International Humanitarian Law Commons^™

Symposium Introduction: Vulnerabilities In The Trade And Investment Regimes In The Age Of Covid-19, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe, Clair Gammage

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This Symposium is one of the follow-up publications to the Afronomicslaw.org Webinar III on “Vulnerability in the Trade and Investment Regime in the Age of COVID-19”

‘Vulnerability’ in trade and investment regimes is not a new phenomenon. Nor, is the concept of ‘crisis’. While IEL scholarship has acknowledged some of the way(s) in which the formalisation of international legal rules in trade and investment can act like a ‘straightjacket’ on global south states, sustaining and creating forms of dependencies that are difficult to escape, there is a notable lack of meaningful engagement with the contours and manifestations of concepts like …

Symposium Introduction: Teaching And Researching International Law – Global Perspectives, James Thuo Gathii, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe, Nthope Mapefane, Titilayo Adebola, Ohio Omiunu

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Welcome to the Teaching and Researching International Law – Global Perspectives Symposium. This series of blog posts gathers perspectives from international law teachers, researchers and students from different regions and all stages of their careers and legal education, to reflect together on common challenges and imagined futures of our profession. This Symposium is held in a moment of great uncertainty – but also of possibility: the Critical Pedagogy Symposium recently held on Opinio Juris offered thought-provoking commentary from across the globe on critical international pedagogy and the virtual space, while the forthcoming TWAILR series on Critique and the Canon promises …

The European Union Military: A Debate On The Need For A Common Defense Mechanism, Gonzalo Secaira

CMC Senior Theses

In a region affected by death and destruction brought on by two devastating world wars, the European Union has held peace and economic stability as its primary objective. Since its creation, the EU has expanded both in size and scope, becoming on the largest economic global actors in the world. In recent years, the EU has looked towards expanding its competencies to include common security and defense policies. Efforts on behalf of the EU to further integrate EU members have faced mixed reactions and opposition. One of these policies, the funding, and implementation of a European Union military has been …

The Syrian Refugee Crisis Within Europe: A Matter Of Politics, Not Capacity, Anita Frances Shenoi

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines factors that enabled the influx of Syrian refugees to the European Union and traces their plight in Europe as one of the greatest humanitarian crises since World War II. The migration of refugees to European countries is a result of Syrians facing religious, racial, and social persecution, and immediate danger from proximity to on the ground conflict in Syria. The Syrian refugee crisis in Europe is occurring, in part, because there is a concentrated effort on behalf of Member States to change the definition of displacement to fit narratives more conducive to each countries’ individual preferences. European …

The Netherlands V Urgenda Foundation: Lessons For Using International Human Rights Law In Canada To Address Climate Change, Karinne Lantz

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This case digest focuses on the Canadian implications of Urgenda— particularly with respect to current attempts to use human rights arguments to require more ambitious and immediate efforts to reduce Canadian GHG emissions. Although the Canadian Arctic (and Indigenous communities residing there) are particularly vulnerable to the threats posed by global climate change, there has not yet been a court decision addressing Canada’s continuing failure to meet its successive GHG emissions targets. With pending climate litigation invoking a human rights approach, it is only a matter of time before Canadian courts will be faced with deciding, among other things, whether …

Environmental Injustice: How Treaties Undermine Human Rights Related To The Environment, Lisa E. Sachs, Lise Johnson, Ella Merrill

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Growing cries for action to effectively address the climate and other environmental crises hold important implications for the governance of cross-border investments. Policymakers and environmental advocates have often overlooked how provisions granted by states in international investment agreements (IIAs) have been used by investors to challenge government measures taken in the public interest to protect the environment and advance environmental justice.

This 2019 paper, published in the Sciences Po Legal Review issue devoted to the climate crisis, explains how the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism, made available to investors in thousands of bilateral and multilateral trade and investment agreements, may …

The Proportionality Rule And Mental Health Harm In War, Sarah Knuckey, Alex Moorehead, Audrey Mccalley, Adam Brown

Faculty Scholarship

The foundational international humanitarian law rule of proportionality — that parties to an armed conflict may not attack where civilian harm would be excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage — is normally interpreted to encompass civilian physical injuries only. Attacks may cause significant mental harms also, yet current interpretations of the law lag behind science in understanding and recognizing these kinds of harms. This article analyzes legal, public health, psychology, and neuroscience research to assess the extent to which mental health harms should and could be taken into account in proportionality assessments.

