An unattainable dream

Symposium
Empty Chairs

An unattainable dream

21.12.2020

Mary Aileen Diez-Bacalso

Ten years have passed since the entry into force of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED or the Convention). It seems to be only yesterday...

Symposium
Empty Chairs

New wine in old bottles

21.12.2020

Dilek Kurban

On 16 June 2017, 40-year-old Murat Okumuş was abducted in broad daylight by several plainclothes men in Izmir, Turkey’s third largest metropole. The abductors arrived in two unmarked cars, pushed Mr. Okumuş into one...

Symposium
Empty Chairs

Unlocatable Violence

19.12.2020

Christina Varvia

Enforced disappearance is not simply the act of violence of its constituent parts: of detention, torture, inhumane treatment, murder. Enforced disappearance operates on a different political register: it not only...

Symposium
Empty Chairs

(Enforced) disappearances – when state and criminal perpetrators blur

18.12.2020

Janice Gallagher

Mexico intellectual and organizer Gustavo Esteva uses “lodo” (lit. mud, Spanish), as an analogy to talk about violence in Mexico. For Esteva, the State and organized crime are no longer separate entities –...

Symposium
Empty Chairs

Excluding enforced disappearances from military jurisdiction

18.12.2020

Catherine Kent

Enforced disappearances often result in impunity, which is a “distinctive trait” of such crimes (UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, 2020 Annual Report, paras. 1, 93). A range of factors can contribute...

Symposium
Empty Chairs

Bringing home the remains of forcibly disappeared persons

17.12.2020

Grażyna Baranowska

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it impossible for millions of people around the globe to say goodbye to their loved ones or to bury them according to their beliefs. This situation...

Symposium
Empty Chairs

The vicious cycle of impunity

16.12.2020

Ana Srovin Coralli Pamela Favre

Despite being a country where disappearances have been committed for decades, El Salvador’s approach towards the search for disappeared persons and prosecution of these crimes remains under-explored by the international community....

Symposium
Empty Chairs

The Committee on Enforced Disappearances

16.12.2020

Albane Prophette-Pallasco Anna Batalla Trilla

With the ratification of the 2006 International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED), States officially confirm their commitment to fight against enforced disappearances and to prevent their...

Symposium
Empty Chairs

Non-judicial search for disappeared persons

15.12.2020

Luciano Hazan

In view of the failure of the criminal justice systems, which have been unable to make effective progress in the investigation and search for disappeared persons, a new model of...

Symposium
Empty Chairs

Disappeared migrants and refugees

15.12.2020

Barbara Lochbihler Silke Voß-Kyeck Grażyna Baranowska

Every year thousands of migrants and refugees disappear en route to reach their destination country or in the host country itself. While this phenomenon has been articulated recently in the...

Symposium
Empty Chairs

A precursor to comprehensive perspectives on Enforced Disappearances

14.12.2020

Antonia Urrejola Noguera

Enforced disappearance is one of the most atrocious criminal behaviours: its intention is to erase a person from his or her environment, to hide his or her whereabouts and thus...

Symposium
Empty Chairs

A decade of victim-centred approaches

12.12.2020

Carmen Rosa Villa Quintana

“¿Dónde están? Vivos se los llevaron, vivos los queremos!” (lit. Where are they? Alive they were taken, alive we want them!) is the cry of the relatives of disappeared persons....

Symposium
Empty Chairs

My story: a case of enforced disappearance

11.12.2020

Raza Mahmood Khan

My name is Raza Mahmood Khan and I have been disappeared for seven months. I am a peace educator and have worked actively with children across the border of India...

Symposium
Empty Chairs

Empty chairs

10.12.2020

Justine Batura Nesa Zimmermann

“Enforced disappearance is a particularly heinous crime”. This phrase has been repeated time and again by civil society organisations and UN experts, and states have condemned this crime countless times....

Symposium
Empty Chairs

Call for Contributions: Symposium on Enforced Disappearances

03.11.2020

Justine Batura Nesa Zimmermann

The year 2020 marks the 10th anniversary of the entry into force of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED) and the 40th anniversary...

