This article examines the approaches taken by the Asian Development Bank Administrative Tribunal and the Administrative Tribunal of the Inter-American Development Bank Group in deciding discrimination claims. The article reviews the basic features of each tribunal before examining their jurisprudence on equality of treatment and issues of information disclosure in discrimination cases. Decisions to date have addressed claims of disparate treatment relating to various aspects of remuneration and benefits as well as allegations of arbitrary treatment vis-à-vis others similarly situated. A few cases have involved allegations of discrimination on the basis of sex/gender, one of several protected grounds in equality law. The number of judicial dissents in discrimination cases suggests that the tribunals have encountered some difficulty in handling them. The article points to a gradual but still incomplete approximation of the decisions of such tribunals to contemporary developments in discrimination law, and suggests a possible way forward.

This note tries to determine the most appropriate way to position international administrative tribunals (established by a number of inter-governmental organizations) in the public international legal order, and identify the substance of the so-called international administrative law applied therein. There is an emerging group of laws arising from numerous international administrative tribunal decisions that form a substantive body of legal rules applicable therein: a law of international civil service. Judges in those tribunals, who look for an appropriate source whenever they face a non-liquet situation, use the concept of international administrative law to overcome such difficulties. Judges should not hide themselves behind an ambiguous notion of international administrative law or general principles, but apply the law of international civil service with confidence.

This paper brings forward Justice Pal's dissenting opinion at the Tokyo Tribunal to add to Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) literature on international criminal law and the rules of evidence and procedure. It is part of a TWAIL effort to scrutinize the everyday practices of international prosecutions through procedural and evidentiary rules. By locating and situating Justice Pal's reasoning within the broader academic literature on dissents in international criminal law, it is possible to illustrate how and why Justice Pal's views were obscured as a relevant dissent. From this vantage point, this paper pursues Justice Pal's legacy as it relates to the rules of evidence and procedure in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. It traces the evolution of the judicial power to draft and amend these rules, and examines the impact of these decisions on the everyday functions of the tribunals and how truth is determined.

Denied citizenship and persecuted in Myanmar, the Rohingya have fled to various countries, including Malaysia. However, Malaysia is not a signatory to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol. It also has weak domestic legal and regulatory mechanisms to protect refugees and asylum-seekers. In this paper, the authors study the treatment of Rohingya refugees in Malaysia and suggest how the Malaysian legal system can better protect them by adapting international legal practices.

While the Responsibility to Protect (“R2P”) doctrine synergizes modern international law against atrocities, its legal underpinnings formed in Europe much earlier. Scholarship thus attributes R2P's origin to the Just War traditions as early as the fourth century, which particularly endorsed external interventions against tyranny. The Ancient Chinese had championed similar ideas of Just War, encompassing jus ad bellum recognition of war against unworthy sovereigns and jus in bello. Nevertheless, the Chinese traditions charted a different course. While in Europe, Just War rationalized the interventionist protection of co-religionists during the Reformation and later of oppressed Christians ruled by the Ottomans; the Chinese humanitarian expedition was discontinued by the advent of the Qin Empire. As R2P literature largely ignores ancient Chinese doctrines and practice, this paper investigates how they veered away from the pre-Qin traditions. It particularly illustrates how “tyranny” was perceived differently, and why “atrocity” and “minority protection” appeared alien concepts.

President Rodrigo Duterte won on a law-and-order campaign promise to fatten the fish in Manila Bay with the corpses of criminals. By the time the Philippines withdrew from the Rome Statute, the body count stood at a reported 30,000, a fifth of whom were openly killed in Philippine National Police (PNP) anti-drug operations. Duterte has since been accused of Crimes Against Humanity, inter alia, as “a person effectively acting as a military commander” under Article 28(a) of the Rome Statute for failing to prevent, repress, and report the crimes of his police subordinates. This study tests the veracity of that claim. It seeks to determine whether Duterte, as the Chief Executive and overall superior of the PNP – statutorily, a civilian group – may be held liable as a military-like commander under the doctrine of command responsibility. At the core of this query lies a singular concern far from simple: the meaning of military-likeness.

