This chapter first discusses the main subjects of international law and explains their principal features. It then zooms in on states, the traditional and principal actors in the international legal system. It discusses the criteria for statehood under international law, the role that recognition plays in this respect, and how new states emerge. Finally, this chapter turns to an analysis of the right to self-determination, a notion that plays an important role in the creation of states and is considered to be the most prominent right of one of the subjects of international law: people.

This chapter begins by explaining why international lawyers typically begin discussions about the sources of public international law by referencing Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). It then introduces treaties and custom, which are the two main sources of law in this field, before discussing other sources, namely general principles of law, decisions of international organizations, unilateral declarations, judicial decisions, and the teachings of international legal experts. The chapter ends with a discussion of non-binding instruments, which do not contain binding legal rules, but are nonetheless significant in the international legal field as they contain norms that impact the behaviours of states.

International criminal law is the branch of public international law under which individuals may be held criminally responsible for the offences of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. International criminal law seeks to prevent impunity by holding accountable those individuals who are responsible for serious violations of international criminal law. This chapter begins with the history of international criminal law, starting with the aftermath of the First and Second World Wars, and ending with the creation of a spate of international criminal courts and tribunals in recent decades. The chapter then covers substantive aspects of international criminal law, namely the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. Finally, the chapter covers key procedural aspects of international criminal law, including the jurisdiction of international courts and tribunals, the admissibility of cases, modes of liability, and immunities. The International Criminal Court is a focal point in this chapter

International organizations perform activities in areas in which states can no longer operate effectively in isolation, and in which there is a common interest in cooperation within a permanent international framework. This chapter will examine international organizations primarily from a legal perspective. The chapter aims to present a general overview of the law of international organizations. This chapter discusses the legal status, privileges, and immunities of international organizations. The chapter further deals with membership issues, powers, and institutional structures. The chapter also looks at decisions of international organizations: the way in which they are taken and the different types of decisions. The chapter briefly examines the finances of international organizations. There has been an exponential increase in the activities of international organizations over the years. Not all of these activities have been successful, however, and there have been failures and wrongdoings. In recent years, a much-debated issue is to what extent international organizations and/or their members may be held responsible for such failures and wrongdoings.

This chapter explores the implications of a post-transition context and an ongoing violent confrontation for the memory regime, looking at Kenya as our case study. Despite a power-sharing agreement and a concluded transitional justice process following election-related violence in the country (2008–2012), today Kenya is again characterised by public amnesia with regard to the most recent violence committed in the context of a ‘War on Terror’. The chapter shows how memory is securitised, with amnesia presented as resilience and memory as vulnerability in the context of the confrontation. Spaces of violence are reconstructed and fortified, and people invited to reinhabit them as a way to fight terror. The chapter takes a close look at the rectification of the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, showing the different ways in which labours of memory erasure have paradoxical effects, acting as triggers of memory, archives of memory discourse, and even markers of insecurity.

The rules of state responsibility are set out in the International Law Commission’s (ILC) Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts. This chapter introduces the basic features of the ILC’s Articles on State Responsibility, beginning with an explanation of what constitutes an internationally wrongful act. It then discusses the circumstances precluding wrongfulness that may be invoked by states seeking to avoid responsibility for an internationally wrongful act. The chapter then covers the aftermath of an internationally wrongful act, which can involve legal consequences, such as reparations, as well as countermeasures. This chapter focuses specifically on the responsibility of states, rather than the responsibility of international organizations or individuals.

This chapter investigates international commissions of inquiry (ICOI) as forms of memory intervention and attempts to breach public amnesia on violence, and how these interact with long-term conflict. The chapter specifically considers UN-sanctioned commissions and mapping exercises in Burundi and Rwanda in the 1990s. It shows that there are at least two ways in which international investigative reports have historically become participants in local conflict dynamics. The chapter shows that, first, by qualifying violence and conflict in particular ways, ICOIs can generate symbolic capital unequally benefiting the different sides to the conflict, and as such they participate in constructing hierarchies of blame and victimhood. Second, through the simultaneity of exposure (‘finding out’) and lack of official recognition, ICOIs can contribute to broader dynamics of impunity and public secrecy, with the risk of producing partial, socially disengaged and politically disempowered forms of revelation. The chapter urges us to construct investigative instruments that are better equipped to account for and address some of these unwanted effects.

This chapter begins by introducing a number of foundational concepts, which serve as the starting point in the field of public international law. Section 1.1 begins with the notion that states are sovereign equals and must consent to be bound by international law. This section also introduces the critical distinction that international law makes between states and ‘non-state actors’. Section 1.2 discusses the inevitable comparison of public international law with domestic legal systems, and the significant limitations of this analogy as a means for understanding the field of public international law. Section 1.3 introduces the subject of the relationship between international and domestic law. Section 1.4 concludes by explaining this book’s overarching structure as well as the approach of this book to the introduction of public international law.

The chapter investigates whether and how the rectification of sites of violence such as mass killings or mass drownings impacts ongoing conflict dynamics. Specifically, it compares and contrasts two forms of public amnesia in the relatively little-studied space of the rectified site. Looking at the unmarked sites of violence in East Africa’s confrontation with Al-Shabaab, such as the Westgate Mall, and the Mediterranean crossings within the system of migration deterrence, the chapter asks: How do rectification practices and the associated public production of silence feed into conflict dynamics and conflict transformation? The chapter shows that, while public amnesia tends to entrench the confrontation, recognition through commemoration needs to be calibrated carefully in order to avoid further conflict escalation. Epistemic redress must precede physical and symbolic memory work in rectified sites of violence. By tackling the puzzle of (non-)commemoration and active forgetting of violence in contexts of ongoing confrontation, the chapter decentres dominant transitional justice concerns over memory from the present to the absent, and from the space of the ‘past’ to the lingering present of ongoing violent confrontations.