This contribution deals with the prohibition of the use of force as it relates to unrecognized territorial entities. It does so by, first, introducing the prohibition of the use of force as enshrined in Article 2(4) UN Charter as well as customary international law; second, by discussing the concept of unrecognized entities under international law providing examples from practice. It then moves on to analyze in how far the prohibition of the use of force applies to such entities, taking the example of the Republic of Artsakh.
Armed conflicts typically entail systematic violations of international law and human rights by the conflict parties resulting in a deeply seated mistrust among the populations affected. Thus, when it comes to ending wars and promoting "positive peace", it is essential that mutual trust and the rule of law are re-established. By drawing lessons from the case studies of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Cyprus and analyzing the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, this article explores under which conditions the rights to return and the restitution of property can be effectively guaranteed in Nagorno-Karabakh despite not having been included in the "Peace Treaty" of August 2025. Respecting and promoting these rights as well as upholding international legal principles in post-conflict situations are essential instruments of restorative justice. Thus, establishing fair mechanisms at an early stage that are strictly based on the rule of law with the possibility of politically independent judicial review by national and international apex courts are key in promoting "positive" peace.
This article analyses the problem of no or a very limited access of independent human rights bodies to areas that are not under effective control of governments of state parties to international treaties - i.e. in the so-called grey zones. The area known as Nagorno Karabakh had been a grey zone for more than 30 years until September 2023. This article discusses various political and legal questions that arise with regards to monitoring human rights (including minority rights) in grey zones. The article focuses on the work of the Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and takes into account the work of the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights in grey zones. The article seeks to offer possible conceptual and practical solutions for monitoring minority rights in grey zones and thus making them, if not fully monitored, at least less grey.
Since the late 2000s, the International Court of Justice has increasingly adjudicated inter-State disputes based on the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), making of this instrument a vehicle for contentious litigation in politically sensitive and conflict-related contexts. This article examines the Court's ICERD related jurisprudence, focusing in particular on the parallel proceedings instituted in 2021 by Armenia and Azerbaijan concerning Nagorno-Karabakh. It analyzes the Court's interpretation of procedural preconditions and jurisdiction ratione temporis, and its approach to the Convention's material scope, including questions relating to protected groups, cultural heritage, and environmental harm. The study reveals a tension between ICERD's strategic relevance in interstate human rights litigation and the Court's cautious, sometimes restrictive, approach, suggesting judicial "gatekeeping". It concludes that a victim-oriented, living-instrument interpretation of ICERD may better address evolving forms of discrimination while staying within jurisdictional boundaries.
A number of international peace initiatives intended to settle the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between 1994 until 2020, yet failed to do so-until all remaining Armenian people were eventually displaced in 2023. In light of these tragic consequences, this paper argues that the conflict exemplifies the urgent need to abandon traditional state-centric and power-focused approaches to peace which have produced numerous deadlocks. They emphasize the need to explore additional domains of peace to allow for peace processes with the potential to settle the conflict. This paper highlights the limitations of state-centric and power-focused initiatives. It suggests that peace in Nagorno-Karabakh requires widening participation beyond state institutions to include three constitutive domains of peace: civil society, women, and water. These domains are not to be engaged as contextual variables or instruments that can be utilized for a certain predefined purpose, but as co-producers of peace.
The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, a long-standing territorial dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan, has produced severe humanitarian and legal challenges. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has played a crucial role in addressing some of these challenges. The paper examines the Court's evolving jurisprudence on the conflict, focusing on landmark judgments, such as Chiragov v. Armenia and Sargsyan v. Azerbaijan, as well as on ongoing inter-State cases Armenia v. Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan v. Armenia and Armenia v. Turkey. It analyses the Court's approach to jurisdiction, admissibility, and the relationship between the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and international humanitarian law. It further explores the Court's handling of substantive issues, particularly in cases of long-term displacement and denial of access to homes and property. Finally, it considers certain specific challenges arising with respect to inter-State applications, including the potential impact of the 2025 peace agreement. The paper demonstrates how the Court seeks to navigate the complex intersection of human rights protection and the realities of armed conflict, aiming to offer justice without disregarding the constraints imposed on States by protracted armed conflicts. The paper stresses the adaptability of the ECHR and highlights the Court's central role in upholding human rights standards in complex conflict settings.
