Das Recht auf Zugang zu Gericht ist zu einem Sinnbild der sich stetig entwickelnden Rechtsposition des Einzelnen im Völkerrecht geworden, da es vor dem Europäischen Gerichtshof für Menschenrechte (EGMR) justiziabel ist. Im Falle eines Aufeinandertreffens mit der Staatenimmunität hat es nach Ansicht des EGMR vollständig zurückzutreten, was nach Ansicht der Autorin den durch die Europäische Menschenrechtskonvention (EMRK) garantierten Mindeststandard unterschreitet. Der Konflikt zwischen regional verbindlichem Völkervertragsrecht (Art. 6 I EMRK) und allgemein verbindlichem Völkergewohnheitsrecht (Staatenimmunität) ist Ausdruck einer fragmentierten Völkerrechtslandschaft, in der zwei (Teil-)Rechtsordnungen bzw. sog. Regime gemeinsame Schnittmengen aufweisen (Inter-Regime-Konflikt). Die vorliegende Arbeit schlägt vor, die betroffenen Interessen in Einklang zu bringen und hierbei beiden Regimen den jeweils größtmöglichen Anwendungsspielraum zu belassen. Sie appelliert an den EGMR, seinem Auftrag aus Art.19 EMRK entsprechend seine Verantwortung für eine praktische und effektive Durchsetzung des Rechts auf Zugang zu Gericht aus Art. 6 I EMRK ernst- und wahrzunehmen.
The purpose of this paper is to offer an introductory overview on the collateral damages and victims of cyberwarfare. Cyberwarfare is a new type of warfare that poses numerous challenges. The article illustrates some basic definitions of cyberwarfare and cyber weapons proposed so far, as well as the international legal framework. Furthermore, the article addresses collateral damages and the role of the victims including illustrations of two paradigmatic cases of widely known cyberattacks.
Countries engage with the International Court of Justice as litigants, as participants in advisory proceedings, and less directly, through contributions of nationals as judges or lawyers. A broad range of scholarship within the discipline of public international law examines this engagement. Specific regional experiences are often emphasised and grouped, for example, by western, African or Asian accounts. Yet the nature and extent of scholarship on a single country’s engagement with the Court is less commonly explored. This article surveys scholarly approaches to specific domestic engagement with the ICJ. It focuses on six countries – Australia, France, Nicaragua, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States – and examines the scholarship generated by each of these countries’ encounters with the Court. This scholarship provides insights into politics, history, institutional practice, professional experience and international legal doctrine. Preliminary in scope, the article points to the value of empirical, historical and country-specific accounts of the work of the ICJ.
When it comes to financing the work of international organizations, voluntary contributions from both state and nonstate actors are growing in size and importance. The World Health Organization (WHO) is an extreme case from this perspective, with voluntary contributions - mostly earmarked for particular purposes - comprising more than 80 percent of its funds. Moreover, nonstate actors are by now supplying almost half of WHO’s funds, with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation ranking as the second-highest contributor after the United States. A number of public-health and international relations scholars have expressed alarm over these trends, arguing that heavy reliance on multilateral contributions is inconsistent with genuine multilateralism. Relying on interviews with current and former WHO officials, our study explores the causes and consequences of these trends, and recent efforts by the WHO secretariat to reconcile growing reliance on voluntary contributions with multilateral governance. We describe the headway WHO has made in mitigating the risks associated with heavy reliance on voluntary contributions—as well as the challenges that persist. Most importantly, we argue that multilateralism is not categorically incompatible with reliance on voluntary contributions from both state and nonstate actors. Collective multilateral decisionmaking is not a binary feature, either present or absent. Even if the final decision to provide voluntary contributions is up to individual donors, international institutions have opportunities to regulate them both in terms of substance and process. The more heavily regulated voluntary contributions are, the more embedded they become in collective decisions, the less tension there is between multilateralism and reliance on voluntary contributions.
Immediately after the historic adoption of the aggression amendments on 14 December 2017, a number of participants in the negotiations expressed their belief that activating the crime of aggression would help deter states from engaging in the illegal use of force. Unfortunately, the version of the crime adopted in New York is but a pale shadow of the kind of criminal prohibition capable of convincing would-be aggressors that they will be held accountable for their acts. Instead, as this article explains, the crime of aggression at the ICC is so jurisdictionally narrow, so substantively limited, and so unlikely to promote domestic prosecutions that its deterrent value is essentially nonexistent.
