crimes.
- Topic:
- International Law, Displacement, Conflict, Violence, and Responsibility to Protect (R2P)
- Political Geography:
- United Nations, Syria, and Global Focus
53. Shifting Sands: Power, Uncertainty and the Form of International Legal Cooperation
- Author:
- Timothy Meyer
- Publication Date:
- 01-2016
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- This article argues that the form of international agreements – binding hard law agreements versus non-binding soft law agreements – can be partially explained by states’ interests in promoting renegotiation in the presence of uncertainty and shifting power. I make this argument in three steps. First, I explain that states regularly use unilateral non-compliance as a renegotiation strategy. Second, I argue that making an agreement soft facilitates this use of unilateral non-compliance. Third, I analyse the conditions – uncertainty characterized by common interests (but not uncertainty characterized by distributive concerns) and shifting power – under which facilitating renegotiation through soft law will appeal to states. In particular, I argue that in the presence of these conditions preventing renegotiation creates long-term costs for states that can inhibit short-term cooperation. In effect, under these conditions the shadow of the future can inhibit cooperation rather than support it, as is conventionally thought. These conditions are common to many major contemporary subjects of international cooperation in a way they were not during the latter half of the 20th century, partially explaining the increased importance of soft law to contemporary international governance.
- Topic:
- International Relations, International Law, International Trade and Finance, Treaties and Agreements, and United Nations
- Political Geography:
- Europe, United Nations, and Global Focus
54. Shifting Sands: Power, Uncertainty and the Form of International Legal Cooperation
- Author:
- Timothy Meyer
- Publication Date:
- 01-2016
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- This article argues that the form of international agreements – binding hard law agreements versus non-binding soft law agreements – can be partially explained by states’ interests in promoting renegotiation in the presence of uncertainty and shifting power. I make this argument in three steps. First, I explain that states regularly use unilateral non-compliance as a renegotiation strategy. Second, I argue that making an agreement soft facilitates this use of unilateral non-compliance. Third, I analyse the conditions – uncertainty characterized by common interests (but not uncertainty characterized by distributive concerns) and shifting power – under which facilitating renegotiation through soft law will appeal to states. In particular, I argue that in the presence of these conditions preventing renegotiation creates long-term costs for states that can inhibit short-term cooperation. In effect, under these conditions the shadow of the future can inhibit cooperation rather than support it, as is conventionally thought. These conditions are common to many major contemporary subjects of international cooperation in a way they were not during the latter half of the 20th century, partially explaining the increased importance of soft law to contemporary international governance.
- Topic:
- International Law, International Trade and Finance, Treaties and Agreements, and United Nations
- Political Geography:
- Europe, United Nations, and Global Focus
55. Might and Right in World Politics
- Author:
- Dr. Jan (eds) Woischnik and Dr Jans Woischnik
- Publication Date:
- 12-2016
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI)
- Abstract:
- In the last decade of the 20th century, when the Cold War came to an end, there was a growing understanding that International Law was consolidated as legitimation body for state actions. It was the begin- ning of a new peaceful world order, the world hoped that an old problem of geopolitics could finally be fully addressed by the International Law, a problem which the Athenian General Thucydides observed already more than 2000 years ago, according to which in the realm of the international, “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”. In this new world order right was supposed to finally come before might.
- Topic:
- International Law, Political Theory, and Geopolitics
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
56. Transitional Justice Models and Analytic Philosophy: Towards Theory
- Author:
- Michał Krotoszyński
- Publication Date:
- 06-2016
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Polish Political Science Yearbook
- Institution:
- Polish Political Science Association (PPSA)
- Abstract:
- As an interdisciplinary field of scholarship, transitional justice is still in its pre-theoretical stage, focusing mainly on the case and comparative studies, supported by general considerations concerning justice in the times of transition. To entrench the field as a distinct area of studies, a theory of transitional justice needs to be formulated. The article explores the possibility of making a step towards such a theoretical basis with the use of the tools of analytical philosophy, methodology and legal theory. First, drawing on Leszek Nowak’s procedure of idealisation, three basic models of responses to a painful past are formulated. Then, distinct transitional justice values are attributed to each of the models. Finally, with the use of Jerzy Kmita’s concept of humanistic interpretation, the article seeks to conceptualize the way in which these values – among other factors, such as the need to uphold the rule of law or to preserve the stability of a democratic system – influence the choice of a model of transitional justice response. Thus, the aim of the presented models – which I described in more detail elsewhere (Krotoszyński 2017) – is to provide a sound theoretical basis for some of the fundamental claims formulated in the field of transitional justice.