This study shows that protecting cultural heritage under public international law is complex, involving multiple legal regimes and raising key terminological and scope-related issues, especially in armed conflict and post-conflict recovery. It highlights the growing role of human rights and minority perspectives, recognizing heritage as central to collective identity for minorities and indigenous peoples, while noting risks of marginalization under state-centric approaches. Focusing on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM) and its Advisory Committee (ACFC), the study identifies gaps and inconsistencies in heritage protection, calling for methodological reform to better integrate cultural heritage into minority rights monitoring and recovery efforts. The case of Karabakh underscores the urgent need to strengthen legal frameworks and monitoring to ensure effective, responsive protection in conflict contexts, offering proposals to advance international standards and practice.
This article considers serious violations of international law during and after the second Nagorno-Karabakh war (2020), examines avenues to provide accountability and seeks to assess the relevance of an historical contextualization of the alleged perpetration of international crimes. Such considerations are not only important for technical questions of applicable laws and the exercise of jurisdiction, including by national courts and potentially by the International Criminal Court, to bring alleged perpetrators to justice; they are also significant from a broader transitional justice perspective. Indeed, if recent developments are to be processed via national or international trials or other mechanisms, such as reparation schemes or a truth and reconciliation commission, it will matter greatly how the acts in question are characterized. The article therefore seeks to contribute to a reflection on how the complexity and invariably controversial historical dimensions of a longstanding conflict can be considered, and how international law can avoid the common tendency of telling simplified narratives in such contexts.
In 2023, a military offensive by Azerbaijan ended nearly three decades of de facto rule of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR) over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. This article examines some of the legal implications of the NKR's dissolution, particularly with regard to the principle of effectiveness in an international legal discourse on secession. It contends that the NKR's termination both reinforces the structural dominance of the principle of territorial integrity and affirms the normative and factual fragility of secessionist entities. The article thus claims that the single event of military victory by Azerbaijan covers a cloak of silence over fundamental norms of international law, particularly the prohibition of the use of force, in a way as if they do and did not exist. The NKR's dissolution is further briefly considered with regard to its impact on the normative environment pertaining to other secessionist disputes in the South Caucasus.
The phenomenon of systemic discrimination is complex, involving legal, sociological, psychological, historical or political dimensions. In the field of normative sciences, the concept of systemic discrimination is not yet defined in the European or international legislation. The current article discusses the concept of systemic discrimination, particularly focusing on the case of Romania, following a research effort conducted in a multidisciplinary team. Key findings in Romania highlighted the absence of a legal definition of systemic discrimination, despite its indirect recognition of its subcomponents in national case law and administrative practices. The conducted research reveals a complex interplay between historical legal frameworks, current policies, and the practical challenges of addressing systemic discrimination Romania, showing a need for more robust mechanisms and broader societal acknowledgment to effectively tackle deep-rooted issues that generate systemic discrimination. The final part focuses on possible remedies in case systemic discrimination is recognized, the limitations of such remedies and the legal challenges that arise.
The article analyzes the approach of UN bodies and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to "conversion therapy" - practices that aim to change sexual identity. While only the UN has previously analyzed "conversion therapy", this article shows that the ECtHR shares a similar approach. While UN bodies do not support "conversion therapy", they have different approaches. Although the ECtHR has yet to rule on "conversion therapy" cases, the European Convention on Human Rights offers several relevant articles that victims can rely on. Organizers may attempt to invoke specific European Convention on Human Rights articles. Still, it is unlikely that the ECtHR would interpret them as protecting any form of "conversion therapy" or its promotion. The article argues that international bodies call on states to take more than just legal action and to adopt a comprehensive approach to protection against "conversion therapy".
The article analyses the procedural obligation to protect the right to life in Georgia in the light to the standards established under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It focuses both on the national law and practice in Georgia. For this purpose the article focuses on the elements of the procedural obligations as established under the practice of the ECtHR. Based on this analysis, few conclusions are drawn: while the Georgian law mainly reflects the relevant European standards, implementation of these standards is not satisfactory in practice.
