Last week, the Trump administration sanctioned four judges of the International Criminal Court, who were subjected to an asset freeze and a travel ban simply for doing their job. Yesterday, the governments of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway and the United Kingdom sanctioned two extremist Israeli ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, for inciting violence and other human rights abuses against Palestinians in the West Bank. They, too, were subjected to asset freezes and travel bans. Within the span of a week, the same tool was used by different (allied?) states for very different ends – in the latter case to pursue a measure of justice, in the former to outrage any sense of justice. For many years, states and scholars have debated the legality of sanctions or coercive measures. For some, sanctions are a legitimate and legal tool of statecraft. For others, sanctions violate the rights of the target state, and/or the human rights of its population or persons who were targeted individually. When it comes to the rights of the…
Economic Development
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The Rise of Outbound Investment Screening: A Vacuum in International Economic Law
Advanced economies, and in particular China and the US, are engaging in a new technological arms race. China is trying to catch up technologically to the US and the US is doing everything it can to prevent that from happening. It perceives Chinese technological advances as a threat to its national security. Outbound investment screening mechanisms are the…
Sovereign White Knights: Defensive State-Capitalism as a Gate Keeper of (EU) Economic Security?
Geopolitical considerations have been creeping into corporate and international economic laws. Faced with rapidly increasing inbound foreign direct investment by corporations from competing economies, many countries have either strengthened existing, or developed new, investment screening mechanisms. These mechanisms enable host country governments to decide whether to admit foreign investment, and if so, whether conditions should be…
Development, Marine Biodiversity, and the Common Heritage of Mankind: The ISA’s Deep Seabed Mining Quandary and Complying with the High Seas BBNJ Convention
Starting July 9, 2023, the International Seabed Authority (ISA), sited in Jamaica, will allow companies to file permit applications for commercial deep seabed mining. In 2021, the Government of Nauru invoked Section 1(15) of the 1994 Implementation Agreement to Part XI of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which effectively started…
The G7’s Fear of Economic Coercion through Weaponised Interdependence – Geopolitical Competition Cloaked in International Law?
President Zelensky’s attendance of the G7 Summit in Hiroshima (19 – 21 May 2023) was not the only significant moment of the event. Pundits have zeroed on something else, describing the summit as “a launch party for one phrase in particular: economic coercion” – China’s economic coercion. A launch party it was indeed. The…
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