Suchergebnisse

Reviving the United Nations Trusteeship Council (UNTC) and the evolution of the idea of trust in the global domain underscores that there are places, territories, and areas known as 'global commons' that require special and careful nurturing. The TC under the UN Charter sought to continue the spirit and essence of the 'sacred trust' with a 'new mandate,' even as it now lies dormant since 1994. From a scholarly perspective, such a move eminently makes sense since it could bring to life an entity within the UN. It will essentially serve as a guardian of the global 'common concerns' and 'common heritage of mankind' as well as the global environment. It would serve as a trustee for the present and future generations of humankind. A revived TC with a new mandate (for the environment and the global commons) could strengthen the UN and vindicate one of the core purposes for which the 'United Nations' came together (in 1945) with a solemn resolve "to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained"

This article seeks to place under scanner the role of international courts and tribunals (ICTs) as important agents for the peaceful settlement of international disputes through the instrumentality of law. The rapid upswing in the number of specialized international courts and tribunals (in areas such as trade, human rights, law of the sea, criminal justice and environment) can be perceived as an attempt by the sovereign states to maintain viability of the ICTs in light of perplexity in international relations, growing recognition of peaceful co-existence, quest for institutionalized cooperation and emergence of some of the 'Common Concerns of Humankind' and the 'Duty to Cooperate'. It has sought to make sense of emergence of ICTs as the 'New Environmental Sentinels'. Do we need a specialized International Environmental Court (IEC) as an 'ideal'? What does it portend for our common future?

The article seeks to make a modest effort in making sense of the international environmental law-making process. It comprises the subtle normative process currently at work, including 'global conferencing' technique resorted to by the UN General Assembly, how it draws upon the basic legal underpinnings of international law, the unique treaty-making enterprise at work, and what this enormous legal churning process portends for the protection of the global environment at this critical time of perplexity in the Anthropocene epoch. It calls for taking serious cognizance of mass destruction of plant and animal species, heavy pollution of fresh water resources, choking of the oceans with plastic and other litter, and alteration of the atmosphere, among other lasting impacts that imperil our only abode Earth. International environmental law-making process is ad hoc and piecemeal and is generally understood to be the product of a lack of a single, central specialized institution having expertise on the subject, scientific uncertainty on many environmental issues, and the hard-headed economic interests of sovereign states. Still, the international environmental law-making process with its inherent resilience could possibly be able to adapt to the vagaries of scientific assessments and the political realities of in the future.

"The present study seeks to examine the genesis, development, and proliferation of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) - in-built law-making mechanisms and processes of institutionalization - and their ad hoc treaty-based status and the issue of the legal personality of their secretariats. It provides legal understanding of the location of MEA secretariats within an existing international host institution, as well as discussion of the issue of relationship agreements and interpretation of the commonly used language that triggers such relationships. It places under scrutiny the standard MEA phrase "providing a secretariat," delegation of authority by the host institution to the head of the convention secretariat, possible conflict areas, host country agreement, and the workings of the relationship agreements. The book offers an authoritative account of the growing phenomenon in which an existing international institution provides a servicing base for MEA that, in turn, triggers a chain of legal implications involving the secretariat, the host institution, and the host country"--Provided by publisher

As a plenary organ of the UN, the General Assembly has invoked its principal instrumentality of resolutions to address a variety of global problems. The mirage of being called "recommendations" (Article 11, the UN Charter) has never come in the way of finesse with which the Assembly has invoked its resolutions to zero in on contemporary common concerns. The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by resolution 70/1 (September 25, 2015) has been one such major global action plan that became a milestone in a long line of engagements that have also carried the normative halo. Now at the mid-way to the 15-year cycle (2015–2030), the performance assessment on 17 Goals shows that the promise of leaving "no one behind" is in peril. In view of the reality of the world we live in and multiple interconnected planetary scale crisis situations, the UN member states have floundered in giving effect to the promises laid down in the 17 Goals of the 2030 Agenda. The UN Secretary-General's report (April 27, 2023) has called for a resolute rescue plan for people and planet. The progress came to be reviewed at the SDG Summit convened by the UNGA President during September 18-19, 2023. The available data (Revised Zero Draft of June 8, 2023), underscored the gravity of the peril faced by the humankind since, out of 140 targets, "only about 12 per cent are on track; more than half, although showing some progress, are moderately or severely off track; and some 30 per cent have either seen no movement or regressed below the 2015 baseline". The Political Declaration adopted at the New York SDG Summit coinciding with the meeting of the High-Level Political Forum, sought to work out a rescue plan considering the UNSG's stimulus plan and taken the "pledge to act now, for present and future generations". This article examines the process, the promise, the pledge and the rescue plan for the SDGs in peril.

The Stockholm+50 Conference (2-3 June 2022) has been perceived as a low-key affair and a missed opportunity. The moral halo that ushered the world into global environmental consciousness, led by the Prime Ministers of Sweden (Olof Palme) and India (Indira Gandhi) at the first UN Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) held in Stockholm (5–16 June 1972) seemed to be missing at the 2022 Stockholm+50 Conference. This historic event coincided with the 30th anniversary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The Stockholm+50 event, jointly hosted by Sweden and Kenya, ended as a ubiquitous joint Presidents' Final Remarks to the Plenary issued by the two host countries. In spite of the call for action by the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to address the "triple planetary crisis" driven by climate emergency, biodiversity loss and pollution and waste, the Stockholm+50 outcome took the shape of ten-point summarized recommendations. It didn't cause any ripples or resulted in a clarion call that could shake the conscience of peoples and nations to arise for everting the existential planetary crisis. The 2022 Stockholm+50 Moment at best remained a timid acknowledgement of things going terribly wrong in the past fifty years (1972–2022). Yet, no world leader stepped forward to don the mantle "to rescue" the world from the "environmental mess" as urged by the UNSG in his 2 June 2022 inaugural address. The heads of government and delegations seemed to lack the requisite courage befitting the momentous occasion for a decisive course correction in the global environmental regulatory policies, legal instruments and the environmental governance architecture. What would it entail to address the planetary crisis? It brings to the fore some lessons from the 2022 Stockholm+50 Moment that presents an ideational challenge for scholars of International Law and International Relations as well as the UN system, multilateral environmental treaty processes, international institutions and the decision-makers of the sovereign states.

Since the recognition by the UN General Assembly resolution 43/53 (6 December 1988) that "climate change is a common concern of mankind" as well as adoption of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, climate change has emerged as one of the most pressing global environmental challenges. The IPCC AR6 (April 2022) curated scientific evidence has explicitly observed that "Net anthropogenic GHG emissions have increased since 2010 across all major sectors globally." The cumulative effect of GHG emissions appears to exacerbate the abnormal weather events, melting the polar ice caps and cause other cataclysmic climatic changes. The effects of climate change transcend territorial boundaries and continents. It has provided a normative basis for the concerted international law-making process underneath the existing UNFCCC led global regulatory regime. It designated climate change as a common concern of humankind. The resultant soft normativity has been shaped into the hard law through the trajectory of three international legal instruments that took the forms such as common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (1992 UNFCCC) to international legal commitments only for Annex I countries (1997 Kyoto Protocol) and the nationally determined commitments by the parties (2015 Paris Agreement). This study has sought to place under scanner the graded evolution of the climate change regime through the in-built law-making process premised upon a common concern of humankind. In the aftermath of the UN Secretary-General's warning about climate emergency as part of "triple planetary crisis", it is high time the international law scholars, the UN General Assembly and the UNFCCC regulatory process shift into the higher trajectory of climate change as a planetary concern.