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.

This article returns to a 2005 criticism of international law’s tolerance of State discretion in the regulation of nationality for creating ‘holes in the rights framework’. The article sets out normative advances in international law since that date, aiming to show that they go further than recognised in more recent literature. It focuses on five interlinked elements of respect for the right to a nationality: the avoidance of statelessness; due process in case of loss or deprivation of nationality; the inclusion of arbitrary denial within the interpretation of arbitrary deprivation of nationality; the evolution in the interpretation of the definition of ‘stateless person’; and, finally and in greatest depth, the challenge to racial discrimination, both direct and indirect. The article highlights the role of strategic litigation in these developments and foregrounds especially the contribution of the Inter-American and African human rights institutions, starting from the groundbreaking judgment of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the Yean and Bosico case against the Dominican Republic. In particular, the article argues for the potential significance of moves to reinterpret the ‘genuine connection’ condition for recognition of nationality—the lack of which was famously invoked by the 1955 Nottebohm judgment of the International Court of Justice as a reason to deny a State’s right to exercise diplomatic protection on behalf of a naturalised citizen—to establish instead an individual’s positive right to claim the nationality of a particular State.

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.

This article examines the human rights impacts of counter-terrorism sanctions on third parties, with a novel focus on the dependent family members of sanctioned individuals. Employing a comparative analysis of public international law and European Union (EU) law, it highlights an underexplored dimension of sanctions regimes: the individual effects of asset freezes on family members, rather than on the sanctioned individuals themselves. While asset freezes are intended to disrupt terrorist financing, they often exacerbate humanitarian crises and may conflict with international legal norms, as seen in contexts such as Afghanistan and Gaza. In response, both the EU and the United Nations have introduced humanitarian carve-outs to facilitate aid delivery.

This article’s original comparative analysis shows that only the EU includes family exemptions, reflecting a unique legal recognition of the specific vulnerabilities faced by relatives of sanctioned individuals. Despite this progress, implementation of these exemptions remains inconsistent across sanctions regimes. Through an in-depth fundamental rights analysis, the article argues for harmonising family-related exemptions in EU sanctions and establishing an independent right for family members to seek the unfreezing of essential funds. By comparing family members with the broader population affected by sanctions, the article emphasises the need to balance security goals with fundamental rights protections. Advocating for individual review procedures, the article highlights how a rights-based approach can mitigate risks of resource diversion while safeguarding humanitarian needs. This research contributes to broader discussions on international sanctions and their social consequences, demonstrating that human rights concerns linked to asset freezes extend to other international security measures.

This article examines the tension between arbitration and insolvency in common law jurisdictions. Focusing on the divergence created by the English decision in Salford Estates and the Privy Council decision in Sian Participation Corp v Halimeda International Ltd, it critically assesses their approaches to disputes over a creditor’s standing to present a winding-up petition. Through comparative analysis, including consideration of the judgment of the courts of Singapore in AnAn Group PTE Ltd v VTB Bank, it argues that a correct understanding of the test in the Hong Kong judgment Re Southwest Pacific Bauxite (HK) Ltd, commonly known as Lasmos, provides a more principled framework, balancing party autonomy and insolvency principles.

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 examines the legal foundations of an equitable global fossil fuel phase-out under international law and considers how legal principles could shape the scope of existing obligations and development of a future regime limiting the production of fossil fuels. While fossil fuel production remains largely unregulated in the international climate regime, emerging scientific, political and normative pressures demand clearer legal guidance. The article argues that a principle-based approach, grounded in established norms of international law, can clarify what equity entails in this context, and offer a coherent framework for a managed phase-out. Drawing on principles of permanent sovereignty over natural resources, common but differentiated responsibilities, cooperation, prevention, precaution and non-regression, it is demonstrated that the substantive and procedural obligations needed for an equitable transition away from fossil fuels are already part of existing international law.

This article concerns the ‘rule in Gibbs’: a controversial principle of English private international law which provides that a debt is only discharged in a foreign insolvency proceeding if the contract is governed by the law of that proceeding. Critics of the rule consider that it undermines the foundation of corporate insolvency as a unitary process in which individual collection efforts are replaced by a collective proceeding for all creditors. This article offers a qualified defence of the rule. It suggests that it could be abandoned in ‘true’ insolvency cases, in which the company’s assets are sold to a third party and the proceeds distributed to its creditors, but only if the rule is replaced with a cross-border insolvency law framework. It also suggests, however, that Gibbs is the ‘right’ rule in a cross-border corporate restructuring, in which only some of the company’s creditors stay with the firm to benefit from any future upside that the third party would otherwise capture in a sale. It argues that European Union private international law adopts this approach to a restructuring and that the Gibbs rule is, therefore, not nearly as exceptional as it is sometimes made out to be.