Category: 6. Opinion

As we’re waiting to see how yet another round of Ukraine-US-Russia peace talks is going (not that I’m holding my breath), I’ve had conversations with several (very distinguished but unnamed) colleagues in the past few days on an important question of principle: do third states assisting a…

Recent incidents in the Baltic Sea and elsewhere have exposed both the vulnerability of undersea infrastructure and the fragility of the legal order meant to protect it. While recent pieces on EJIL: Talk! and in Ocean Development & International Law address key facets, this post takes a step…

At the October 2025 European Council, European leaders invited the Commission ‘to present, as soon as possible, options for financial support’ for Ukraine based on the use of immobilised Russian assets. This request followed more than three years of debate (see here, here, and here) and…

In July 2025, forty-one OSCE participating States, in cooperation with Ukraine, invoked the OSCE Moscow Mechanism to examine the treatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) by the Russian Federation. This activation reaffirmed the mechanism’s continuing importance as an instrument for…

On 12 May 2025, the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) announced that it had adopted a decision holding the Russian Federation responsible for the downing of Malaysia Air flight MH17 in 2014. Acting under Article 84 of the Chicago Convention on International Civil…

Immunities are back in vogue.  And the debates about them – their relevance, and whether they can shield wanted war criminals from investigation, prosecution or issued arrest warrants – is again front and centre. Of critical importance, is the question of how States react to these debates,…

In ongoing peace negotiations to end Russia’s unlawful invasion of Ukraine, Russia has demanded that Ukraine waive any reparation claims for the damages resulting from the invasion. This follows a broader set of Russian demands capable of impacting justice and accountability, particularly

Asked to identify the procedure that has defined the pace of the International Court of Justice’s docket over the past few years, one might feel torn between intervention under Article 63 of the Statute or provisional measures (‘PMs’) indicated under Article 41. This post highlights an…

On 9 July 2025, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR, the Court) issued its long-awaited merits judgment in Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia, a nearly 500-page ruling of unprecedented scale in the Court’s history, which also drew an exceptional number of third-party interventions…

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR, Court)’s merits judgment in Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia (Ukraine-v.-Russia) prompted assessments (here; here; here; here). This post addresses one unexamined question: how the judgment has shaped, could have shaped, and may still shape…