If we think about global migration law, refugee law is the place to start, since this seems to be the area in which the institutions, the norms, the system are the clearest example of a global migration law. Unlike most other migrants, refugees have their own convention and their own agency—the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) dating from 1950—and a set of regional agreements on refugees, and that has produced a solid foundation of rights, seventy years of practice, and billions of dollars a year in assistance, as well as coordinated international action on resettlement and return. I think it is fair to call it a legal regime on refugees.

For a second year in a row, the American Society of International Law had to convene an all virtual annual meeting because the COVID-19 pandemic made international travel and gathering in cavernous ballrooms impossible. I had the pleasure of chairing a pre-recorded panel on the rise of restrictions on data flows and digital technologies, which featured a stellar cast of experts distributed across three continents and time zones. This panel depended on the digital infrastructure provided by a private videoconferencing company on top of the public infrastructure of interconnectivity that the internet has supplied for more than three decades. As the pandemic forced people around the world into lockdowns—albeit asynchronously and unevenly—it further mainstreamed the use of communications platforms for everyday interactions, whether public or private, whether for business or leisure.

The classical approach to investment protection is that states have obligations and investors have rights. However, there are emerging trends in favor of a rebalancing of rights and obligations of states and investors. In the context of this recalibrated approach, more attention is given to the definition of substantive provisions, such as the fair and equitable treatment standard. There is also a move from investor protection to investor responsibilization. This emerging responsibilization trend can be observed, for example, in recent treaties negotiated on the African continent, and it is also making a foray into customary international law.