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Public international law has been 'global' in its application since at least the 1960s, when most western colonial empires had disappeared. Still, it is far from being left untouched by the fundamental changes which law is undergoing worldwide and which scholars often catch under the term 'globalization'. The gradual decline of the monopoly of states in the field of international relations and the on-going globalization of the economy and the challenges mankind is facing threaten the autonomy of public international law and even stretch it to its vanishing point. The authors argue that while international lawyers should not react defensively, we should be even more careful not to sacrifice the central position of the state in international law too readily as it is the prime locus of democracy and the rule of law. They also plead for a shift in international legal academia from the traditional focus on the formal role of international law within the system of law and global governance to studying its societal impact and potential in facing global challenges.

After the first drafts of the Treaty of Lisbon were available outside of the small circle of cogniscenti, specialists of the various policies tried to establish whether the new Treaty on European Union (TEU) and Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) contained anything relevant for their specific areas of law. People interested in tax law and those interested in the relation between EU law and public international law quickly established that one familiar yet not always well understood part of the old EC Treaty was missing: The TFEU like the earlier draft Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe, did not contain an equivalent to Article 293 EC – an Article regulating agreements between EU Member States on matters such as inter alia double taxation. In this chapter, I will embark on looking at the reasons and, more importantly, the effects of abolishing Article 293 EC in the current legal system. Several questions need to be addressed: Is there now a legal void? If not, was the initial article superfluous? What does its disappearance say about the future relation between double tax agreements concluded under public international law and EU law? The issue of double tax agreements in the context of the EU raises some fundamental questions about the complex multi-level legal world we are living in.

This report is intended for development professionals as a way to help them understand some of the key characteristics of peace negotiations and how the points of impasse between parties are often strikingly similar. Development professionals can play an important role in any peace process, providing the technical knowledge and practical, on-the-ground insights necessary to create a peace agreement that is durable. They are often in a position to facilitate dialogue among the parties in conflict, provide funding to support peace processes, contribute technical expertise and deliver practical knowledge as to what is feasible during the implementation of the peace agreement based on existing dynamics on the ground. Because development is a key component in any peace process, it is important to have development professionals present at the negotiation table, not just in the post-conflict implementation phase. This is often important because necessary technical issues will be reflected within an agreement to bring about successful implementation. This brief provides a number of lessons learned that are important for development practitioners to keep in mind when supporting peace processes. Much of the guidance offered in this brief has been distilled from multiple sources in academic literature, from background materials used in developing Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation's toolkit on supporting peace processes and from materials produced by numerous other research institutions.

Public international law has been 'global' in its application since at least the 1960s, when most Western colonial empires had disappeared. Still, it is far from being left untouched by the fundamental changes which law is undergoing worldwide and which scholars often catch under the term 'globalization'. The gradual decline of the monopoly of States in the field of international relations and the on-going globalization of the economy and the challenges mankind is facing threaten the autonomy of public international law and even stretch it to its vanishing point. The authors argue that while international lawyers should not react defensively, we should be even more careful not to sacrifice the central position of the State in international law too readily as it is the prime locus of democracy and the rule of law. They also plead for a shift in international legal academia from the traditional focus on the formal role of international law within the system of law and global governance to studying its societal impact and potential in facing global challenges.

The ecological debt is a concept which was developed at the beginning of the 90s in order to fight against the burden of financial debts which crippled the budgets of developing States. States and the civil society used the theoretical and practical knowledge developed by researchers in social and economic sciences to criticize an unequal worldorder, leading to continuous environmental degradation and as such, a characteristic of an unequal ecological exchange. For the different actors, the concept of ecological debt took on various meanings so that we can now dissociate four different discourses. For each discourse, we have identified one or more legal mechanism, but most of them often turn out to be unfit to meet the claims of ecological debt advocates. It appears that only the community version of ecological debt is efficient without being counter-productive. Our analysis of the climate regime in international law confirms this result since norms that empower local communities seem more efficient to reduce climate debt. ; La dette écologique est un discours politique qui s'est développé au début des années 90 pour lutter contre le fardeau des dettes financières qui grevait les budgets des États en développement. États et société civile se sont alors appropriés les acquis théoriques et pratiques des sciences économiques et sociales pour contester un ordre du monde inégalitaire et conduisant à la dégradation continue de l'environnement, caractéristique d'un "échange écologiquement inégal". Mais dans la bouche des différents acteurs, la dette écologique a pris des sens différents, si bien que l'on peut dissocier quatre discours de la dette écologique. À chacun de ces discours correspondent un ou plusieurs outils juridiques, outils qui, après analyse, s'avèrent souvent inaptes à valider les prétentions des partisans de la dette écologique. Il apparaît que seule la version communautaire de la dette écologique offre un cadre d'analyse qui soit efficient sans être contre-productif. L'analyse spécifiquement dédiée au ...

The ecological debt is a concept which was developed at the beginning of the 90s in order to fight against the burden of financial debts which crippled the budgets of developing States. States and the civil society used the theoretical and practical knowledge developed by researchers in social and economic sciences to criticize an unequal worldorder, leading to continuous environmental degradation and as such, a characteristic of an unequal ecological exchange. For the different actors, the concept of ecological debt took on various meanings so that we can now dissociate four different discourses. For each discourse, we have identified one or more legal mechanism, but most of them often turn out to be unfit to meet the claims of ecological debt advocates. It appears that only the community version of ecological debt is efficient without being counter-productive. Our analysis of the climate regime in international law confirms this result since norms that empower local communities seem more efficient to reduce climate debt. ; La dette écologique est un discours politique qui s'est développé au début des années 90 pour lutter contre le fardeau des dettes financières qui grevait les budgets des États en développement. États et société civile se sont alors appropriés les acquis théoriques et pratiques des sciences économiques et sociales pour contester un ordre du monde inégalitaire et conduisant à la dégradation continue de l'environnement, caractéristique d'un "échange écologiquement inégal". Mais dans la bouche des différents acteurs, la dette écologique a pris des sens différents, si bien que l'on peut dissocier quatre discours de la dette écologique. À chacun de ces discours correspondent un ou plusieurs outils juridiques, outils qui, après analyse, s'avèrent souvent inaptes à valider les prétentions des partisans de la dette écologique. Il apparaît que seule la version communautaire de la dette écologique offre un cadre d'analyse qui soit efficient sans être contre-productif. L'analyse spécifiquement dédiée au ...