International Law Archive

There has been no shortage of criticism of Europe’s response to the worsening refugee crisis that first escalated in 2015. In January, Denmark passed a law authorizing the government to seize assets from asylum-seekers. Poland and Slovakia announced they would only accept Christian refugees from Syria. And a recent deal between the European Union and Turkey has come under fire over questions about its legality. The deal allows Greece to return “all new irregular migrants” to Turkey; in exchange, for every migrant settled in Turkey, one Syrian already in Turkey will be resettled in the EU. Immediately after the deal’s […]

The recent bout of intense fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan along the so-called line of contact near the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh should be seen not as an isolated flashpoint, but as the culmination of years of escalating tensions. The regional economic downturn and ongoing tensions between Russia and Turkey only add to the conflict’s volatility. The four days of fighting in early April between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces was the largest eruption of hostilities since the cease-fire to the Nagorno-Karabakh war in 1994, which left Armenian forces in control of the landlocked mountainous region, as well as much of […]

Intellectual property: It sounds boring, but its protection has become one of the cornerstones of U.S. economic policy. And now, it may have an impact on how the Pentagon thinks about the future of technology. In recent years, the big push for international intellectual property protection came about through the concerted action of a group of powerful, well-connected American corporations. These corporations had determined that they could make a great deal of money—or at least stop the loss of a great deal of money—by putting crucial intellectual property protections into international law. Washington has embraced this idea, making intellectual property […]

Just two months ahead of a referendum on the so-called Brexit, the prospects of a British exit from the European Union have sent any number of economists back to their computers to weigh how it would affect the country’s economy. Most seem to think that exit is a bad idea—at least that is the conclusion reached by more than three-quarters of the 100-plus economists polled by the Financial Times. But the British public, as it prepares to vote, is hardly thinking about economics. Instead, matters of sovereignty and culture take precedence. The people want to protect the nation’s borders from […]

AMSTERDAM — Last week, voters in the Netherlands sent a gift to Russian President Vladimir Putin along with a punch in the gut to the people of Ukraine. That was the impact felt in Moscow and Kiev from a nonbinding but politically potent referendum in which Dutch voters soundly rejected a European Union treaty forging closer bonds between the EU and Ukraine. The outcome of the referendum on the EU Association Agreement for Ukraine would have been surprising under almost any circumstances, but it was particularly disconcerting given the dramatic, tragic role the Netherlands has played in the ongoing confrontation […]

On Monday, East Timor asked the United Nations to begin the process of establishing a permanent maritime boundary with Australia in the Timor Sea. In an email interview, Clinton Fernandes, a professor at the University of New South Wales Canberra, discussed Australia’s ties with East Timor and the border dispute. WPR: What is the background to the current agreement on maritime boundaries between Australia and East Timor, and what changes is East Timor seeking to make to the agreement? Clinton Fernandes: In 1972, Australia negotiated a maritime boundary with Indonesia that granted it the lion’s share of oil and gas […]

AMSTERDAM—In the hours that followed the explosive revelations known as the Panama Papers, reverberations from the giant data drop were felt around the globe. After all, the 11.5 million documents from the Panamanian firm Mossack Fonseca, leaked anonymously to International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, implicate rich and powerful people from practically every country on Earth as holders of offshore shell companies that are often used for tax evasion purposes. But while the power from the leaks to discredit prominent individuals extended across practically every nation and every system of government, reaction to the revelations was far from uniform. The differences […]

Drones have captured the imagination of popular culture and the attention of international law experts. Amazing access to real-time intelligence enables precision weaponry, but the same information can inhibit decision-makers from acting by raising the ethical and political costs of doing so. Legal scholars concede that international law has not yet caught up with this reality. The anguish that drones cause among decision-makers is the subject of the new movie “Eye in the Sky.” It focuses in particular on how the same data that make drones such potent weapons can paradoxically inhibit, even paralyze authorities who make life-and-death decisions. The […]