In 2019, the CED adopted the Guiding Principles on the Search for Disappeared Persons (CED/C/7). This chapter describes the reasons that led to the discussion and adopt this document including the role of so called “Urgent Actions” the Committee had received as well as the dialogues held with states. Both showed, in the vast majority of cases, a serious failure of state authorities to comply with their obligation to search, reflected in deficient norms, inadequate institutions, lack of strategy to search and lack of cooperation with the victims. During three years the Committee collected opinions and proposals from victims organizations, NGOs, States, NHRIs, UN bodies, the ICRC and academics. The final document has been widely disseminated and so far translated into three languages beyond the six official UN languages.

The second part of the chapter looks into the impact and influence the Principles have had so far in different countries and with different stakeholders explaining how quickly the Principles were adopted not only by civil society but also by different state institutions, including legislation and court judgments.

In armed conflicts, when people massively go missing, enforced disappearance is prohibited both by the ICPPED and customary international humanitarian law (IHL). While IHL is the primary regulator in armed conflicts, ICPPED complements and reinforces IHL protection from enforced disappearance including by providing more direct legal basis for the State Parties then customary nature of the matching IHL provisions which are often elusive for national practitioners. Obligation under ICPPED to introduce enforced disappearance as an autonomous and continuous domestic crime should provide potentially strong accountability mechanism given the absence of enforced disappearance from underlying offences considered war crimes and the contextual limitations of enforced disappearance as a crime against humanity and may also help break the silence about the disappeared. Limitation of the ICPPED’s definition of enforced disappearance as state-sponsored crime may be overcome in armed conflicts by the commensurate IHL prohibition which applies to non-state actors too.

Policy stability and politicization are not dichotomous. Rather, both disruption of the carbon lock-in status quo and the generation of policy stability around transformation toward decarbonization are inherently political. The desired relationship between policy stability and politicization changes depending on the structural and institutional conditions in place that reinforce carbon lock-in or catalyze and scale decarbonization. In this chapter, we elaborate on the relationship between stability and politicization and discuss how these dynamics are captured by a phenomenon we call the carbon trap. We conclude with the suggestion that the concept and politics of just transition offer ways to understand and pursue desirable politicized disruption of carbon lock-in and to catalyze stable policies and systems around decarbonization.

The chapter explores the regulation of professional tennis as a sub-species of transnational law and as part of the lex sportiva. It goes on to show how this transnational character plays out in disputes arising from regulatory matters and then moves on to ascertain the relationship among the three key tennis actors, namely the ITF, WTA and ATP. The chapter next explores the relationship between professional tennis and domestic law, including governance of the sport globally, as well as the relationship between national tennis federations and the ITF, and the latter’s relationship with the International Olympic Committee. The chapter further delves into the labor status of professional tennis players, as well as the relevance of international law in professional tennis, including the sport’s status in the Olympic Movement, as well as the human rights standard-setting role of transnational tennis entities.

Norway is an active player in international climate politics, with strong consensus on the issue underpinned by cross-party Climate Settlements. Despite this, Norway has only marginally reduced its domestic greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, attempts to establish a new Climate Settlement in 2021 failed. Does this failure constitute a break with Norway’s consensual climate tradition, and is this good or bad news for climate policy? In this chapter, we investigate whether and to what extent the consensus characterizing the 2000s and 2010s contributed to climate policy development or stasis. Focusing on two key sectors – petroleum and transport – we find that key Norwegian climate policies have developed through a dynamic tension of depoliticization and repoliticization over time, with mixed effects. We identify reasons for depoliticization and repoliticization and argue that it is useful to embrace agnosticism in the debate over politicization versus policy stability, instead exploring this on an empirical and contextual basis. Moreover, we uncover a dynamic of politicization in one policy area affecting policy development in another, arguing that such spillover effects warrant analytical attention.

How can the state make durable policies and control resistance of incumbent fossil fuel interests for rapid decarbonization? Through the lens of policy feedback and coalitions, we argue that in certain contexts the state can manage political conflicts to ensure durable policies for decarbonization. We use the case of China – the world’s largest carbon emitter with a political economy system where the state has large influence on the market – to illustrate the possibility of conflict management for energy transition. We show how the central government has used regulatory power to induce big power companies to shift away from fossil fuels toward renewable energies. Reflecting upon the Chinese case, we identify some conditions under which the state can redirect the interest of incumbent actors toward net zero transition. Our study suggests that while political conflicts are inevitable to combat climate change, policymakers can strategically manage them to deepen and accelerate transition.

A global resurgence of industrial policymaking has been evident in low-carbon industries. These sectors – renewable energy, battery storage, and electric vehicles, among others – have seen levels of state intervention rarely witnessed outside of late economic development. But because of China’s dominant position in manufacturing such products, industrial policies for clean energy industries have been accompanied by calls for a reshoring of manufacturing, including in the United States, which is examined in this chapter. While such reshoring may be politically expedient, it presents obstacles to global emissions reductions. First, calls for reshoring likely understate the extent to which the world must rely on Chinese manufacturing capacity for clean energy technologies, until alternative supply chains are established elsewhere. Second, these competitive approaches to industrial policymaking put government measures in explicit tension with the need for global collaboration to meet transnational decarbonization goals. The politicization of clean energy industrial policies may yield short-term political successes but risks long-term instability on emissions reductions and decarbonization.