States – HABIB REHMAN

Illegality, Third States Obligations and the ICJ’s 2024 Advisory Opinion – EJIL: Talk! – Go Health Pro

March 1, 2025 by admin

In the last few years, despite such prohibition, Israeli officials have announced their plans and intention to annex the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) in whole or part. In a recent statement, on 11 November 2024, Israel’s Finance Minister Smotrich announced a plan to impose Israel’s sovereignty to and annex the occupied West Bank in 2025. He also confirmed that the groundwork is already being put into place (see here and here). His plans also include annexation of the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli regime is conducting mass forcible transfer of Palestinians and building military bases (see here and here). The announcement of the US President to forcibly transfer Gaza’s population of over two million to Jordan and Egypt and take over the Strip, which was embraced by the Israeli far-right government (see here and here), emboldens Israel’s long-visioned plan to freely annex the occupied Palestinian territory. It has, in fact, encouraged further Israeli settlements expansion and land confiscation in the West Bank (see here and here).

This comes to no surprise as the Israeli government, led by Natanyahu, has long been in support of annexation and confiscation of Palestinian land in favour of illegal settlements (see here). At the factual level, Israel has been i) maintaining and expanding illegal settlements and outposts and their associated infrastructure, ii) expropriating Palestinian land and exploiting its natural resources, iii) proclaiming Jerusalem as its capital, iv) maintaining a restrictive and discriminatory planning and building regime for Palestinians, and v) applying extensive Israeli domestic law to East Jerusalem and extending Israeli law extraterritorially to Israeli settlers in the West Bank.

Do the Changes to the Sovereign Military of Malta’s Constitution affect its relevance for the future of Small Developing Island States – EJIL: Talk! – Go Health Pro

February 17, 2025 by admin

The fight of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to maintain control of their destiny and retain their statehood needs no introduction. Threatened by the sea level rise caused by centuries of greenhouse gases, SIDSs are both among the most affected (due to their low elevation above sea levels) and the smallest contributors to climate change.

In the absence of a solid body of state practice on whether a state can exist without a territory, scholars and analysts have invoked various precedents and strains of state practice. One of these is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta or SMOM (also sometimes called “Order of Malta”), due to its peculiar international legal personality (ILP). The SMOM was founded in 1048 as a religious order of the Catholic Church, and has a storied history as a geopolitical actor. The Order previously controlled territories, though these were seized by the Ottoman Empire leaving it with only the territory of Malta. However, in 1798, the SMOM lost control of the island to Napoleon and now recognises Malta’s sovereignty over the island. Since then, the SMOM focuses on its humanitarian mission.

Time and Temporality before the ICJ in the Advisory Opinion on Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change – EJIL: Talk! – Go Health Pro

February 14, 2025 by admin

The ICJ’s Advisory Opinion on Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change is one of a string of recent cases which has brought the ICJ to the centre of public discussions of international law (see coverage of proceedings on the BBC, the Guardian, and Forbes), and academic commentators have already noted the significance of the case for procedural rules on the participation of small island developing states and amicus curiae from NGOs, the establishing of obligations erga omnes, and the Court’s use of experts fantômes. In this short post, I want to focus on a different aspect of the Advisory Opinion: namely, its temporal significance, as a decision over when climate change began, how it manifests in our present, and how it will develop in the future.

Time may seem a marginal issue for understanding climate change. Yet across the submissions of the 96 states and 11 international organisations participating in the case, different histories, presents, and future expectations are again and again put before the ICJ to guide its decision. For some states, climate change has a long history, its origins stretching back decades to the emergence of scientific consensus on climate change in the 1960s, or even further back to colonial possession of natural resources and the Industrial Revolution (see, for example, Kenya’s submissions that carbon dioxide emissions should be measured from 1850). This creates a differentiated present: while some states have historically made the largest contributions to climate change, it is others that have been forced to bare its brunt. Accordingly, the history of climate change alters expectations about its future regulation. With the pollution of some states already threatening the existence of others, the ICJ must recognise legal obligations between these states which can halt and rectify the existing damage caused by climate change and restore the right of those states to self-determination over their future (see, among many passing citations by other states, the detailed submissions on self-determination by the Melanesian Spearhead Group, the Republic of Fiji, the Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea, Kiribati, Liechtenstein, Micronesia, Namibia, Nauru, Palau, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, and Tuvalu).

Transgender Rights at a Crossroads in the United States – Go Health Pro

February 13, 2025 by admin

In his first month in office, US President Donald Trump has issued a series of sweeping executive orders targeting transgender rights. Thus far, these aim to rigidly define “sex” in federal law, exclude transgender people from military service, ban gender-affirming healthcare for people under the age of 19, restrict support for transgender students in schools, … Read more

22 states sue to block new NIH funding policy—court puts it on hold – Go Health Pro

February 11, 2025 by admin

Regardless of what else they might be doing, the indirect costs pay for various critical campus services, including at research hospitals. Suddenly having that amount slashed would create a major budgetary shortfall that will be hard to cover without shutting programs down. The resulting damage to research campuses in their states was one of the … Read more