International Law Archive

Despite the jubilation that followed South Sudan’s largely peaceful vote for independence in January, relations with northern Sudan have since deteriorated. In May, just weeks ahead of South Sudan’s July 9 independence day, the Sudanese army occupied the contested Abyei border region. In response, the United Nations Security Council authorized a peacekeeping mission, UNIFSA, to monitor the border and protect civilians there. On Aug. 4, four Ethiopian peacekeepers deployed with UNIFSA were killed after their vehicle struck a landmine in Abyei. Three of the soldiers reportedly died from their injuries after a United Nations medical evacuation helicopter was delayed three […]

In his keynote address to the 1883 International Fisheries Exhibition in London, T.H. Huxley, a prominent biologist of the day, maintained that the ocean’s supply of fish, such as cod, was inexhaustible: Fish were present in the oceans in such large numbers and reproduced prolifically, while only an insignificant fraction of them in proportion to their numbers was captured. Huxley concluded that human fishing efforts could not meaningfully affect the number of fish in the oceans and that it was unnecessary and even wasteful to attempt to regulate their capture. More than two centuries earlier, Hugo Grotius, the famous Dutch […]

Last month the U.S. threatened to impose sanctions against Iceland over its increased whaling activities. In an email interview, Peter Stoett, professor at Concordia University, discussed the politics of the international whaling regime. WPR: What are the main components of the international whaling regime, and what is its recent trajectory? Peter Stoett: The International Whaling Commission is the central global body, mandated to protect the whaling industry back in 1946. As the threat of extinction for several species of cetaceans rose and whales assumed a prominent space in public environmental consciousness, the IWC gradually swung towards an anti-whaling position, led […]