Book Review
Symposium
Crimes Against Humanity

Transnational biographies and “legal flows”

02.10.2020

Kerstin von Lingen

I feel honoured by the inspiring comments my book has received from so many eminent colleagues, and I would like to thank everybody, and also the Völkerrechtsblog for the opportunity...

Book Review
Symposium
Crimes Against Humanity

A melody for legal reform?

01.10.2020

Elena Kempf

In Crimes Against Humanity, Kerstin von Lingen proposes a twofold argument about the history of the eponymous concept. First, von Lingen emphasizes the longue-durée history of crimes against humanity as...

Book Review
Symposium
Crimes Against Humanity

A (time) travelling concept

28.09.2020

Annette Weinke

In May 2001, the French National Assembly passed the so-called Lois Taubina which retroactively decreed the colonial slave trade as a "crime against humanity". In 2019, Pope Francis publicly called...

Book Review
Symposium
Crimes Against Humanity

Civilizing wartime violence?

24.09.2020

Daniel Marc Segesser

For many years, legal concepts were a domain of legal analysis in which the historical context was hardly addressed. This has slowly changed since the beginning of the 21st century,...

Book Review
Symposium
Crimes Against Humanity

A matter of evolution, not invention

23.09.2020

Philippe Sands

On the morning of Sunday July 29th 1945, Robert Jackson, recently named as Chief Prosecutor of the International Military Tribunal to be established in Nuremberg, was driven from his hotel...

Book Review
Symposium
Crimes Against Humanity

Symposium introduction: crimes against humanity

22.09.2020

Sebastian M. Spitra Anna Sophia Tiedeke

This post is the opening of a symposium on Kerstin von Lingen’s award-winning book Crimes Against Humanity. Eine Ideengeschichte der Zivilisierung von Kriegsgewalt 1864–1945. The book looks at the intellectual...

Symposium
Interview
Book Review
Indigenous Rights and Biodiversity

Indigenous peoples and biodiversity law in Ecuador

08.07.2020

Alexandra Tomaselli Daqui Lema Maldonado

The book symposium on Federica Cittadino’s attempt to incorporate indigenous rights in international biodiversity law raised various theoretical and practical issues for international legal scholarship. But how is the link...

Symposium
Book Review
Indigenous Rights and Biodiversity

Incorporating indigenous rights in the CBD

30.06.2020

Federica Cittadino

Let me start by thanking the symposium’s editors and the three researchers that have accepted to review my work for their thoughtful comments and for sparking a lively discussion. In...

Symposium
Book Review
Indigenous Rights and Biodiversity

Two opposing commitments?

29.06.2020

Mauro Barelli

Federica Cittadino’s book examines the tension that underpins the relationship between two key commitments undertaken by the international community, namely the commitment to protect indigenous people’s rights and the commitment...

Symposium
Book Review
Indigenous Rights and Biodiversity

Indigenous power beyond human rights

26.06.2020

Lucas Lixinski

Indigenous power in international law has long been subsumed under the language of international human rights, and we have turned ourselves blind to other possibilities in international law that Indigenous...

Symposium
Book Review
Indigenous Rights and Biodiversity

Traditional knowledge and customary law

25.06.2020

Giada Giacomini

While the world’s 370 million of persons belonging to an Indigenous people account for less than five percent of the total human population, they hold tenure over 25 percent of...

Symposium
Book Review
Indigenous Rights and Biodiversity

Incorporating indigenous rights in the international regime on biodiversity protection

24.06.2020

Sebastian M. Spitra Anna-Julia Saiger

This post is the first of a series of four that will discuss Federica Cittadino’s book Incorporating Indigenous Rights in the International Regime on Biodiversity Protection. Access, Benefit-sharing and Conservation...

Symposium
Book Review
The Corporation, Law and Capitalism

Perfect pandemic reading

21.06.2020

Grietje Baars

I am very excited about my book being discussed in the Völkerrechtsblog and grateful to Michael Bader for organising it, and for the six readers taking their time to dip...

