Due to the presence of Dutchbat troops in July 1995, when over 8000 Bosniaks were killed, the Srebrenica genocide became a shared Bosnian-Dutch history. This chapter explores how civil court cases (Nuhanović; Mustafić; Mothers of Srebrenica) by survivors and relatives shaped the space for reparation in the Netherlands. Departing from a sociological definition of genocide, this chapter arrives at a similarly broad and transformative conceptualisation of reparation as a spectrum (based on Lisa Laplante (Laplante, Cornell International Law Journal 48:513–578, 2015)). While court cases themselves can only be expected to address the narrow, left side of the reparation spectrum, their contributions to fact-finding and the conversation on responsibility can form the basis for a larger, politics- and society-driven reparation process. The chapter thus starts by studying plaintiffs’ lived experiences of the court procedures vis-à-vis their needs and aims. While recognizing several instances of delay and denial, we acknowledge that the legal narratives and outcomes held significant reparation potential. However, studying the political and societal responses to the court cases, the chapter argues that this potential did not materialize. Most importantly, the political and societal emphasis is still on Dutchbat rather than on the Bosniak stories, thus blocking restorative and civic reparation. Therefore, we present initiatives by the Bosnian-Dutch community as ‘interventions’ in this stalling process. These initiatives re-imagine what reparation can be. We conclude that, through them, Dutch politics and society are given another chance to contribute to inclusive and transformative reparation for the shared history of the Srebrenica genocide.
This chapter engages in a tentative critical-theoretical exploration of ecocide as an ‘ecocentric’ core crime. For this purpose, I first provide a brief outline of the conceptual binary between anthropocentrism and ecocentrism. The anthropocentric ontology of international criminal law (ICL) is then explored by retracing its permeation by interrogating two dominant conditions: the international community and the ideal victim. I argue that the contours of a green progress narrative become visible in ICL to remedy the accountability gap concerning large-scale environmental damage. A central thesis of this narrative is that ICL is failing in engagement with environmental damage due to its anthropocentric focus and should therefore move towards a more ecocentric approach by criminalising ecocide. The notion that an ecocentric core crime can redeem ICL’s anthropocentric conditions is problematised in this chapter. Rather than a pointing towards a profound oscillation between environmental ethics and ICL, I contend that this green progress narrative firstly obscures ICL’s anthropocentric ontology and secondly that it does not account for the complexities of translating environmental concerns into the discipline. Latour’s de-centred approach is introduced to disrupt this linear logic and to give impetus for a critical approach of a re-imagination of ICL which embeds the more-than-human in its framework.
This chapter examines two cases against Syrian asylum seekers—the Ahmad al.-Y Judgment of 21 April 2021 and the Ahmad al-Khedr Judgment of 16 July 2021—in which the District Court of the Hague asserted universal jurisdiction to convict the accused of terrorist offences and war crimes committed in the Syrian conflict. The Court made remarkable findings on questions that concern the fields of international jurisdictional and humanitarian law. Specifically, it relied on the aut dedere aut judicare obligation under the UN Terrorist Bombings Convention, to which Syria is notably not a State Party, to claim universal jurisdiction over the crime defined in it. It thus produced very rare judicial practice on a matter of international jurisdictional law that is subject to much controversy and scholarly disagreement. In addition, the judges entered certain findings on the war crime of outrages upon personal dignity, as defined under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which addressed two questions that have not been litigated at the international criminal tribunals: (i) can outrages upon personal dignity be committed against a dead person; and (ii) does exposing a captured fighter to public curiosity (by distributing online videos in which he is recognizably portrayed) amount to a war crime in non-international armed conflicts?
Sustainable finance regulation, a new type of regulation, preoccupied by ad hoc concerns and pursued by novel instruments is emerging around the world. Sustainable finance regulation itself closely follows the rise of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) markets, which gained momentum after the conclusion of the Paris Agreement and due to growing investor pressures. While ESG markets have first operated under self-regulatory regimes, greenwashing controversies, growing climate-related risks, and environmental policy objectives have motivated regulatory responses at both national and international levels. Remarkably, the international coordination of these regulatory responses occurs largely outside the sphere of traditional standard-setters. This contribution explores the singularity and extent of the international regulation and coordination of sustainable finance, showing significant differences in the content and process of the international regulation and coordination of sustainable finance.
Humanity is on the verge of reaching the planet's boundaries. Industrialisation, the growth of the world population and changing consumption patterns all impact on nature's capacity to regenerate, with global warming, extreme weather, pollution, species depletion, the destruction of ecosystems and the spread of infectious diseases as major threats to our survival. In the view of the Editorial Board of the Netherlands Yearbook of International Law, these challenges require a (re)calibration of the existing norms for the protection of the environment and more generally an inquiry into international law’s responses to the global environmental crisis. This editorial contribution provides an overview of recent developments across fields of international law and introduces the approaches taken by the various contributions in this volume to the overarching theme. It concludes that international law has in fact become greener over time, but that it is nonetheless essential to go beyond the current efforts by reimagining humanity’s relationship with the environment on a more fundamental level.
Climate justice is a part of the preamble of the Paris Agreement, hence a context for treaty interpretation. It captures the need to protect the interests of those most affected by climate change having made the least contribution. To achieve climate justice all States need to comply with their obligations under the climate change agreements and particularly the Paris Agreement. The question is can States then defend such measures on the ground of climate justice when challenged before investment tribunals. The climate change agreements are such structured that if States do not undertake maximum regulatory measures to protect climate change they may be held responsible for failure to comply with their obligations under the climate change agreements. This chapter argues that there are sufficient interpretative tools allowing States to undertake climate change regulations without being found responsible for violations of investment treaties. For this purpose, obligations under climate change agreements would have to be integrated and harmoniously applied with the treatment standards under investment treaties so to allow States to tackle climate change and achieve climate justice. Systemic integration based on Article 31(3) (c) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties and the existing jurisprudence on the interpretation of treatment standards allows such a possibility.