The concept of the material constitution serves as an interpretative tool to understand the foundations and characteristics of the constitutional order. This article uses comparative legal theory and a positivist method to analyze the material constitution and its application in Kosovo. Drawing on constitutionalists like Hermann Heller and Costantino Mortati, it argues that Kosovo experienced a fundamental shift in its original constituent power, as expressed on 17 February 2008, when the country declared independence. This shift, reflected in two international agreements between Kosovo and Serbia in 2023, constitutes a unique exercise of constituent power de novo. Unlike the original exercise by Kosovo’s Assembly, this was carried out by the executive, redefining the material constitution established in 2008. The redefinition altered Kosovo’s political unity, fundamental objectives, and institutions while restructuring social relations between rulers and the ruled. It privileged the Serb community of Kosovo, granting it an exceptional position over others, including the Albanian majority.
The debate about Serbia’s defeat regarding Kosovo in 1999 is still ongoing. Questions such as whether the Kumanovo Agreement and UN Security Council Resolution 1244 formalized that defeat or not, what are the consequences of that defeat, and how it affected Kosovo’s final status, are part of everyday conversations in Serbia and beyond. These questions have a significant impact on contemporary Serbia and the understanding of its national interests. This paper focuses on how international law affected Serbia’s self-perception of its wartime defeat and presents two main arguments. First, it posits that the post-World War II state practice confirms that international law’s prohibition of the use of force has fundamentally changed the understanding of the concept of war defeat in international relations. Specifically, achieving victory through force no longer permits the annexation of defeated states’ territories. In this context, international law has significantly restricted policy options for victorious states and promised to the defeated ones: you will continue to exist with unchanged borders even after the military defeat. Second, the paper argues that the case study of Serbia demonstrates the limitations of international law’s influence on the concept of defeat. It shows that victorious states are finding avenues to circumvent international law’s restrictions and impose their will on militarily defeated states, undermining the principle of territorial integrity of defeated states.
Since 2019 in courts in Odesa and Kyiv oblasts, judges developed guidelines on how to manage cases while using their legal competences as given in the various Ukrainian codes of procedure. Procedural guidelines are arrangements of judges in which they announce how they will decide for example on self-recusals and challenges of judges and various requests for delays, and on the way the courts will communicate with parties. This enables judicial case management and gives the courts control over the time they spend on different cases, proportionate to the severity/complexity of the case. In this article we describe the idea behind the guidelines, their (legal) character and their functions. We argue that procedural guidelines and the inherent judicial competence to deviate from the guidelines contribute to the courts conducting fair trials in accordance with article 6 European Convention on Human Rights.
To participate electronically in general meetings, shareholders and their representatives must be verified to confirm their identities. Electronic verification remains relevant today as virtual and hybrid meetings of shareholders are widespread across the globe. This article studies shareholders’ electronic verification from the viewpoint of EU company law, domestic laws in the Baltic States, human rights instruments, data protection laws, and other sources; it focuses on three cases of companies from the Baltic States where shareholders were verified for electronic participation between 2021 and 2024. The three cases, from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, known for their digitalization efforts, are evaluated against the background of regional and domestic laws in those countries. The study reveals that verification spans multiple legal areas and is typically regulated by companies themselves. The paper concludes with recommendations for the more transparent and accessible electronic shareholder participation.
This article examines the methodology employed by the Czech Constitutional Court in adjudicating social rights, with particular focus on the so-called rationality test. While the Court's approach aims to balance judicial restraint with the constitutional protection of social rights, its implementation raises important theoretical and practical concerns. The article relies both on holistic analysis of the case-law from which general remarks in relation to social rights in the Czech Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms and methodological approach of the Court are derived, and the detailed case study of three pilot judgments, namely: judgments on Compulsory Vaccination (Pl. & Uacute;S 16/14); Smoking Ban in Restaurants (Pl. & Uacute;S 7/17), and Health Insurance of Migrants (Pl. & Uacute;S 2/15). By these means, the article explores how the Court has developed and applied its distinctive four-step rationality test that combines the protection of the core of the right with reasonableness and proportionality. The approach of the Czech Constitutional Court represents a global anomaly, as no comparable model has yet been described in the comparative constitutional law literature. This article addresses three core pitfalls of the Court's approach to judging social rights: 1) Although the rationality test seems to accommodate deferential variation on proportionality, in practice the test often collapses into a mere assessment of the suitability of the contested measure, without proper consideration of the normative content of the right at issue or the harm caused to individual rights-holders. 2) In many cases, the Constitutional Court is reluctant to interpret the core of rights and/or their normative content in general. 3) The study also demonstrates that the Constitutional Court still has not found a clear and sound attitude towards positive obligations. In its concluding section, the article offers a normative proposal for reform of the Court's methodology.