Symposium
Book Review
The Corporation, Law and Capitalism

Between utopia and affirmation of the status quo

20.06.2020

Miriam Saage-Maaß

For someone who has been working in the field of so-called strategic litigation against multinational corporations in international (criminal) law and other fields of national law for more than a...

Symposium
Book Review
The Corporation, Law and Capitalism

International law and capitalist logic of exploitation

19.06.2020

Hannah Franzki

The Corporation, Law and Capitalism: A Radical Perspective on the Role of Law in the Global Political Economy is a loud book. The author promises to "radically" change our view...

Symposium
Book Review
The Corporation, Law and Capitalism

Internationales Recht und kapitalistische Verwertungslogik

19.06.2020

Hannah Franzki

The Corporation, Law and Capitalism: A Radical Perspective on the Role of Law in the Global Political Economy ist ein lautes Buch. Die Autor*in verspricht, auf “radikale” Weise unseren Blick...

Symposium
Book Review
Contingency in International Law

Of law(s) and capitalism(s)

18.06.2020

Klaas Eller

The thrive for corporate accountability has given rise to some of the most vivid legal developments since the post-war era. In a liberal logic and from the vantage point of...

Symposium
Book Review
The Corporation, Law and Capitalism

Rechtsform(en) jenseits des Kapitalismus?

17.06.2020

Johan Horst

The Corporation, Law and Capitalism ist ein wichtiges Buch. Mit einem historisch-materialistischen Fokus auf die rechtliche Konfigurierung des Unternehmens als Rechtsperson zeigt Grietje Baars exemplarisch die Rolle des Rechts für...

Symposium
Book Review
Contingency in International Law

Legal form(s) beyond capitalism?

17.06.2020

Johan Horst

The Corporation, Law and Capitalism is an important book. With a historical-materialist focus on the legal configuration of the corporation as a legal entity, Grietje Baars shows in an exemplary...

Symposium
Book Review
The Corporation, Law and Capitalism

Seeking corporate accountability for human rights

16.06.2020

Marisa McVey

The Corporation, Law and Capitalism provided a fantastically refreshing (if a little depressing) counter-narrative of international (criminal) law’s intimate relationship with capital, and the paradoxical effect this has on attempts...

Symposium
Book Review
The Corporation, Law and Capitalism

Working toward the world we want to live in

15.06.2020

Michael Bader

Grietje Baars’ recently published book The Corporation, Law and Capitalism is a powerful intervention on multiple accounts. Baars’ study spearheads and complements a newly revived Marxist legal tradition in the...

Symposium
International Law in Pandemic Times

The case for global constitutionalism in pandemic times

06.06.2020

Ezel Buse Sönmezocak

As the first shock wave caused by the Covid-19 has partially passed, the conditions and effects of the epidemic and even the post-pandemic process started to be discussed among international...

Symposium
International Law in Pandemic Times

Creating a kingdom of stone walls

05.06.2020

Shardul Ansingkar

India has 376 million active social media users, out of which 66 million are aged between 5 and 11 years, suggesting that a significant number of India’s demographics on social...

Symposium
International Law in Pandemic Times

To sue or not to sue

04.06.2020

Johanna Aleria Lorenzo

Various areas of international law highlight the value of information and the essential role of the obligation to notify in fulfilling other duties. The current COVID-19 global crisis has further...

Symposium
International Law in Pandemic Times

Racial violence and COVID-19

03.06.2020

Bruna Goncalves

Since COVID-19 emerged, Western discourse vivifies the exclusion and objectification of racial groups regarding both a responsible subject and potential solutions to the pandemic. These solutions articulate political interests instead...

Symposium
Digital Echoes: Listening to New Normativities – Second Season

Testing Europe: COVID-19 and the rule of law

02.06.2020

Markus Beham

“Sovereign is he who decides on the exception,” wrote the notorious constitutional law scholar Carl Schmitt in 1922 in his work Political Theology, “exception” understood as measures undertaken in a...

Symposium
International Law in Pandemic Times

Claims after COVID?

02.06.2020

Abdullah Ali

COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc – not only by taking the lives of thousands of people across the world but also by impacting the national and international economy. The pandemic...

