International Law Archive

Relations between Iran and the European Union seemed to enjoy something of a honeymoon just after President Donald Trump announced he was pulling the United States out of the 2015 agreement limiting Tehran’s nuclear program. But it is becoming increasingly evident that any warm feelings engendered by a joint commitment to preserve the Iran deal and stand against Trump have cooled significantly. Europe and Iran are now growing farther apart amid accusations that the Islamic Republic is engaging in behavior that Europe cannot countenance. The nuclear deal itself could ultimately collapse in the acrimony. Last May, when Trump announced the […]

Earlier this month, the Indonesian military raided and destroyed the offices of the West Papuan National Committee, a separatist group in the country’s easternmost region, which has long agitated for independence. The raid came amid allegations that the military had used chemical weapons in airstrikes on separatists in West Papua in late December. The Indonesian government has responded harshly after at least 17 construction workers were killed by West Papuan militants in early December, the deadliest such attack in West Papua in years. This surge in unrest in the region is the outcome of a harder line that the Indonesian […]

In late 2011, as the International Criminal Court prepared to mark 10 years since it began operations, its record was looking decidedly unimpressive. For one thing, it still had not secured any convictions; the first, for the Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga, wouldn’t be delivered until March 2012. Perhaps more importantly, the court’s most high-profile suspects sat comfortably outside its reach. Despite their indictments, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and Uhuru Kenyatta, then Kenya’s finance minister, both held onto their offices. And Kenyatta was gearing up for what would turn out to be a successful presidential bid in 2013, a campaign in […]

In late December, Japan formally announced it would withdraw from the International Whaling Commission, or IWC, clearing the way for it to resume commercial whaling in July 2019. In announcing the move, the Japanese government criticized the IWC and member states for what it portrayed as an uncompromising anti-whaling posture. But environmental activists attacked the decision, with the executive director of Greenpeace Japan calling it “out of step with the international community.” In an email interview with WPR, Natalie Barefoot, acting director and lecturer at law for the University of Miami School of Law’s Environmental Justice Clinic, discusses Japan’s reasons […]

Drug trafficking laws have led to some contentious relationships among North and South American countries. Now the decriminalization of drugs is challenging these relationships in new ways. Find out more—when you subscribe to World Politics Review. Drug trafficking has become such a part of the landscape in Mexico that those involved in the practice even have their own unofficial patron saint: Jesus Malverde, a mustachioed bandit from the hills of Sinaloa state who, according to legend, stole from the rich and gave to the poor until his death by hanging in 1909. Though primarily an icon for those who run […]

Calling someone or something “primitive” is not normally meant as a compliment. But I have just learned that I may be a “primitive multilateralist.” It is a badge that I wear proudly. This weekend, Financial Times columnist Simon Kuper published a smart think piece on the process that led to the 1919 Versailles Treaty and the end of World War I. There will certainly be many more articles in this vein to mark the ill-fated agreement’s 100th anniversary this year. A lot of pundits will note that the Paris Peace Conference gave birth to modern multilateral diplomacy through the creation […]

The Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants and asylum-seekers has placed the United States in the same camp as the countries recently denounced by National Security Adviser John Bolton as the “troika of tyranny”—Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. For years, those three countries have denounced or refused to participate in the proceedings of the Organization of American States’ inter-American human rights system when their own violations of democratic norms and human rights are under scrutiny. Over the past two years, the Trump administration has joined their ranks, ignoring or rebuffing the Western Hemisphere’s premier human rights body. Since Trump’s inauguration, the OAS’ […]