There seem to be no answers to resolve the deadlock between the Global North and the Global South on liability and compensation for loss and damage from climate change. Revisiting the original story of international environmental law from the Stockholm Conference of 1972 may help us address these historical tensions. In doing so, this article unveils the genesis of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) from the Stockholm Conference as an alternative consciousness centred around the aspirations of the Global South. Indira Gandhi's plenary address at Stockholm outlined the Global South's position on environmental issues, which greatly influenced early TWAIL scholarship in the 1980s. Locating TWAIL's origins at Stockholm allows us to: (1) chart the environmental concerns of the Global South till date; (2) infer its evolved view on the “development versus environment” debate; and (3) understand the role of future TWAIL scholarship in challenging the enduring and structural limitations of international environmental law, especially in future deliberations on loss and damage.

This article examines the implications for a change in framework from sustainable development to degrowth in the environmental and social discourse of International Economic Law (I.Econ.L.). It argues that the framework of sustainable development accommodates the Global North's inaction in assuaging environmental degradation and alleviating global inequality by remaining embedded in a capitalist, growth-oriented political economy. Degrowth would provide a strategy to move past such an impasse by encouraging actors to grapple with the role growth plays in the rationale behind I.Econ.L. Degrowth advocates a planned economic contraction to reconcile human's relationship with the environment. This project serves as the first effort to link ideas of degrowth with I.Econ.L. and seeks to identify some of the areas in I.Econ.L.'s scholarship where degrowth would serve as an alternative to sustainable development and what such an alternative would mean for the norms in the different areas of I.Econ.L.

International environmental law has come a long way in addressing humans’ extractive and negative relationship with nature, although despite its profound anthropocentrism and economic focus. This paper analyzes how and whether international environmental law can be conceived differently by incorporating different perspectives about the human/nature relationship. More specifically, the article engages with the concept of multinaturalism, as developed by anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, to address the advantages and significance of admitting indigenous forms of life in international environmental law. Forms of life which not only relate to nature differently but can conceive of nature differently. Taking such an approach requires a methodological shift to examine the existence of forms of life that invert the traditional Western conception of nature and culture, thus allowing for the potential to move international environmental law beyond anthropocentrism, while providing elements to resolve the tension between development/economic concerns in ecological conservation and long-term species survival.

Global animal law has emerged as a new legal subdiscipline and area of study following the widespread proliferation of animal law and animal law studies across the globe. However, there remains confusion as to what exactly global animal law is. Early global animal law studies are also entrenching norms that facilitate coloniality and neglect intersecting oppressions. In response, this article proposes a conception of global animal law based in global law metatheory and second wave animal ethics. This article critically analyses instances of “globabble” within global animal law, where global-speak has masked ethnocentric, western influence, and bias. This article recommends diversifying and decolonizing global animal law, relabelling some such work as western/European perspectives on animals and international law. It also recommends focusing on deep, critical, and radical animal justice in lieu of welfarism or rights-based theory. The article argues this could inspire a more interconnected, post-Westphalian, multilateral global animal lawscape.

In the past decade China's engagement with UN peacekeeping has intensified. In particular, Beijing has supported and participated in peace operations that were not fully compatible with the consensual, impartial, and non-coercive models of peacekeeping traditionally employed by the United Nations. China's endorsement of offensive and intrusive missions is not inconsequential, given that it clashes with its professed adherence to rigid interpretations of the principles of sovereignty, non-intervention, and the non-use of force in international relations. This article suggests that to make sense of China's involvement in unconventional peacekeeping operations one must examine the broader process of foreign policy recalibration that is redefining the interests and priorities of the country as a new great power. Furthermore, by examining China's ambivalent approach to the principles that have traditionally defined the legal framework of UN peacekeeping, this article highlights the opportunities and challenges that China will face as a provider of international security.

Agrobiodiversity conservation is vital for food security, maintaining ecological balance, and preserving socio-cultural norms. There is substantial evidence to support that agrobiodiversity hotspots coincide with localized, small-scale peasant food systems. Preserving such food systems is necessary for protecting agrobiodiversity. The current legal framework over agrobiodiversity is fragmented and inadequate. A major portion of this framework is situated within intellectual property law and farmers’ rights law, neither of which are designed to foster sustainable management of agrobiodiversity. In this context, the 2018 Peasants’ Rights Declaration has the potential to fill the gaps in the existing framework. The paper critically analyses the Declaration by exploring some of its legal innovations in improving agrobiodiversity conservation. While some of these innovations are commendable, they are unlikely to be adopted by states owing to their radical nature. Their adoption would require a massive overhaul of the existing agricultural model and power structures embedded within it.