Symposium
International Law in Pandemic Times

A burden to share

01.06.2020

Jasper Doomen

The spread of the Coronavirus disease prompts the question whether EU Member states should show solidarity and, if so, to what extent. It is clear that Italy is one of...

Symposium
70 Years of UNHCR and Refugee Convention

Vulnerability in times of Corona

28.05.2020

Anna Kohte

Two years ago, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Court) issued a seminal ruling regarding the right to health established in Article 26 of the American Convention on Human Rights...

Symposium
Digital Echoes: Listening to New Normativities – Second Season

The Corona effect

27.05.2020

María Elisa Vera Madrigal

Can the flap of a bat’s wings in Hunan, China, send global markets into freefall and threaten democracy in the Americas? Today, most of us would answer in the affirmative...

Symposium
International Law in Pandemic Times

Beauty and the virus

26.05.2020

Michael Bader

Many parts of the world are in lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic. As most of Europe was hit hard by the virus and its rapid spread, countries implemented lockdown...

Symposium
International Law in Pandemic Times

Look for everyday solidarity

25.05.2020

Ling Chen Vishakha Wijenayake

The absent global leadership and starkly uncoordinated cross-border responses have exacerbated the spread of the coronavirus. On a positive note, countries are progressively joining forces to address immediate humanitarian appeals....

Symposium
Contingency in International Law

Symposium: International law in pandemic times

25.05.2020

Völkerrechtsblog

Today we kick off our symposium on „International law in pandemic times“. International lawyers have started to debate the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on a range of fora (see here, here and...

Symposium
Climate Justice

La solidarité dans le droit international: entre mythe et réalité

15.05.2020

Vonintsoa Rafaly

Le droit international n’est pas toujours conforme à l’image que l’on veut lui donner, et qu’en donne les internationalistes, qu’ils soient positivistes ou relativistes. Les critères sont relatifs et ne...

Symposium
Climate Justice

How behavioural law can promote sustainable development

14.05.2020

Eva van der Zee

The idea that human society and peoples should develop in a sustainable way can be traced back to ancient cultures, practices and legal traditions. However, only recently there is an...

Symposium
Digital Echoes: Listening to New Normativities – Second Season

Could “Net”-Zero Emissions prove to be a fatal blow for climate justice?

13.05.2020

Simon Simanovski

In 2015, after intense lobbying efforts and to the frustration of many climate justice activists, the Human Rights dimension of climate change was included not in the text, but only...

Symposium
Climate Justice

Art. XX GATT 1994 – Climate change and disadvantaged nations

12.05.2020

Leonard Reider

As signs of a looming climate catastrophe emerge, international law scholars and lawyers frequently seek additional paths to restrict greenhouse-gas emissions and to protect the environment. On a regular basis,...

Symposium
Climate Justice

Securing pathways to environmental justice for indigenous women

11.05.2020

Laura Cahier

Across the Americas, Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) or the World Bank (WB), finance public and private projects to support the development of the...

Symposium
Contingency in International Law

Access to justice and climate-related disasters: Do we need “disaster justice”?

07.05.2020

Mariko Watanabe

The world is experiencing an increasing number of disasters, both those caused by natural hazards and those linked to human activities, and this fact renders cooperation and coordination at the...

Symposium
Climate Justice

Klimagerechtigkeit – ein Recht auf Heimat?

06.05.2020

Manuela Niehaus

Das Thema Klimagerechtigkeit hat in den letzten Jahren viel Aufmerksamkeit erfahren. Die explizite Aufnahme von Klimagerechtigkeit in die Präambel des Pariser Übereinkommens von 2015 wurde sowohl von Aktivisten als auch...

Symposium
Climate Justice

Displacement in connection with climate change: does transitional justice offer a lens for durable solutions?

05.05.2020

Jenny Poon

Forced displacement is not a recent phenomenon. However, in recent years, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has estimated that there are over 65.6 million persons forcibly displaced...

Symposium
Climate Justice

Democratising international climate law

04.05.2020

Leslie-Anne Duvic-Paoli

Government centred action has so far failed to respond adequately to the climate crisis, opening the space for new governance experiments, including through subnational coalitions, social movements and private standards....

