Playing with Fire
Is the aid pledged by the G7 an offer Brazil’s President Bolsonaro cannot refuse?
“Our house is burning”, French President Macron found graphic words to address the wildfires in the Amazon rainforest, which have reached threatening levels in the past weeks. 80,000 fires this year alone have resulted in the loss of approximately 350,000 hectares of rainforest. Notably, Brazilian President Bolsonaro is known to support the ‘slash-and-burn’ agriculture, which is responsible for most of the fires, and only initiated a two month ban of …
What’s next to preserve the linguistic richness of Indigenous Peoples?
Beyond the International Year of Indigenous Languages
This year, 2019, marks the International Year of Indigenous Languages. Based on the United Nations (UN) General Assembly resolution 71/178, it represents a massive effort to finally raise awareness on the invaluable richness of Indigenous languages. This initiative is primarily led by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), but it involves all the UN bodies directly dealing with Indigenous Peoples’ rights (e.g., the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous …
Manual scavenging: outlawed, yet persisting
The stinking legacy of suffocation and stigma captures the degrading practice of Manual Scavenging in India. Twenty-six years after this repulsive practice has been outlawed by the Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, there are still 182,505 manual scavengers across India, with 740,048 households using the services of manual scavengers for clearing out human excreta. Alarmingly, this number does not include septic tanks, public sewers, and railway …
A chain as strong as its weakest link
Climate science and legal causation after the Mozambique floods
In spring 2019, Mozambique was hit by a large-scale disaster. Cyclones Idai and Kenneth tore through the country on 14 March and 25 April, resulting in heavy rainfall and causing major flooding in five of the country’s eleven provinces. The disaster had devastating impacts on affected communities’ enjoyment of their human rights. UNICEF’s Humanitarian Situation Report, published on 31 July 2019, estimates that 1.7 million people in Mozambique continue to …
A rule to catch them all
How European policies on combating abuse of rights in tax law aim at countering cynicism by non-state actors
One of the legal regimes where cynicism is most prevalent in the eye of the public is tax law. After the so-called ‘Panama Papers’ and ‘Paradise Papers’ public debate on fair taxation of companies was rekindled at the World Economic Forum 2019, where Rutger Bregman stressed that it is cynical when people talk about philanthropic engagement, equality and transparency, yet ‘almost no one raises the real issue of tax avoidance’. …
Back in time to Roman Law
Thoughts on an analogy of ‘Abuse of Right’ in International Law
The prohibition of abuse of right calls into question that branch of legal positivism that sees law as a ‘pure’ discipline with necessarily no connection with morality (the so-called exclusive positivism). Law prohibits something that is allowed within its own system, but that is rejected according to other rules (the rules of morality). Is the law therefore flawed? Is it cynical? One might object and say that if the prohibition …
how to be cynical: some suggestions
Livestream of Prof. Gerry Simpson’s Keynote Lecture at the Conference ‘Cynical International Law?’, 6 September 2019
Watch here the livestream of Prof. Gerry Simpson’s Keynote Lecture, opening the Working Group of Young Scholars in Public International Law’s (Arbeitskreis junger Völkerrechtswissenschaftler*innen – AjV) and the German Society of International Law’s (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationales Recht – DGIR) joint conference Cynical International Law? Abuse and Circumvention in Public International and European Law held at Freie Universität Berlin on 6-7 September 2019. Find the conference program here. What might …
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Cynicism? Yes, please!
Embracing cynicism at the International Criminal Court
Debates surrounding cynicism in international law have an inherently negative focus. But why not try to take something positive-constructive out of the cynicism an institution is experiencing? Since there are few institutions, which are currently facing more cynical backlash than the International Criminal Court (ICC/Court), this piece will take a look at the reasons and at the question how cynicism manifests itself in the context of the Court and how …
All’s fair in the law of war?
Legal cynicism in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
On June 1, 2018, Razan Al-Najjar, a twenty-one-year-old Palestinian paramedic, was killed by Israeli fire during demonstrations along the Israel–Gaza border. Her death triggered intense debates concerning the facts and circumstances of the shooting: was Al-Najjar the target of the Israeli fire, as several human rights organizations concluded, or was the deadly bullet directed at other violent demonstrators, as the Israeli military found? Was she standing alone, with only other …
In international law we (do not) trust
The persistent rejection of economic and social rights as a manifestation of cynicism
Economic and Social Rights (ESRs) are the unloved and unwanted last born child of the human rights family. Despite a promising start in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (the UDHR), ESRs still retain a second class status in most national jurisdictions. What explains this cynicism with which ESRs are (still) regarded? This blogpost analyzes how the skeptical gaze through which ESRs are often viewed legitimizes (or attempts) to legitimize …
The Edge of Enlightenment
The EU’s struggle with post-fascist cynicism
Recently, Harvard professor Steven Pinker’s book “Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress”, which explores the effect of the Enlightenment on contemporary societies worldwide and also anti-Enlightenment movements in the West, became an international bestseller. Applying his findings about the age-old symbiotic relationship between certain elements of “Western civilization” and (post-) Fascism to certain developments both at the EU level and in individual member states, we can …
An ideal at sea
International law and a ‘conflict through norm-genesis’ approach
International law is supposed to establish peace and prevent inter-state conflicts. At the same time, it is the central means for states to legitimize and communicate their claims in respect of the international community. For instance, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) was designed to act as the ‘constitution for the oceans’ and to ‘promote the maintenance of international peace and security’ (Koh, 1982). Today, …
From speaking truth to power to speaking power’s truth
Transnational judicial activism in an increasingly illiberal world
From San José to Karlsruhe, Strasbourg to New Delhi, in both the Global North and South, judges have been at the forefront of the establishment of a new jus gentium common to all humankind. Implicit in this narrative, however, lies the idea that transnational judicial activism has inherent progressive outcomes: the rule of law, human rights, or liberalism tout court are the necessary products of these new forms of judicial …
International law beyond cynicism and critique
A plea for a legal scholarship that offers alternatives instead of reinforcing the status quo
Cynics do not have to look far: critical international law has uncovered the ways in which the forces of colonialism and imperialism have been present in the international legal system from its foundation to the present. According to David Kennedy, it is not only cynical use of law by despots but experts, including legal scholars, that –subtly but surely – enable, reproduce, legalize and legitimize this international legal system. With …
Cynical International Law?
Announcement of the Online Symposium and Keynote Lecture Livestream
Cynicism and its relation to international law is a question that has so far not comprehensively been studied. Cynicism has been used in a cursory fashion by international lawyers, e.g. when denouncing the invocation of legal justifications by certain actors as ‘cynical’. Others have applied the concept to international lawyers and their attitude towards their own profession. But the concept of cynicism might also be applied to international law itself: …
With a diplomatic solution, there would be no loser.
An interview with Rüdiger Wolfrum on the situation in the Strait of Hormuz
The Strait of Hormuz is one of the most important waterways worldwide. Nearly one fifth of the global transport of oil and about one quarter of the production of liquefied natural gas are shipped through the Strait that is only a few kilometers wide. On 19 July 2019, Iran detained the British-flagged tanker Stena Impero in this strait. Iran argued that, among other things, the ship had collided with a …
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