EJIL: The Podcast!

We need to talk about hunger. After seven decades of a decline in mass death from starvation, starvation is now a reality for millions of people. And most of this starvation is not due to natural disasters but man-made. In this episode of EJIL: The Podcast, EJIL Editor in Chief Sarah Nouwen speaks with Michael Fakhri, the UN Rapporteur on the Right to Food and professor at the University of Oregon, and Alex de Waal, a leading thinker on humanitarian issues and Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation. Together, they discuss the strength and weaknesses of various areas of international law and, especially, how that law can be used politically to address famine and starvation. They go from human rights to international economic law, from individuals to corporations, from the World Food Programme to the world humanitarian system, from Gaza to Sudan and from food as a weapon of war to the slow violence committed by the international food system.

What is the Alpha and Omega of Climate Control discourse? Surely it is Intergenerational responsibility. Our responsibility towards future generations. Yet, in January 2023 EJIL published Against Future Generations, by Stephen Humphreys, which challenges this comfort zone. Needless to say, the article created a climatic disruption. 

Listen to the Podcast, moderated by Editor in Chief Joseph Weiler, in which Humphreys engages with three of his critics, Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh, Ayan Garg and Shubhangi Agarwalla (For their written reply, see here).

Does the decision of the International Court of Justice with respect to Gaza illustrate the influence of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL)? Has TWAIL perhaps become ‘mainstream’? And how germane are some of the critiques that have been levelled against TWAIL? In this 24th episode of EJIL:The Podcast!, Antony Anghie, one of TWAIL's founders, discusses the rise and critiques of Third World Approaches to International Law with the authors of three Afterwords to his already classic EJIL Foreword ‘Rethinking International Law: A TWAIL Retrospective’: Andreas von Arnauld, Arnulf Becker Lorca and Ratna Kapur. Podcast host is EJIL Editor in Chief Sarah Nouwen.

In this episode, Dapo Akande, Marko Milanovic and Philippa Webb, joined by Mike Becker, discuss the oral hearings before the International Court of Justice on provisional measures in the South Africa v. Israel case, in which it is alleged that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. How did the hearings go, what will the Court do now, and what will it eventually do on the merits? The discussion then moves to exploring recent trends in international litigation, and concludes by briefly examining the recent strikes by the US and UK on the Houthis in Yemen.

International organizations are often expected to solve problems that states cannot or do not solve. But how should we understand international organizations? Marking the year-long symposium ‘Hidden Gems in International Organizations Law’ in the European Journal of International Law, this podcast discusses how international organizations have been theorized by various scholars and practitioners. Special attention is paid to international organization practitioner SKB Asante and scholar Rao Geping. Hosted by EJIL Editor in Chief Sarah Nouwen, the discussants are Kehinde Olaoye, Yifeng Chen and Jan Klabbers.

The International Criminal Court has been frequently accused of a bias against Africa in that all its defendants thus far have been from Africa. But might the ICC suffer from another bias that disadvantages Africa? EJIL editor-in-chief Sarah Nouwen discusses with Stewart Manley and Pardis M. Tehrani who, together with Rajah Rasiah, have authored the EJIL article ‘The (Non-)Use of African Law by the International Criminal Court’ (free access!).

Much of international law is about ordering. But in her article in issue 33(3) of the European Journal of International Law, Michelle Staggs Kelsall calls for the disordering of international law. This is not an appeal to create more chaos in the world – there seems to be plenty of it. It is an invitation to open up new ways of thinking about and in international law. Tune in to her discussion with Luis Eslava, Andrea Bianchi and podcast host Sarah Nouwen, to learn … and to unlearn.

In this episode Marko Milanovic, Dapo Akande and Philippa Webb are joined by Oona Hathaway (Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law at Yale Law School) to discuss big legal issues arising from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, one year on, including the arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin, the application of international humanitarian law in the conflict, and problems regarding reparation and immunities of frozen Russian assets.

In this episode Dapo Akande, Marko Milanovic and Philippa Webb are joined by Philippe Sands and Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh. They reflect on the role and significance of advisory opinions by international courts, particularly in the context of various current efforts to litigate legal issues regarding climate change in such advisory proceedings in several different courts. They also discuss previous high-profile advisory proceedings before the ICJ, including the Nuclear Weapons, Wall and Kosovo cases, focusing on the different types of advisory cases, their legal and political purposes, the litigations strategies of the parties and the need to formulate questions tailored to the particular moment and the particular forum.

What conduct occurring where are states allowed to regulate? The international law on jurisdiction provides part of the answer. But international lawyers use different images when conceptualising the geographical reach of states' jurisdiction to prescribe their laws. In this podcast, the two contenders in a debate in issue 33(2) of the European Journal of International Law engage with each other’s images and their ensuing conclusions as to the international law of jurisdiction. Nico Krisch posits that the traditional image is inappropriate, that in practice jurisdiction - at least when it relates to global markets - has come "unbound" and that this unbound jurisdiction has allowed economically powerful states to exercise global governance in a hierarchical fashion, triggering fresh demands for public accountability. Roger O’Keefe replies that this supposedly traditional image was never his understanding, argues that the current law of jurisdiction is fit for purpose and cautions against blaming this law for the perpetuation of the world’s economic inequalities. EJIL Editor in Chief Sarah Nouwen hosts the debate.