Symposium
Climate Justice

The state is dead – long live the state! Statehood in an age of catastrophe

01.05.2020

Viljam Engström Michel Rouleau-Dick

The geographical impact of climate change on statehood is rather clear. Ever since scientists have been warning about climate change and the rise in sea levels it would involve, several...

Symposium
Climate Justice

Judging climate change obligations: Can the World Court rise to the occasion?

30.04.2020

Tom Sparks Nataša Nedeski Gleider Hernández

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic piles crisis atop crisis. As confirmed infection rates cross 2.5 million and attributed deaths pass 170,000 (at time of writing, in April 2020), it is increasingly being...

Symposium
Climate Justice

Judging climate change obligations: Can the World Court rise to the occasion?

30.04.2020

Tom Sparks Nataša Nedeski Gleider Hernández

In Part I of this post, we sought to identify the core rules of international environmental law that needed evolution and clarification for a claim relating to climate change to...

Symposium
Climate Justice

Pursuing climate justice through public interest litigation: the Urgenda case

29.04.2020

Otto Spijkers

This blog post critically examines the contribution of public interest litigation to the global fight for climate justice. I consider the Urgenda case, which culminated in the Netherlands’ Supreme Court...

Symposium
Digital Echoes: Listening to New Normativities – Second Season

Global South climate litigation versus climate justice: duty of international cooperation as a remedy?

28.04.2020

Juan Auz

Imagine for a moment that you are a Bolivian small farmer whose livelihood depends on the continuing flow of a river to water your crops. Now, due to climate change,...

Symposium
Climate Justice

International law in an age of catastrophe

27.04.2020

Dana Schmalz Raffaela Kunz Anna-Julia Saiger

The symposium on climate justice is starting on the blog today, and it appears both a most urgent and a curious moment for it. Last year, the climate crisis finally...

Symposium
Climate Justice

‘Staying with the trouble’

27.04.2020

Marie Petersmann

Among the issues raised in the call for contributions to the symposium on ‘Climate Justice – International Law in an Age of Catastrophe’, we find the question whether ‘international law...

Symposium
Young Approaches to International Law

Irrational, unprofessional, radical?

18.04.2020

Raffaela Kunz Anna Holzscheiter

2019 has marked the year in which the climate crisis has entered broader public debate. The main trigger were young people protesting around the globe and demanding that their governments...

Symposium
Young Approaches to International Law

Denying juveniles’ agency role: truly in their best interest?

17.04.2020

Dilken Celebi

How is it possible that thus far the agency role of juveniles in international law appears to be diminished and underestimated, even though they constitute a large number of the...

Symposium
Young Approaches to International Law

Enter the youth, a protagonist behind the scenes

16.04.2020

Laura Fischer Franka Weckner

The 1992 Rio Declaration suggested that young people would soon become protagonists in international law-making. Accordingly, it should be no surprise that the youth has become louder and louder in...

Symposium
Young Approaches to International Law

Do youth delegates at the UN have an influence on public international law?

15.04.2020

Antonia Kuhn

Young people, mostly defined as people aged between 15 and 24 in the UN context (for more information on the definition of youth, see here), are generally underrepresented in political...

Symposium
Young Approaches to International Law

Rejuvenating international law

14.04.2020

Lewis Wattenberg Julian A. Hettihewa Felix Schott Selin Dirik

Announcing a “Youthquake”, Time Magazine rang the bell of change, declaring that a new generation is on its way to power. International legal scholarship, however, has not yet recognised this...

Symposium
International Law in Pandemic Times

Call for Contributions: International law in pandemic times

06.04.2020

Völkerrechtsblog

The current COVID-19 pandemic is a health crisis of global dimension. With numerous countries imposing shut-downs, closing their borders and limiting international trade and cooperation, the crisis in some ways...

Symposium
Rewarding in International Law

International law in an age of catastrophe

10.02.2020

Dana Schmalz Raffaela Kunz Anna-Julia Saiger

We live in an age of catastrophe. This is not alarmism. Rather, denying this would mean disregarding all scientific evidence we have. At the beginning of this new decade, Australia...

