As well as adopting a new Pandemic Agreement in 2025, the “legal reaction” of the international community to the COVID-19 pandemic also included the adoption in 2024 of a substantial set of amendments to the World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations, which had already been practically overhauled in 2005 from the previous model. The process was set in motion by the United States and ran in parallel with the negotiation of the Pandemic Agreement, thus creating evident political complexities but also laying the foundations for a synergistic and complementary relationship. The amendments entered into force on September 19, 2025, but their universality and effectiveness are still a work in progress.

In the Confirmation of Charges decision concerning Joseph Kony, a Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) confirmed thirty-nine charges against Kony, the leader of the Ugandan rebel group the Lord’s Resistance Army. The charges covered a range of war crimes and crimes against humanity, many related to sexual and gender-based crimes perpetrated against girls and young women. This decision was further notable as resulting from the ICC’s first confirmation of charges process conducted in absentia because, despite an arrest warrant dating to 2005, Kony has never been brought into custody. As a result, the process leading to this decision addressed novel questions of law for the ICC.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) issued a landmark merits decision in 2025 holding the United States internationally responsible for the torture and death of Mexican national Anastasio Hernández Rojas, and for denying his family justice. The Commission found violations of the protections of life, humane treatment during arrest, health, and access to justice in the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man (American Declaration) and ordered the United States to reopen the criminal investigation, impose sanctions, provide legal remedies and adopt non-repetition measures, including aligning use-of-force standards with international law, such as banning electric shock weapons, after specific legal findings of torture by the European Court of Human Rights and the UN Rapporteur, which both regarded its use as disproportionate, unnecessary, and inhumane.1

The Agreement between the Council of Europe and Ukraine establishes a Special Tribunal to prosecute individuals bearing the greatest responsibility for the crime of aggression against Ukraine. Adopted in June 2025, the treaty-based tribunal responds to Russia’s use of force beginning in 2014 and escalating in 2022. The Tribunal’s Statute explicitly removes head of state immunity, ensuring that senior leaders may face prosecution. Jurisdiction is limited to aggression as defined by UN General Assembly Resolution 3314. The institutional framework includes chambers, a prosecutor’s office, and a registry, with robust fair trial guarantees. This represents a significant development in international criminal justice and accountability for leadership crimes.

On July 25, 2025, the French Court of Cassation handed down an important decision concerning the existence in international law of possible exceptions to the functional immunity of agents of a foreign state. The Court of Cassation reached the conclusion that the “principle of functional immunity from jurisdiction in criminal matters” recognized for foreign agents acting in the exercise of their functions cannot be invoked in cases of prosecutions for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. However, the Court’s internationalist approach, which sought to identify the evolution of custom on the issue by examining relevant state practice, remains exclusively Eurocentric, by examining the practice of only five states, all from the same region of the world.

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 Türkiye Halk Bankasi A.S. v. United States, the Supreme Court held that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) does not apply to criminal prosecutions of foreign state instrumentalities. The Court found that FSIA’s text and structure address only civil actions. On remand, the Second Circuit ruled that Halkbank lacked common-law immunity from criminal prosecution, deferring to the Executive Branch’s decision to prosecute and concluding that state-owned corporations enjoy no immunity for commercial activity under common law. The court’s analysis relied primarily on pre-1976 U.S. cases rather than international law. The Supreme Court denied certiorari in October 2025, ending the immunity dispute.