Migration As Reparation: Climate Change And The Disruption Of Borders, Carmen G. Gonzalez

Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article examines the legal and moral basis for migration as a form of reparation for the harms inflicted on the states and peoples of the Global South through climate change and through centuries of predatory economic policies. Using Central American migration to the United States as a case study, the article explains that susceptibility to climate change is a function of two variables: exposure and social and economic vulnerability. High-emitting affluent states are disproportionately responsible for Central America’s exposure to climate change due to their historic and current greenhouse gas emissions, their unwillingness to curb these emissions, and their …

Rationing Safe And Effective Covid-19 Vaccines: Allocating To States Proportionate To Population May Undermine Commitments To Mitigating Health Disparities, Harald Schmidt, Parag A. Pathak, Michelle A. Williams, Tayfun Sönmez, M. Utku Ünver, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

A central goal in the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine’s (NASEM) framework for equitable COVID-19 vaccine allocation is to mitigate existing inequities, particularly those affecting economically worse-off racial and ethnic minorities. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice (ACIP) likewise notes that equity demands to “reduce, rather than increase, health disparities in each phase of vaccine distribution”. A crucial question in this regard is how vaccines should be distributed to states. The default is to allocate proportionate to population size. However, this approach risks increasing scarcity for worse-off populations in states where they represent above-average shares. To avoid lower …

Book Review, Terje Einarsen & Joseph Rikhof, A Theory Of Punishable Participation In Universal Crimes (2018), Mark A. Drumbl, Lauren Hancock

Scholarly Articles

In A Theory of Punishable Participation in Universal Crimes, Terje Einarsen and Joseph Rikhof unpack concepts of liability for individual contributions to universal crimes. Universal crimes – namely genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and acts of aggression – tend to occur when a state or another powerful organization (a non-state actor, for example) collectivizes and channels the involvement of many people to commit the crime. The people who execute the acts are rarely ever the people who coordinate them. This disjuncture renders participation difficult to define and punish – individual acts may elide conventional legal intelligibility. Consequently, only …

Introduction: Global Health And Human Rights, Lawrence O. Gostin, Benjamin Mason Meier

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This introduction highlights the foundational importance of human rights for global health and provides an academic framework for this book by laying out the role of human rights under international law as a basis for public health. Part I seeks to define the evolving conceptualization of health, examining both the shifting focus from medicine to public health and the shifting response from international health to global health. Framing global health as a human rights imperative, Part II examines the establishment of human rights under international law, the implementation of these rights in public policy, and the development of rights for …

The World Health Organization In Global Health Law, Benjamin Mason Meier, Allyn Taylor, Mark Eccleston-Turner, Roojin Habibi, Sharifah Sekalala, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The World Health Organization (WHO) has sought to bring the world together to respond to a shared threat. This column seeks to examine the central importance of WHO in developing and implementing global health law. Recognizing that global health law requires global governance, the column begins by situating WHO’s role at the forefront of global health governance. WHO’s leadership in global governance for health is supported by an expansive mandate to serve as a forum for the codification of international law, which WHO has exercised sporadically through the evolving development of the International Health Regulations (IHR). Yet, where the IHR …

Why China Should Unsign The International Covenant On Civil And Political Rights, Margaret K. Lewis

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In March 2019, the United Nations Human Rights Council finalized its periodic review of China's human rights record just as human rights in China were under intensified attack. As during prior reviews, China was criticized for its human rights practices. And, once again, China was urged to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which China signed over twenty years ago. It is time to reevaluate this approach.

