On the grand scale of humanity, a good thing you could say about 2023 is that it is over \u2013 if only that meant that there were realistic hopes of less horrors for 2024. However, such fatalism is not what we are about here: Because doing international law requires the hope that things could be different – a Fool\u2018s Hope perhaps, as Gandalf might call it.<\/p>\n
What gives us some hope is having a look the small part we have been able to do by providing an open and diverse platform to the international law community for another year.<\/p>\n
What You Read in 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n Our top posts of 2023 are a colorful mix of well-known all-time favorites, articles that discuss current topics, and rather unusual posts.<\/p>\n More than 8 % of our readers are based in India \u2013 which puts the country third in our readership statistics after the United States (9 %) and Germany (28 %). This is why we are very happy that our two most read articles of 2023 center Indian perspectives on human rights law and anti-discrimination in India. Our most clicked article \u201cIndia\u2019s Forced Sterilization Practices Under International Human Rights Law\u201d by Ramya Jawahar Kudekallu was published<\/u><\/a> on 10 March 2022 as part of our \u201cWomen in International Law\u201d symposium, Volume 1. The symposium was continued<\/a> in 2023 with a focus on women in international refugee law. In our second-most clicked article \u201cThe Internationalisation of Caste\u201d, Swati Singh Parmar discusses<\/u><\/a> the incompatibility of caste discrimination with international human rights law, which provoked a remarkable number of comments on our blog.<\/p>\n Moving down the list, many readers will stumble across familiar names and titles: Our most popular article of 2022<\/u><\/a> and #8 of 2021, Sissy Katsoni\u2019s \u201cThe Right to Abortion and the European Convention on Human Rights: In Search of Consensus among Member-States\u201d, came in third. In our January 2023 editorial, we were wondering whether Cristian van Eijk\u2019s\u00a0record-breaking piece<\/u><\/a> \u201cSorry, Elon: Mars is not a legal vacuum \u2013 and it\u2019s not yours, either\u201d would be #4 in 2023, since it reached #1 in 2020, #2 in 2021 and #3 in 2022. However, this post (or the person addressed in its title?) was not quite as popular anymore and ranked #12 in 2023.<\/p>\n Rather, an anonymously-published article ranked fourth<\/u><\/a> this year: In \u201cWhat to Expect When You\u2019re PhDing: Mental Health and Doctoral Studies in International Law\u201d, the author guides us through the peculiarities and troubles of pursuing a PhD, speaking mostly from a German point of view. A German version of this article was published<\/u><\/a> on JuWiss blog. The fact that this article drew so much interest suggests that mental health struggles in academia deserve more attention, alongside an improvement of working conditions.<\/p>\n Some articles seem to have secured their spot in our ranking before the year even started: Konrad Lachmayer\u2019s\u201cConstitutional authoritarianism, not authoritarian constitutionalism!\u201d (#5) is being featured in our top 15 for the fourth time<\/u><\/a> since 2019, and Valentin J. Schatz and Dmytro Koval\u2019s \u201cUkraine v. Russia: Passage through Kerch Strait and the Sea of Azov\u201d (#6) even for the fifth time<\/u><\/a>. Will we see them again next year?<\/p>\n Of course, current events are reflected in our top 15, too. Nora Salem\u2019s article \u201cPalestine \u2013 Israel: Context Matters!\u201d sparked debate<\/u><\/a> on 20 October 2023 and made it to #8 in just a little over two months. Three articles on the list appear in our extensive Ukraine-Russia article collection<\/u><\/a>: \u201cShould Third States Follow Ukraine\u2019s Lead and Confiscate Russian State Assets?<\/u><\/a>\u201d by Artem Ripenko (#9), \u201cHow Are Nuclear Power Plants Protected by Law During War?<\/u><\/a>\u201d by Anne Dienelt (#11, and #7 in 2022) and \u201cRussia\u2019s Recognition of the DPR and LPR as Illegal Acts under International Law<\/u><\/a>\u201c by J\u00falia Miklasov\u00e1 (#15, and #2 in 2022).<\/p>\n Only five out of the 15 most popular posts were published in 2023. To us, this illustrates once again that many of our articles remain just as relevant over time \u2013 a finding that encourages us in our concept of \u201cslow blogging<\/u><\/a>\u201d. Being able to take time in discussing, arguing and responding to scholarly work is also one of the main motivators for #reflecti\u00d6ns, a new, open-ended review format on V\u00f6lkerrechtsblog. Its first edition started on 18 December 2023 with a video lecture<\/u><\/a> by Juan Pablo Scarfi on \u2018The Monroe Doctrine: Towards a New Historiography\u2019. Please find more information on our new #reflecti\u00d6ns series\u00a0here<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n Other encouraging statistics include the continuously growing audience of the (German-language) V\u00f6lkerrechtspodcast. Three years into this project, we are as excited as on the first day and look forward to our next guests.<\/p>\n Growing Our Team<\/strong><\/p>\n Going by numbers, actually, the\u00a015th place on our most-clicked articles list would have been awarded to our Call for new team members, which we published in November. All in all, we received close to 80 applications from all over the world and then faced the extremely difficult task of selecting just twelve new editors to join our team. We feel extremely honored that so many highly qualified and just downright cool individuals are motivated to give some of their time to V\u00f6lkerrechtsblog.<\/p>\n #bl\u00d6giversary<\/strong><\/p>\n This level of support is what has allowed V\u00f6lkerrechtsblog to grow and thrive since 2014. Yes, you did the math right – 2024 marks our ten-year anniversary! We are already working on special content to celebrate our #bl\u00d6giversary, so keep an eye out for that.<\/p>\n And speaking of staying in contact, do consider joining us on Bluesky<\/u><\/a> (@voelkerrechtsblog.org).<\/p>\n We look forward to another year with you \u2013 thank you so much for being here.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Here are the 15 most-clicked articles on V\u00f6lkerrechtsblog in 2023:<\/p>\n On the grand scale of humanity, a good thing you could say about 2023 is that it is over \u2013 if only that meant that there were realistic hopes of less horrors for 2024. However, such fatalism is not what we are about here: Because doing international law requires the hope that things could be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6639],"tags":[],"authors":[6928,5621],"article-categories":[3577],"doi":[],"class_list":["post-21216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","authors-daniela-rau","authors-isabel-lischewski","article-categories-our-own-news"],"acf":{"subline":"And Looking Back on 2023"},"meta_box":{"doi":"10.17176\/20240112-004150-0"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21216"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21222,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21216\/revisions\/21222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21216"},{"taxonomy":"authors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/authors?post=21216"},{"taxonomy":"article-categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-categories?post=21216"},{"taxonomy":"doi","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/doi?post=21216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n