Symposium
Book Review
Feminist Engagement with International Law

Crisis and hypocrisy?

20.01.2020

Sué González Hauck Isabel Lischewski

The Book Review Symposium on Feminist Engagement with International Law has been taking place against the backdrop of multiple crises. The crisis that has been dominating the news worldwide is...

Symposium
Book Review
Digital Echoes: Listening to New Normativities – Second Season

Intersectional feminist engagements with international law (Part II)

15.01.2020

Sué González Hauck

In this second part of our interview with CIJ founder and executive director Emilia Roig, we move from general questions on intersectionality and the category ‘women’ to more specific questions...

Symposium
Book Review
Feminist Engagement with International Law

Intersectional feminist engagements with international law (Part I)

14.01.2020

Sué González Hauck

Most contributions to our online review symposium argue in favor of an intersectional approach. Legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term ‘intersectionality’ in 1989. Crenshaw is also the president of...

Symposium
Book Review
Feminist Engagement with International Law

Whose womanhood? Feminist postcolonial approaches to law

13.01.2020

Katharina Wommelsdorff

In July 2019, shortly before her election as the first ever female president of the European Commission, German centre-right minister of defence Ursula von der Leyen introduced the Hashtag #EuropeIsAWoman....

Symposium
Book Review
Feminist Engagement with International Law

TWAILing feminist engagement with international law: Toward an intersectional governance feminism

10.01.2020

Gabriele Wadlig

The recently published Handbook on Feminist Engagement with International Law [’the Handbook’] does not only provide a glimpse at the breadth of contemporary critical feminist international law scholarship, but, perhaps...

Symposium
Book Review
Feminist Engagement with International Law

The problem of “sport sex”

09.01.2020

Michele Krech

Female track athletes with certain differences of sex development (DSD) are now barred from the women’s category of international competition – that is, unless they undergo procedures to “normalise” the...

Symposium
Book Review
Feminist Engagement with International Law

Book Symposium on “Feminist Engagement with International Law”

08.01.2020

Sué González Hauck Isabel Lischewski

“Feminist analysis is like friendship: an ongoing process of deepening complexity, interactive, contradictory, insightful, emotional, enlightening, challenging, conflicting”, Nancy O. Dowd wrote in her introduction to Feminist Legal Theory: An...

Symposium
Book Review
Feminist Engagement with International Law

‘It’s not a research gap, it’s a research crevasse!’

08.01.2020

Isabel Lischewski

To kick off our book symposium on the Research Handbook on Feminist Engagement with International Law, Völkerrechtsblog’s Isabel Lischewski talks to editors Susan Harris Rimmer, Associate Professor, Griffith University Law...

Symposium
Internet Governance Forum

The Contract for the Web: The newest manifestation of digital constitutionalism?

29.11.2019

Dennis Redeker

The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is intended to bring together the multistakeholder community to talk about the current and the future Internet. It is distinctly not supposed to bring about...

Symposium
Internet Governance Forum

A tale of two foundational orders

28.11.2019

Matthias C. Kettemann

The Internet – as a global technological facility enabling information and communication creation and exchange – has become an object of regulation by international law. But more than that: the...

Symposium
Internet Governance Forum

Three eras of digital governance

27.11.2019

Jonathan Zittrain

To understand where digital governance is going, we must take stock of where it’s been, because the timbre of mainstream thinking around digital governance today is dramatically different than it...

Symposium
Internet Governance Forum

Free speech in the age of online content moderation

26.11.2019

Giovanni de Gregorio

Content moderation is not a novelty in the media sector. As content providers, traditional media outlets like televisions and newspaper have always selected the information to broadcast or disclose. Nevertheless,...

Symposium
Internet Governance Forum

Thoughts on ‘one World, one Net, one Vision’

25.11.2019

Anna Sophia Tiedeke Matthias K. Klatt

That the Internet is more than a global infrastructure is old news. But the changes and challenges to our global understanding of territorial boarders, governance, sovereignty and communication are still...