This Article argues that the international community should change tack and instead call on China to remove its signature from this foundational human rights treaty. While this would be …

Pandemia Y Derecho Internacional, Claudio Grossman

Contributions to Books

La pandemia actual ha cobrado un tremendo precio a la humanidad. A la fecha, más de un millón de personas han fallecido, varios millones han sido infectadas y no se vislumbra un final para las trágicas consecuencias que la COVID-19 ha infligido a las personas. La pandemia ha afectado a todas las naciones, debido a las interconexiones en numerosos campos, incluido el comercio, las inversiones y el turismo, que, como resultado de la globalización, han multiplicado los contactos entre las personas. No obstante, la pandemia ha demostrado también que las poblaciones más vulnerables son las que más sufren. Los países …

The Changing Landscape Of International Law, Claudio Grossman

Contributions to Books

No abstract provided.

Slavery-Like Conditions And Abuse Of Positions Of Vulnerability: Why The United States Should Judge Countries' Efforts To Combat Human Trafficking Based On The Palermo Protocol And Consider The Effects Of Legalized Prostitution On Human Trafficking, Danica Baird

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Paradigm Perplexities: Does International Humanitarian Law Or International Human Rights Law Govern The Gaza Border Protests Of 2018-2019, & What Are The Consequences? A Response To The Supreme Court’S Opinion In Yesh Din V. Idf Chief Of Staff (Hcj 3003/18), Anthony Carl

Student Articles & Notes

In March 2018, thousands of Gazan citizens mobilized for a mass protest movement at the border with the State of Israel that endured for more than a year and a half, ending in late 2019. By February 2019, the IDF’s response to these protestors resulted in 189 deaths and 23,313 injuries to Gazan Palestinian protestors. Upon hearing challenges to the IDF’s rules of engagement brought by a number of human rights groups, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled in HCJ 3003/18 Yesh Din v. IDF Chief of Staff that the IDF’s response was proper under the law enforcement paradigm of international …

How Well Does Societal Mobility Restriction Help Control The Covid-19 Pandemic? Evidence From Real-Time Evaluation, Juhwan Oh, Hwa-Young Lee, Khuong Quynh Long, Jeffrey F. Markuns, Chris Bullen, Osvaldo Enrique Artaza Barrios, Seung-Sik Hwang, Young Sahng Seo, Judith Mccool, S. Patrick Kachur, Chang-Chung Chan, Soonman Kwon, Naoki Kondo, Hoang Van Minh, J. Robin Moon, Mikael Rostila, Ole F. Norheim, Myoungsoon You, Mellissa Withers, Mu Lil, Eun-Jeung Lee, Caroline Benski, Soo Kyung Park, Eun-Woo Nam, Katie Gottschalk, Matthew M. Kavanagh, Jong-Koo Lee, Martin Mckee, S. V. Subramanian, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

One of the most widely implemented policy response to the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has been the imposition of restrictions on mobility (1). These restrictions have included both incentives, encouraging working from home, supported by a wide range of online activities such as meetings, lessons, and shopping, and sanctions, such as stay at home orders, restrictions on travel, and closure of shops, offices, and public transport (2-5). The measures constitute a major component of efforts to control the COVID-19 pandemic. Compared to previous epidemic responses, they are unprecedented in both scale and scope (6).

The rationale underpinning these public health …

Can The International Criminal Court Succeed? An Analysis Of The Empirical Evidence Of Violence Prevention, Stuart Ford

Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review

Despite significant optimism about the future of the International Criminal Court (“ICC”) during its early years, recently there has been growing criticism of it by both scholars and governments. As a result, there appears to be more doubt about the ICC’s ability to succeed now than at any other point in its history. So, are the critics correct? Is the ICC failing? No. This Article argues that, not only can the ICC succeed, there is strong evidence that it is already succeeding. It analyzes several recent empirical articles that have convincingly demonstrated that the ICC prevents serious violations of international …

Hernández V. Mesa And Police Liability For Youth Homicides Before And After The Death Of Michael Brown, Delores Jones-Brown, Joshua Ruffin, Kwan-Lamar Blount-Hill, Akiv Dawson, Cicely J. Cottrell

Sociology & Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

In a five-to-four decision announced in February of 2020, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the parents of an unarmed fifteen-year-old Mexican national killed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in a cross-border shooting, cannot sue for damages in U.S. civil court. Here, we critique the majority and dissenting opinions and attempt to reconcile the strikingly different approach each used to resolve the case. Using a publicly available data set, we examine the homicide in Hernández v. Mesa, against the circumstances and context in which underage youth were killed by police within the United States over a five year …