Ecological economics research on limits to growth has demonstrated that high-income countries are unlikely to succeed in ‘making growth green’ or, in other words, decoupling economic growth from ecological impacts fast enough to bring human activity back within planetary boundaries. At the European Union (EU) level, a paradigm shift is difficult because the EU’s socioeconomic system is growth dependent: the continuation of economic growth is required to avoid significant psychological, social and economic harms. This article argues that the EU founding treaties entrench this growth-dependent model by constraining the policy reforms proposed by ecological economists to reduce the EU economy’s reliance on growth. It therefore contends that treaty reform is necessary if the EU is to sustain human wellbeing without continued economic growth. Nevertheless, the article also finds in the treaties a limited degree of flexibility towards policies that would constitute first steps in the direction of growth independence.

This article considers the legal status of the prohibition on gender-based violence against women. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) does not contain a prohibition on violence against women as such. However, the CEDAW Committee found in its General Recommendation 19 that the definition of discrimination against women in Article 1 CEDAW includes gender-based violence against women. As general recommendations are not binding, it is often suggested that, aside from the regional treaties on the issue, the prohibition exists only under soft law. By contrast, this article argues that the prohibition exists also under hard law. Whether the definition of discrimination against women in Article 1 CEDAW includes gender-based violence against women is a question of treaty interpretation.

The article contends that, in line with Article 31(3)(b) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, the subsequent practice of States Parties in the application of CEDAW has established their agreement that discrimination against women in Article 1 includes gender-based violence against women. It argues further that General Recommendation 19 served as the catalyst for this subsequent State practice. The article also explores the relationship between treaties and customary international law and contends that CEDAW has generated rules of customary international law, namely that gender-based violence against women is prohibited and that there is an obligation on States to exercise due diligence to eliminate it. The large number of States Parties to CEDAW has not proved an obstacle to the generation of these customary rules.

The article is set against the near absence of external protection responses to the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Querying the interplay between four recognised international legal norms in the context of armed conflict, it seeks to provide doctrinal clarity in a context where the range and interaction of diverse legal standards may generate uncertainty or claims of apparent norm conflict: the prohibition on forced displacement, the right to leave any territory, non-refoulement and the right to return to one’s ‘own country’, including as part of the realisation of a collective right to self-determination. The article posits that a future realisation of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination has been coopted by external actors as a justification for infringing, in an immediate and tangible sense, the individual rights of Gazans to leave the strip in order to seek and to enjoy elsewhere protection from rights violations, some of which breach jus cogens norms. This latest manifestation of ‘Palestinian exceptionalism’ has had dire consequences for individual Palestinians and, unless unwaveringly rejected, could detrimentally affect those fleeing future armed conflicts.