CfP: Old Doctrines, New Battles

Once again, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) are emerging as an important site for contestation over the meaning, application, and future of some of public international law’s most fundamental principles.

Recent debates surrounding US conduct vis-à-vis Venezuela, Colombia’s changing regional role amid its ongoing armed conflict, the international reception of governance models such as El Salvador’s and the continuing impact of the US embargo and sanctions on Cuba raise questions that go beyond individual cases.

The United States’ attack on Venezuela and broader discourse surrounding intervention, regime change, and the use of force have revived longstanding concerns about sovereignty, non-intervention, and the unequal application of international legal norms. In Colombia, the continuing armed conflict, the new government’s changing approach to peace negotiations with armed groups, and the country’s evolving relationship with neighbouring Venezuela have placed questions of regional security, cross-border cooperation, and geopolitical alignment at the centre of political debate. Meanwhile, El Salvador’s extensive reliance on emergency powers, mass detention policies, and the concentration of executive authority in the name of combating organized crime has prompted intense discussion about the relationship between public security, democratic governance, constitutional safeguards, and human rights. In Cuba, the continuation of the US embargo and sanctions regime has contributed to a deep economic crisis marked by recurring nationwide blackouts, shortages of food, fuel, and medicine, and one of the largest migration waves in the country’s recent history.

These are just some examples that touch on structural issues of sovereignty, intervention, democratic erosion, and the capacity (or limits) of international law to meaningfully engage with informal, indirect, or politically legitimized forms of external influence. Sovereignty and democratic self-determination in the region are continuously challenged in the context of shifting regional power dynamics, and increasingly explicit security-based rhetoric as well as renewed US interventionism.

At the same time, developments across the region increasingly expose tensions within the contemporary international legal order itself. Questions surrounding democratic legitimacy, the privatization and transnationalization of violence, regional security cooperation, migration governance, economic dependency, and the expanding role of executive power are no longer confined to domestic or regional politics. Instead, they raise broader questions concerning the adequacy of existing international legal frameworks, the resilience of multilateral institutions, and the changing relationship between law, political authority, and geopolitical influence in the Americas.

Therefore, Völkerrechtsblog invites scholars and practitioners to reflect, among others, on the following questions/themes:

1. Interventions and Interferences
   1. Contributions may examine contemporary forms of intervention and external influence in LAC, including the role of foreign states, private actors, transnational criminal organizations, and other non-state actors.
   2. We also invite historical perspectives (e.g. Guatemala or other case studies) to illustrate structural limitations of the OAS and/or the UN, and to assess whether these limitations continue to shape (the lack of effective) responses to interventions in the present.
2. Safeguarding Human Rights, Democracy and Realizing Self-Determination: LAC, especially their indigenous peoples, have long been subjected to colonial domination and its enduring consequences. At the same time, decolonial and scholarship emerging from the region is challenging the universalist claims of a Eurocentric reading of international law. LAC share a long history of resistance and state-building, as well as more recent struggles against exploitation and the loss of autonomy and land. Against this backdrop, we would like to examine the potential of international law to promote (internal and external) self-determination and racial justice, as well as its potential to safeguard democracy.
3. Contestation of the Rules-Based Order: The principles and core rules that once guided States and that solidified in LAC, are now being openly contested. In some cases, this contestation is even voluntary, as heads of State welcome external involvement within their territories. Rules that once emerged as forms of resistance in South and Central America, such as the principle of non-intervention (crystallised in the UN General Assembly Resolution 2625 (XXV)), the Calvo Doctrine, and the Drago Doctrine, are now forgotten or neglected. Against this backdrop, the symposium also invites scholars and practitioners to examine the current state of the rules-based order that increasingly appears threatened or diminished.
4. Emergency Powers, States of Exception, and Democratic Governance: We also welcome contributions examining the increasing reliance on emergency powers and exceptional forms of governance across the region. Possible topics include the normalization of emergency measures, the concentration of executive authority, the relationship between constitutional and international constraints on emergency powers, and the role of international human rights law in addressing prolonged, recurring, or informal states of exception.

We particularly encourage contributions that engage with the broader legal and structural questions underpinning these developments. The symposium aims to bring together perspectives on how contemporary dynamics in LAC relate to core concepts, doctrines, and institutions of public international law. Rather than focusing on isolated or case-specific issues, we invite submissions that situate regional developments within wider debates on sovereignty, intervention, democratic governance, and the international legal order.

Submission Details

If you are interested in participating in the symposium, please send your contribution of approximately 1,500 words, in English or Spanish in line with our guidelines for authors, to  symposium-americas@voelkerrechtsblog.org. Please mention ‘Call for Contributions – Symposium’ in the subject line. Submissions should also mention the affiliation of the authors.

Deadline for the submission of blog posts: 07 September 2026