Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki signed a historic agreement on July 9, 2018, in Asmara, Eritrea, ending over two decades of open hostilities and war. The Joint Declaration of Peace and Friendship (Joint Declaration) marks a fundamental change for the Horn of Africa, with the reconciliation possibly altering the economic and political dynamics of the region. The Joint Declaration resulted from several key developments occurring over a few weeks from June through early July 2018. Ethiopia announced its acceptance of the original Algiers Agreement, dated December 12, 2000, which had never been implemented, and its willingness to abide by the 2002 international Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC) ruling that awarded disputed territory to Eritrea, including the border town of Badme. Previously, Ethiopia had rejected the ruling and asked for a new ruling. Ethiopia had also previously insisted that relations must be restored before any territorial resolution. President Afwerki agreed to negotiate, after stating for years that Ethiopia had to withdraw its troops from the disputed town of Badme first. A few weeks before the signing of the Joint Declaration, the Eritrean foreign minister visited Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, marking the first bilateral meeting between the two since the war began.

Those who have been following international headlines for the past year can observe the increased prevalence of discussions on nuclear weapons, including between the United States and North Korea. In the margins of the discussions, the law and policy discussions around nuclear non-proliferation become very relevant. After all, the devastating humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons are very clear. “Studies have shown that the detonation of nuclear weapons would cause widespread death, injury and damage, especially if it occurred in or near a populated area.” There would be extensive casualties from severe burns and blunt force trauma that would occur in the moments after the detonation, as a result of blast effects and the release of thermal radiation. As such, most communities would not necessarily have the capacity to enact appropriate response mechanisms. “[A]ssessments undertaken by the ICRC have highlighted that there is a lack of capacity in most countries and at the international level to adequately respond to a nuclear detonation, and to provide assistance that would benefit a substantial portion of survivors in the aftermath.” Amid these considerations, the first-ever nuclear ban treaty, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (Treaty), was negotiated in the halls of the UN headquarters in New York. Before analyzing the Treaty itself, a word on how it came about and the legal framework that preceded it.

On August 30, 2011, a majority of the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court (‘‘ICC’’) rejected the appeal of the Government of Kenya to the earlier admissibility decision of Pre-Trial Chamber II in the case of Prosecutor v. Francis Kirimi Muthaura, Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta and Mohammed Hussein Ali, one of two cases arising from the ICC’s investigations into crimes against humanity committed during the 2007 post-election violence in Kenya.

The Artemis Accords (the Accords) reproduced below were signed on September 13, 2020, by the administrator of the U.S. space agency, NASA, and seven other space agencies. The intervening years since then have underscored their importance: they may give a boost to the development of the legal regime of outer space exploration and use as defined by the existing treaty framework, while supporting the U.S. interpretation of the non-appropriation principle, or they may upset the existing legal regime of Outer Space, leading to its fragmentation by abandoning multilateralism. This introductory note highlights those aspects of the Accords that may affect the edifice of the international law relating to Outer Space, even if the Accords themselves are not legally binding, as explained briefly below.

On July 11, 2013, in the case against Radovan Karadžić, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) held that the evidence presented against the accused, if taken at its highest, could lead a reasonable trier of fact to find that genocide against Bosnian Muslim and/or Bosnian Croat groups had occurred in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992. This decision overturned an earlier ruling by Trial Chamber III on the accused’s motion for acquittal pursuant to Rule 98bis of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence, which found that there was insufficient evidence to support a conviction for genocide in the seven municipalities of Bosnia and Herzegovina.2

On September 24, 2015, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) released its judgment on the preliminary objection filed by Chile in Obligation to Negotiate Access to the Pacific Ocean.1 Chile had objected to the ICJ’s jurisdiction arguing that Bolivia’s application raises a dispute that had already been settled by the 1904 Peace Treaty Between Bolivia and Chile. The ICJ, however, rejected this jurisdictional objection and agreed to consider the merits of Bolivia’s claim that Chile has an obligation to negotiate in good faith the issue of Bolivia’s sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean.

On June 12, 2015, the Arbitral Tribunal in Muhammet Çap & Sehil Inşaat Endustri ve Ticaret Ltd. Sti. v. Turkmenistan, composed of Professor Julian D.M. Lew (President), Professor Laurence Boisson de Chazournes (Arbitrator), and Professor Bernard Hanotiau (President), issued its Procedural Order No. 3, ordering claimants to confirm

This is the first publicly available written order issued by an arbitral tribunal constituted under the rules of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) that compels claimants to disclose information about any third-party funding arrangements.

On September 30, 2014, Afghanistan signed agreements with the United States and NATO providing for U.S. and NATO military presences in Afghanistan following termination in December 2014 of the post-9/11 U.S. “Operation Enduring Freedom” (OEF) and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) military missions.

In recent years, national and international courts have grappled with the questions of foreign state immunity and foreign official immunity from domestic jurisdiction over claims arising from human rights abuses committed under color of foreign law. Foreign state immunity involves the immunity ratione personae of the state as a juridical person, as well as that of the state’s agencies, instrumentalities, and political subdivisions. Foreign official immunity involves the immunity ratione personae of incumbent heads of state and diplomats, as well as the immunity ratione materiae of other current and former officials for acts performed in the scope of their official duties.

On May 25, 2021, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) issued a final judgment in Big Brother Watch and Others v. United Kingdom (BBW). The decision is the first Grand Chamber ruling on bulk interception in the post-Snowden era and charts the path forward for the use of tools and techniques of mass surveillance for national security purposes by Council of Europe member states. The decision was issued alongside a parallel ruling in Centrum för rättvisa v. Sweden (CFR). While CFR is “very much the companion case to BBW,” an analysis of it is outside the scope of this note. Suffice to say that, combined, both cases reaffirm the Court's position that the operation of foreign bulk interception regimes does not ipso facto violate the Convention, as such operations may be necessary in the investigation of national security threats and serious crime, including in the context of global terrorism, cyber-attacks, counter-espionage, election interferences, drug trafficking, and child pornography. In a rather complex and lengthy judgment, the Court elaborated on a procedural framework that incorporates “end-to-end safeguards” and is aimed at preventing power from being abused in the operation of these tools.

On July 16, 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued its ruling in Data Protection Commissioner v. Facebook Ireland Limited and Maximillian Schrems, commonly known as Schrems II, invalidating the EU–U.S. Privacy Shield as a valid transfer mechanism under the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and creating significant legal uncertainty for the continued availability of another widely used transfer mechanism, Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs), for transfers of EU personal data from commercial entities in the EU to the United States. The widely anticipated ruling marked the second time in five years that the CJEU had invalidated the legal foundation for such data transfers, which in both cases had been the result of a carefully negotiated compromise balancing European data privacy concerns with statutory and constitutional limitations of the U.S. system (see Schrems I).

On July 17, 2018, the Human Rights Committee, the monitoring body of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), rendered decisions in two similar cases brought by two French nationals against the French state. Both petitioners were Muslim women who challenged Act No. 2010-1192 of 11 October 2010, a French law under which wearing of the niqab, also known as a “full-face veil,” in public spaces is prohibited. These seminal cases constitute the first time that an international arbiter of human rights has ruled that France's face-veil ban violates the human rights of its citizens.