Global law and the environment is an increasingly prominent and rapidly evolving area of scholarship. In confronting global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, freshwater scarcity, and other symptoms of planetary breakdown, critical scholars from different intellectual traditions are questioning the traditional approach taken within environmental law which has, so far, only managed to save “some trees” but failed to keep “the forest”. These dominant legal interactions often use the law to address “problems” after they arrive. However, the law plays a key role also in constituting these “problems” by incentivizing certain harmful activities, upholding socio-political-economic structures, and through the limited framing of the issues it claims to solve. It is becoming increasingly clear that we live in a “legally constituted world”. Against this background, there is a need for further critical reflection on the role of the law in preventing, addressing, and even driving the entangled socio-ecological-economic crises of modernity. Through interrogating the assumptions that underlie environmental law, critical scholars have exposed, challenged, and put forward alternative visions to its neo-colonial and gendered biases; its exclusion of indigenous perspectives and voices; its construction upon problematic representations of “the environment” that centres an anthropocentric worldview; and a neoliberal economic order that fosters vast environmental damage.

As of 2020, close to 1 billion people are living with mental disorders. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed and intensified the shortcomings in guaranteeing the right to mental health, particularly of the marginalized. The article discusses the international human rights framework with the endeavour of highlighting the non-derogability of the right and the obligations imposed on States in pursuance of it. By discussing the Indian experience the article exemplifies that, despite greater normative clarity, practice has not been brought into conformity in most States, resulting in pre-existing lacunae being amplified during the pandemic. The article proceeds to outline recommendations for States to consider by treating India as a global reference. The overarching conclusion is that while the pandemic has made it even more apparent that the implementation of the rights-framework is deficient, it has also provided an opportunity to advance which can only be availed by operationalizing this framework.

The adoption of the Rome Statute is a significant moment for international criminal law. Before its formulation, the criminal law was governed by the sources mentioned in their statute or Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice [ICJ Statute]. Custom is one of the important sources within the ICJ Statute. The ad hoc tribunals applied custom and even formulated certain customs. The formulation of custom is considered as against the principle of legality. To avoid such criticism, the State Parties inserted Article 21 in the Rome Statute. The provision clarifies the law which the court can apply. The parties chose not to include custom explicitly. However, the wordings of the provision indicate that the custom is still a source for the court. Apart from the wording of Article 21, other provisions of the Statute give ample scope for the application of custom.

This paper considers the international legal implications of certain civil lawsuits that recently resulted in Japanese companies being ordered to pay compensation to Korean victims of forced labour, focusing specifically on whether investor-state arbitration could provide a means of redress against judgments affecting those companies. After identifying the jurisdictional hurdles that those companies might face were they to challenge those judgments before an Arbitral Tribunal, this paper explores the most relevant treaty protection disciplines that could be relied upon in bringing such challenges, and discusses the remedies that a competent Arbitral Tribunal could prescribe were it to find that those judgments were not in conformity with Korea's international obligations. Building on existing jurisprudence, this paper shows that investment arbitration may provide a means for offsetting the adverse consequences of Korean forced labour litigation, but also highlights a number of difficulties that the Japanese companies would face in pursuing such an avenue.

The distinction between disputes of sea boundary delimitation and disputes over the existence of maritime entitlements was one key element of the legal argument that the Philippines brought forward against China in the Philippines v. China Arbitration. On the one hand, the distinction between delimitation and entitlement allowed the Tribunal to establish its jurisdiction on several Philippine submissions despite the jurisdictional exclusions of China's declaration under Article 298(1)(a)(i) of the Law of the Sea Convention. On the other hand, the Tribunal's finding about the lack of China's entitlements has important consequences. China and a number of lawyers objected to the jurisdictional separability of entitlement and delimitation. The aim of this paper is to discuss the question of whether a tribunal can establish jurisdiction on the existence of maritime entitlements in a context where jurisdiction on boundary delimitation is excluded and where a determination of entitlements has consequences for boundary delimitation.