Symposium
Internet Governance Forum

Ein globaler „Dauerbrenner“

25.11.2019

Amélie Pia Heldt

Hate Speech umgrenzen, verstehen und bekämpfen – ein weiterhin aktuelles Thema im Kontext von Online-Kommunikation. Das Thema ist demzufolge auf dem Internet Governance Forum gut aufgehoben, denn es betrifft alle...

Symposium
Colonial Repercussions in Germany and Namibia

The role of museums

22.11.2019

Winani Thebele

When we talk about addressing the colonial past and decolonization, museums should play an active role and make their numerous voices heard. In order to play a relevant role in...

Symposium
Colonial Repercussions in Germany and Namibia

German colonialism, reparations and international law

21.11.2019

Vasuki Nesiah

Reparations have become an increasingly important entry point to the conversation about the unfinished business of decolonization. Even though reparations have an established role in transitional justice and human rights,...

Symposium
Colonial Repercussions in Germany and Namibia

Participation rights of indigenous peoples

20.11.2019

Lazarus Kairabeb

Over the past three decades, indigenous peoples’rights have become an important component of international law and policy. This is a result of a movement driven by indigenous peoples, civil society...

Symposium
Colonial Repercussions in Germany and Namibia

From ideological fixity to moral argument

19.11.2019

André du Pisani

Today, international law – and international human rights law in particular – provides the dominant frame, often augmented by negotiations, for responding to acts of genocide. While this frame is...

Symposium
Colonial Repercussions in Germany and Namibia

Racist repercussions and transgenerational exclusion

18.11.2019

Karina Theurer

The German and Namibian governments seem to be about to finalize their negotiations on (the costs of) reconciliation. Several civil society actors and Ovaherero and Nama representatives criticize the procedure...

Symposium
Colonial Repercussions in Germany and Namibia

The law as a (limited) means to address colonial injustice

15.11.2019

John B. Nakuta

Calls for reparations for historic injustices dominate current Namibian discourse. Such calls are directed to both the German and Namibian governments. The German government is called upon to take full...

Symposium
Rewarding in International Law

The genocide against the Ovaherero and Nama peoples

15.11.2019

Sam Geiseb

The German colonization of what became German South West Africa commenced in 1884 and ended with German forces’ surrender to the Union of South Africa in July 1915. The genocidal...

Symposium
Rewarding in International Law

Decolonizing intertemporal international law

13.11.2019

Matthias Goldmann

As with many legal disputes concerning Europe’s bloody colonial past, conversations about the Ovaherero and Nama’s right to reparations from Germany often reach a dead end at the mention of...

Symposium
Women in International Law Vol. 4

Colonial repercussions in Germany and Namibia

11.11.2019

Judith Hackmack

The colonial past and its complex repercussions are finally present in post-colonial European public discourse. So far, however, this has had little to no effect on formerly colonized societies. One...

Symposium
Colonial Repercussions in Germany and Namibia

Historical originis of the Ovaherero and Nama Genocide

11.11.2019

Festus U. Muundjua

One cannot discuss the issue of the Ovaherero and Nama genocide without referring to the causes that gave rise to it. Although Eurocentric historiographers have written most of the history...

Symposium
Plurality of Law and Development

“Sexual orientation is not a fashion statement”

18.10.2019

Sophie Hoffbauer

With the High Court’s judgment from June 11th 2019, judge Michael Elburu suspended section 164 a and c and section 165 of the Penal Code from 1965 which punish same-sex...

More law in development

18.10.2019

The post 'More law in development' was subject to an external complaint and was provisionally taken down while the blog was conducting an internal investigation in line with internationally accepted...

Symposium
Plurality of Law and Development

Burning issues in the “Land of the Future”

17.10.2019

Mariana Monteiro de Matos

Since his first visit, Stefan Zweig had been fascinated by Brazil. Friendly people, good weather, and terrific landscapes. This fascination has led Zweig to publish a book called Brazil, Land...

Symposium
Plurality of Law and Development

The new wave of law and development

15.10.2019

Koen de Feyter

This short note was inspired by the 2019 Law and Development Research Network Conference in Berlin. The Conference was organised by the Chair for Public Law and Comparative Law at...