Category: 6. Opinion

Russia’s withdrawal from the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands didn’t make global headlines—but it probably should have. At first glance, a wetlands convention may seem an unlikely casualty of war. Yet, when Contracting Parties, at their fourteenth meeting, voted to pass a resolution in…

“When shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain?

When the hurlyburly’s done, When the battle’s lost and won.”

Macbeth, Witches, Act I, Scene I.

Introduction

After the recent meeting of US-President Trump with Russian President Putin, and the ensuing meeting of President…

The judgment of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in Ukraine and the Netherlands v Russia addresses a number of significant questions in international law (see initial analysis by Marko Milanovic here). In this post, we focus on one important issue on which the Court did…

As the historical judgement is made, the ECtHR must ensure meaningful consideration of individual applications connected to Russia’s war against Ukraine.

On July 9, 2025, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered a historic judgment in four inter-state applications, holding Russia…

In this episode, Dapo Akande, Marko Milanovic and Philippa Webb are joined by Tom Dannenbaum to discuss two sets of issues. First, the legality of the use of force by Israel and the United States against Iran, and specifically its nuclear programme, from the standpoint of the jus ad bellum. The…

On June 25, 2025, Ukraine and the Council of Europe signed an agreement in Strasbourg to establish a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine (“Tribunal”). The Tribunal is intended to create an internationally supported forum to prosecute the crime of aggression against…

The allegiance of governments in the Global North to international law (sometimes endorsed in reductionist form as “the rules-based international order”) is currently experiencing an abrupt collapse. Since 2022, the Global North has based its support for Ukraine largely on the fact that the…

In a landmark ruling, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights yesterday delivered its much-anticipated merits judgment in Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia (nos. 8019/16, 43800/14, 28525/20 and 11055/22). The judgment is here; the Court’s press release summarizing it is

This is a short post to flag to readers that on Wednesday next week, 9 July, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights will be delivering its much-anticipated merits judgment in one of the most important interstate cases ever to be decided by that Court, Ukraine and the Netherlands…