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This blog post is part of the symposium “The Rooms We Wanted: What a Year of Decolonisation Seminars Revealed about a Law School”, reflecting on the Decolonisation Seminar Series at...

This blog post is part of the symposium “The Rooms We Wanted: What a Year of Decolonisation Seminars Revealed about a Law School”, reflecting on the Decolonisation Seminar Series at...

This blog post is part of the symposium “The Rooms We Wanted: What a Year of Decolonisation Seminars Revealed about a Law School”, reflecting on the Decolonisation Seminar Series at...

This blog post is part of the symposium “The Rooms We Wanted: What a Year of Decolonisation Seminars Revealed about a Law School”, reflecting on the Decolonisation Seminar Series at...

This blog post is part of the symposium “The Rooms We Wanted: What a Year of Decolonisation Seminars Revealed about a Law School”, reflecting on the Decolonisation Seminar Series at...

In July 2025, the University of Edinburgh published Decolonised Transformations, the findings of a four-year long inquiry into its own history of enslavement, eugenics and colonialism, for which the University...

Earlier this year, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution A/80/L.65, which seeks to ‘translate’ last year’s Advisory Opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Obligations of States in...

In December 2024, China approved the construction of the Medog Hydropower Station on the Yarlung Tsangpo River in Tibet, which flows on to become the Brahmaputra in India and the...

During the drafting of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1969 (‘VCLT’ or ‘the Convention’), Sir Humphrey Waldock famously remarked that treaty interpretation is “to some extent an...

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (the CRPD) transformed the disability rights movement’s demand of ‘Nothing about us, without us’ into a legal obligation. Article...

In July, Christopher Nolan’s latest movie, The Odyssey, was released in cinemas. Alongside the enthusiasm for what appears to be a new masterpiece – one which has conquered the box office – it has...

Sweden has reformed its approach to child detention, introducing youth wings within regular adult prison complexes to house 15- to 17-year-olds convicted and sentenced to detention. This reform forms part...

In her contribution to the 17th of September, Himani Jha reviews my 2023 Hart monograph, Self-Determination in the International Legal System: Whose Claim, to What Right?. Jha engages with the...

Tom Sparks is the Director of Just Access and is an international lawyer and legal consultant based in Heidelberg, Germany. He holds a PhD in international law from Durham University....

In the spring of 2024, I participated in a series of teach-outs on international law and Palestine at the student encampments that spread across university campuses in the United Kingdom...

Recently, while leading a seminar class on the fundamentals of International Human Rights Law, I was lamenting before my students on the US government’s latest flagrant dismissal of human rights...

To teach international law, including international human rights law, from a critical perspective is to confront a foundational paradox immediately. The discipline routinely presents itself as a universal framework of...

Every semester, at the conclusion of my lectures on various themes under public international law, I return to Audre Lorde's well-known observation that "the master's tools will never dismantle the...

On the occasion of the new academic year, which starts in most countries in late summer/beginning of fall, Völkerrechtsblog introduces the establishment of the annual “Teaching International Law” symposium. The...

Over the last few decades, unsustainable human activities have led to alterations in the biosphere, oceans, atmosphere, and cryosphere, and, in such a reality, the effects of climate change are...

Following concerns raised regarding possible plagiarism in “ Subsidiary Protection and Climate Refugees: A Cure-All or a Limited Remedy?”  by Kabir Kumar published on 2 February 2026, Völkerrechtsblog conducted a...

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