Child soldiers remain poorly understood and inadequately protected, despite significant media attention and many policy initiatives. This Research Handbook aims to redress this troubling gap. It offers a reflective, fresh and nuanced review of the complex issue of child soldiering. The Handbook brings together scholars from six continents, diverse experiences, and a broad range of disciplines. Along the way, it unpacks the life-cycle of youth and militarization: from recruitment to demobilization to return to civilian life. The overarching aim of the Handbook is to render the invisible visible – the contributions map the unmapped and chart new directions. Challenging prevailing assumptions and conceptions, the Research Handbook on Child Soldiers focuses on adversity but also capacity: emphasising the resilience, humanity, and potentiality of children affected (rather than ‘afflicted’) by armed conflict.
This chapter investigates the relative importance investment tribunals accord to correctness and consistency considerations in arbitral decision-making by empirically investigating the similarity of treaties connected through precedent. My argument is that tribunals enjoy large discretion in their choice of precedent and use that discretion to further their legal policy preferences. Tribunals that take a system-oriented approach and understand their mandate as promoting the consistent and harmonious development of investment law will select precedent more liberally including cases rendered under highly dissimilar investment treaties. Conversely, tribunals that favor a dispute-centric approach and understand their mandate as ensuring the correct interpretation of the specific treaty will select precedent more cautiously focusing on cases rendered under the same or highly similar treaties, but excluding case law from dissimilar ones. Using a dataset of more than 4500 citations, I find that, apart from NAFTA and a few other exceptions, most tribunals cite precedent liberally rather than cautiously suggesting that tribunals prioritize consistency over correctness considerations. This conflicts with the preferences expressed by states in the UNCITRAL process that place correctness over consistency. Current investment law reform efforts are an opportunity to remedy this mismatch of policy preferences between states and tribunals.
The article presents an argument in favour of a richer theory of subsidiarity in the European Court of Human Rights context. In particular, the proposal is to include what is called a 'positive' dimension in subsidiarity thinking. That is to say, the article argues that the scholarly and political debate on ECHR subsidiarity has focused mostly on ECHR restraint, associated with a wide margin of appreciation for the States Parties. There is however a complementary dimension in the subsidiarity layout, which concerns the responsibility of national authorities to offer first-line protection of Convention rights. The article examines the role the European Court of Human Rights can play in facilitating that first-line responsibility. The article explores what this means for the margin of appreciation of national authorities.
The latest issue of the European Journal of International Relations (Vol. 25, no. 4, December 2019) is out. Contents include:
The ILO supervisory system, which has reviewed compliance with international labor standards for nearly all of the organization’s 100-year history, is widely hailed as cornerstone of its institutional architecture. In 2012, however, the employer representatives challenged the longstanding position of ILO expert bodies that Convention No. 87 on freedom of association implicitly protects the right to strike. The resulting “crisis of tripartism” has raised questions about the proper interpretation of international labor law and the future competences of ILO monitoring mechanisms.
This chapter, a contribution to a forthcoming edited volume on the centenary of the ILO, offers a wider perspective on these events. It begins by analyzing how states and non-state actors have pushed back against the treaty monitoring bodies created by UN human rights conventions. The chapter then compares the similarities and differences between pushback against human rights treaty bodies and challenges to ILO expert committees over the right to strike. The chapter concludes by highlighting ongoing UN and ILO initiatives aimed at strengthening international supervisory systems.
The latest issue of the International Journal of Refugee Law (Vol. 31, no. 1, March 2019) is out. Contents include:
The latest issue of the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law (Vol. 52, no. 3, May 2019) is out. Contents include:
The latest issue of the International Journal of Human Rights (Vol. 23, no. 7, 2019) is out. Contents include:
The latest issue of Global Society (Vol. 33, no. 4, 2019) is out. Contents include:
This article critically analyses the reparations and asset forfeiture framework at the Extraordinary African Chambers and its application in the case against Hissène Habré. It identifies obstacles to implementing the reparations awarded and calls for states and international organizations to support their realization for the sake of Habré’s victims, without whose efforts the tribunal might not exist. It argues that international(ized) criminal tribunals should more readily utilize fines and forfeiture as penalties to alleviate the pressure on trust funds to implement reparations awards, particularly in cases where convicted persons possess substantial assets. Lastly, in light of the requirement that assets susceptible to forfeiture orders be derived directly or indirectly from the crime(s) of which a person is found guilty, the article questions the failure of the prosecutor to charge Habré with the war crime of pillage, despite its availability in the tribunal's statute and the finding that the suffering of many of Habré’s victims entitled to individual compensation resulted from pillage.