- Topic:
- International Law
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
57. Pandemic Declarations of the World Health Organization as an Exercise of International Public Authority: The Possible Legal Answers to Frictions Between Legitimacies
- Author:
- Pedro A. Villarreal
- Publication Date:
- 06-2016
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Goettingen Journal of International Law
- Institution:
- The Goettingen Journal of International Law
- Abstract:
- The institutional decisions regarding the 2009–2010 influenza A(H1N1) pandemic displayed how the World Health Organization’s (WHO) role as the international organization in charge of coordinating the pandemic response amounts to an exercise of authority. Notably, the 11 June, 2009 Pandemic Declaration was grounded in the WHO’s guidelines that do not have a binding nature according to international law. However, this is not an obstacle for considering them as an act of authority, since their effects can constrain the decision-making of States. If these non-binding acts have an authoritative nature, then it is necessary to address various legitimacy issues that may be present. This is where the concept of international public authority (IPA) can prove useful, since it enables to combine the non-binding nature of Pandemic Declarations and the respective guidelines with broad legally-oriented figures such as transparency and accountability. The controversies surrounding the 2009 Pandemic Declaration illustrate how the strictly technical-scientific elements that led to such a decision were not necessarily harmonious with other aspects more related to political decision making in general, such as transparency and accountability. This can be considered as an example of how so-called ‘technocratic legitimacy’ sometimes generates friction with lato sensu ‘political legitimacy’. As the 2009–2010 pandemic period unraveled, it became clear that expertise-based legitimacy is not sufficient in itself to consider the act as generally legitimate. On the contrary, the strongest criticisms directed at the decision-making process of the WHO during this event were leveled against deficits of transparency and accountability. This article purports to discuss the issue of how both types of legitimacies, technical-scientific and political, are necessary components for deeming Pandemic Declarations as legitimate enough, since they amount to an exercise of international public authority.
- Topic:
- International Law, World Health Organization, Public Health, and H1N1
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
58. The UN Declaration on the Rule of Law and the Application of the Rule of Law to the UN: A Reconstruction From an International Public Authority Perspective
- Author:
- Clemens A. Feinaugle
- Publication Date:
- 06-2016
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Goettingen Journal of International Law
- Institution:
- The Goettingen Journal of International Law
- Abstract:
- The UN Declaration on the rule of law at the national and international levels seems to open new possibilities for listed terrorist suspects claiming legal protection or those seeking damages for harm caused by UN peacekeepers because the Declaration provides that the rule of law applies to the United Nations itself. However, the Declaration raises questions regarding the elements of the rule of law, its legal basis, and binding nature. This paper attempts a reconstruction of the UN Declaration and relevant UN practice under an international public authority perspective to explain and develop elements of the rule of law applicable to the UN, to determine its legal basis, and to investigate its binding nature. It argues, that since measures under Chapter VII must be effective if the UN wants to fulfil its purpose (Article 1 (1) UN Charter), the UN is bound by the rule of law insofar as “effective” measures require that related legitimacy concerns are addressed by rule of law safeguards.
- Topic:
- International Law, Terrorism, United Nations, Peacekeeping, and Legitimacy
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
59. Towards a New International Law of the Atmosphere?
- Author:
- Peter H. Sand and Jonathan B. Wiener
- Publication Date:
- 11-2016
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Goettingen Journal of International Law
- Institution:
- The Goettingen Journal of International Law
- Abstract:
- Inclusion of the topic ‘protection of the atmosphere’ in the current work programme of the UN International Law Commission (ILC) reflects the long overdue recognition of the fact that the scope of contemporary international law for the Earth’s atmosphere extends far beyond the traditional discipline of ‘air law’ as a synonym for airspace and air navigation law. Instead, the atmospheric commons are regulated by a ‘regime complex’ comprising a multitude of economic uses including global communications, pollutant emissions and diffusion, in different geographical sectors and vertical zones, in the face of different categories of risks, and addressed by a wide range of different transnational institutions. Following several earlier attempts at identifying cross- cutting legal rules and principles in this field (by, inter alia, the International Law Association, the UN Environment Programme, and the Institut de Droit International), the ILC has now embarked on a new codification/restatement project led by Special Rapporteur Shinya Murase – albeit hamstrung by a highly restrictive ‘understanding’ imposed by the Commission in 2013. This article assesses the prospects and limitations of the initial ILC reports and debates in 2014 and 2015, and potential avenues for progress in the years to come.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Environment, International Law, United Nations, and Space
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
60. The Use of Scholarship by the WTO Appellate Body
- Author:
- Sondre Torp Helmersen
- Publication Date:
- 11-2016
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Goettingen Journal of International Law
- Institution:
- The Goettingen Journal of International Law
- Abstract:
- This article examines the use of scholarship by the WTO Appellate Body. While it is not possible to say definitively how the Appellate Body views the legal status of scholarship in WTO dispute settlement, its use of scholarship will in practice determine its status. The article identifies three overall trends: the Appellate Body’s use of scholarship has declined, the Appellate Body uses scholarship mostly for matters of general international law (as opposed to WTO law), and the Appellate body has generally been careful in its use of scholarship. Possible explanations for these trends may include an increase in available precedents, the Appellate Body’s specialized role, criticism of the Appellate Body, and its members’ backgrounds.
- Topic:
- International Cooperation, International Law, International Trade and Finance, and World Trade Organization
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus