This introductory note provides an overview of the amendments brought by the Asylum Procedures Regulation (APR), which will apply from June 2026 as part of the EU’s New Pact on Migration and Asylum. It outlines the main changes introduced by the new framework, including developments relating to procedural guarantees, special procedures, remedies, and ‘safe country’ concepts.

In December 2021, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Assembly (WHA) authorised the creation of an intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) to draft and finalise a new international treaty to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response (PPPR). Early in the negotiations, a loosely formed coalition of World Health Organization (WHO) Member States formed the ‘Group of Friends of One Health’ to promote the integration of One Health as a core guiding principle. The concept of One Health, which emphasises how human, animal and environmental health are closely intertwined and interdependent, proved contentious during the negotiations because of concerns that it might lead to new obligations which low- and middle-income countries would struggle to fulfil. In April 2025, the INB concluded its work and the following month the 78th WHA adopted the Pandemic Agreement under Article 19 of the WHO Constitution. This article considers the significance of the Pandemic Agreement’s inclusion of the One Health approach to PPPR and the subsequent legal and practical implications for States Parties. The central claim of the article is that while the Pandemic Agreement ultimately encourages a One Health approach, the various caveats and qualifications inserted during the intergovernmental negotiations permit those governments that want to circumvent their obligations to do so, at least until and unless moral and political pressure is brought to bear during the Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings. The article’s findings have implications for future treaty negotiations given the importance of COP mechanisms for encouraging compliance.

Legal scholarship has not addressed whether the persistent objector rule applies to general principles of law (GPLs). This article is the first to examine both theoretical and practical incompatibilities between the persistent objector rule and GPLs. It traces the brief history of the persistent objector rule and how it was raised in the International Law Commission (ILC) and the United Nations Sixth Committee (Legal), sparking debate over its applicability. Following the ILC’s omission of a Draft Conclusion on the persistent objector rule in its work on GPLs, this article examines its theoretical and practical implications, noting its incompatibility with: (i) GPLs derived from domestic legal systems; (ii) internationally-derived GPLs; and (iii) regional or subregional GPLs applied beyond the region in which they originate. The analysis combines theoretical, conceptual and practical reasoning supported by evidence from State practice, jurisprudence and scholarship. It concludes that the persistent objector rule is incompatible with GPLs emerging from domestic or international legal systems. Furthermore, it argues that States’ objections to the application of regional or subregional GPLs within subject-specific legal orders or autonomous regional or subregional legal systems do not pertain to the persistent objector rule as such. Rather, they concern the appropriateness of incorporating these norms into another regional or subregional legal system.

Common law courts will enforce jurisdiction agreements unless they find ‘strong cause’ or ‘strong reasons’ not to. This article argues that the strong cause test is the product of the fact that jurisdiction agreements should generally be viewed as weighty factors under forum non conveniens. In particular, this is because a jurisdiction agreement reflects parties’ well-informed view that their chosen court is the appropriate forum for their dispute, to be departed from only in exceptional circumstances. This account explains various features of the strong cause test which otherwise prove difficult to rationalise, and also holds implications for the law’s treatment of non-exclusive jurisdiction agreements and contractual anti-suit injunctions.

The Nordic countries have often been portrayed as pioneers of human rights and international law. However, few are aware that court-protected human rights played an almost negligible role in post-Second World War Scandinavia. Instead, scepticism towards natural law thrived, and minimalist procedural democracy alongside legal positivism positioned ‘the people’ as represented in parliament at the apex of the democratic hierarchy. Therefore, while the desire to impose judicial limits on parliamentary majorities after the Second World War came to dominate most international constitutional discourse as a combination of judicial review and rights, the Nordics cultivated a form of political and even anti-constitutionalist position long before the term gained popularity elsewhere. This article presents the untold story of how and why the Nordics became a symbol of procedural democracy and majoritarianism, making it challenging for the region to embrace a European constitutional order in full. It also argues that by having few judicial safeguards in place nationally, the Nordic countries are badly positioned in the event of a populist or illiberal takeover. The article warns that a procedural and anti-constitutional democracy model, still strongly hailed in the Nordic countries and increasingly prominent in recent constitutional literature, may legitimate illiberal leaders around the globe with its strong link between the idea of unconstrained power of the majority and the right to rule. It may also, in a European context, significantly obstruct the European Court of Justice’s efforts to flesh out a stronger European constitutional democracy.

The creation of national international humanitarian law committees (NIHLCs) in Latin America over the past thirty-five years has been an important tool for the promotion of international humanitarian law (IHL) dissemination and implementation in the region. To date, all countries in Latin America have established an NIHLC, which is an important achievement in itself. These bodies have also developed a range of good practices that may offer valuable lessons both within and beyond the region. Considering the role and activities of NIHLCs in several Latin American countries, this article aims to better understand the importance of NIHLCs and how they can contribute to ensuring that the legal obligation to respect and ensure respect for IHL in all circumstances, including during peacetime, is fulfilled. The research also highlights the challenges faced by NIHLCs in the region, as well as best practices to keep them active through a balanced mix of dissemination and implementation activities. An analysis of NIHLCs’ compositions, as well as their relationship with other stakeholders such as the components of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and academia, is also provided. Finally, the article presents a brief analysis of a good practice involving Ecuador and Peru, two countries with active and relevant NIHLCs in Latin America, which illustrates the potential role that NIHLCs can play and the outcomes they can achieve. While this paper does not pretend to be a comprehensive assessment of all NIHLCs in the region, through an analysis of their regulatory frameworks and selected examples, it presents some conclusions and recommendations related to the work of NIHLCs. In a nutshell, it highlights the important role of these entities and offers several ideas on what NIHLCs can do to strengthen their impact on fostering an environment that promotes respect for IHL.

Human rights litigation increasingly confronts claims that environmental degradation violates duties owed to future generations, yet existing doctrinal frameworks struggle to give these intergenerational obligations concrete effect. This article argues that the constructive trust offers a more coherent and workable private-law architecture for intergenerational equity than the public trust doctrine that dominates current scholarship and climate litigation strategies. The article traces the intellectual genealogy of intergenerational obligation in ideas of stewardship, usufruct and equity, and shows how these motifs have been channelled into trust-based vocabularies. Following this, it surveys international and domestic case law in which courts acknowledge temporal dimensions of environmental harm but hesitate to constitutionalise a general public trust, and highlights four structural defects that render public trust theory jurisdictionally fragile and remedially weak. The latter portion of the article develops an account of constructive trust reasoning grounded in unjust enrichment and unconscionable retention of benefits and shows how this framework can be used to attach proprietary consequences to profits generated by rights-violating environmental conduct, without requiring recognition of future generations as current rights-holders. The article concludes that constructive trust logic is transferable across legal systems, because it aligns with civil-law regimes of unjust enrichment, patrimonies by appropriation and constitutional environmental rights provisions. It further contends that an intergenerational constructive-trust approach can supply some of the ‘missing architecture’ of intergenerational justice within contemporary human rights law.

This article discusses how the state’s failure to respond to the needs of a marginalized community leads to a sense of being undeserving among its members, a sense that significantly shapes their legal consciousness. Focusing on Chinese immigrants’ reluctance to discuss contracts openly and invoke the law to seek redress in Canada, this article challenges the approach of blaming culture for some immigrants’ different perceptions of and relationships with the law in the host country. Based on in-depth interviews and participant observation, this study argues that the host country’s devaluation and non-recognition of foreign credentials, its lack of intervention in predatory practices targeting vulnerable immigrants, and its failure to provide adequate legal resources accessible to immigrants with diverse language and cultural backgrounds, all work in tandem to push Chinese immigrants away from contracts and keep them from turning to law for help in Canada. Drawing on vulnerability theory and legal consciousness scholarship, it develops a multi-level legal consciousness framework to connect micro-level experiences with macro-level forces to understand how individuals who share the same marginalized identities participate in reproducing structural inequalities within their own communities due to state inaction.

This article investigates the critical and often overlooked role of families of missing persons in peacebuilding when the hostilities of armed conflict cease. The unresolved fate of missing persons creates ambiguous loss, a state of chronic psychological and social uncertainty that structurally impedes communal recovery and undermines the fragile foundations of peace. While the issue of missing persons is typically framed as a humanitarian and legal challenge, this study argues that families of the missing are uniquely positioned to act as transformative peacebuilding agents.

Drawing on primary data collected across three distinct settings – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus, and Nepal – the study employs a qualitative, comparative case study methodology. It analyzes how families of the missing, driven by the imperative of establishing the fate of their loved ones, actively engage across conflict divides and contribute to lasting social and political transformation.

Findings demonstrate that the search for the missing necessitates engagement with individuals and groups on the opposing side, effectively forcing the creation of cross-community relationships. Families of the missing successfully overcome deep-seated suspicion, hostility and sometimes political pressure from their own communities to forge solidarity, based on shared experience of loss, with other families. This process enables relational reciprocity and the cognitive reframing of former enemies, leading to the humanization of the “other”. These encounters produce profound personal and interpersonal transformation, which in turn can catalyze the challenging of antagonistic community-level narratives and support broader societal reconciliation.

Families of the missing leverage their legitimacy and humanitarian framing of the issue to become powerful agents of structural change. They challenge exclusive, one-sided interpretations of conflict, advocate for a universal and broad vision of justice, and demand truth-telling and accountability. By acknowledging victimhood on all sides and articulating an understanding of peace based on mutual recognition of suffering, families help to heal social divisions and address the root causes of conflict. Through their focus on truth-seeking and cross-community relationship-building, families of the missing can make an essential contribution to the prevention of renewed conflict and the establishing of a foundation for sustainable peace.

Activities in cislunar space are accelerating as spacefaring nations expand their lunar ambitions, raising urgent questions about how to ensure its peaceful and secure use. While the Outer Space Treaty provides a foundational legal framework grounded in the principle of ‘peaceful purposes’, it lacks provisions tailored to the emerging dynamics of cislunar space. This article argues for extending the ‘exclusively peaceful purposes’ principle, currently limited to the Moon and other celestial bodies, to this broader region. To support this extension, it proposes adopting an optional protocol to the Outer Space Treaty and developing soft law instruments to enable gradual, flexible implementation of enhanced security norms.