General Assembly Resolution Research Articles

Fatalities in value chains—an attempt to classify road traffic crashes in accordance with the United Nations General Assembly resolution 74/299

Large corporations are today expected or obliged to report on accidental deaths and serious injuries to employed or contracted employed as a part of reporting on sustainability and workplace safety. Data about road crashes are part of such events and are therefore, but not separately, collected and presented. In Europe, 40% to 60% of all work-related accidents resulting in death has been reported to be road traffic accidents. In 2020, the Stockholm Declaration urged all corporations to report on their safety footprint including their entire value chain. The aims of the present study were to use a new definition of safety footprint and to quantify those killed as employed and at work, and those killed in a crash where the other part was at work, as so called third parties, to transports for duty with employed drivers. The Swedish Transport Administration (STA) in-depth database of fatal crashes was used, that covers all fatalities classified as road traffic related and consists of information from the police, medical journals, autopsy reports, accident analyses performed by STA, and witness statements. All fatalities excluding suicides or those caused by sickness occurring during year 2019 were investigated (n = 214). 11% (23/214) of the fatalities occurred when the killed person was at work and 16 while commuting. 37% of the fatal accidents occurred when the killed road user or the other part was at work. In total, almost half of the fatalities in the road transport system were related to work in some way when including both the fatally injured and their collision partners. A larger proportion of non-privately owned and procured vehicles was found for the vehicles of the collision partners compared to the vehicles of the fatally injured. In approximately one third of the fatal accidents a procurement of a transport service was involved. The Swedish Work Environment Authority (SWEA) identified 10 of the 23 fatalities at work investigated and none of these accidents was found to be investigated by the police as a crime related to the work environment. In conclusion, almost half of the fatalities in the road transport system in 2019 were related to work in some way, either the fatally injured or their collision partners were at work or while commuting. When including the third-party casualties, the problem becomes much bigger and more complex. In Sweden fatalities related to work are underreported, as the SWEA does not receive basic data. Efforts are needed to improve reporting of work-related road fatalities. It was found that the police did not investigate road traffic fatalities as death at workplace. It is crucial that the police start to follow the intention of regulations linked to workplace safety. If not, the possibility to collect relevant data for organizations to report on their safety footprint is limited. It is complicated to collect, classify and analyse value chain fatal crash information, mainly due to that the police do not investigate fatal road crashes as possibly work-related events. It is recommended that organizations manage their own data collection if they wish to report on their safety footprint data.

From the Editors-in-Chief: The Right to a Safe, Clean, Healthy, and Sustainable Environment

The discipline of international environmental law is about to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. We, at the Yearbook of International Environmental Law, have just celebrated our thirty years of contributing to the discipline of, and academic research on, the field. As already stated, in these three decades, we have watched environmental matters move slowly but emphatically towards the core of economic and social development and occupy an increasing portion of the political discourse, both at the international scene and on the domestic level. It seems incongruous in this context to celebrate the first panegyric declaration of a right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment, initially by the Human Rights Council in Resolution 48/13 (8 October 2021) and later by the UN General Assembly Resolution 76/300 (1 August 2022). One would have presumed that the impressive body of environmental regulation both at the international and national levels would have been safely constructed on a solid principle of law. Instead, reality has worked in the reverse order. Pau de Vilchez and Annalisa Savaresi have produced an impressive piece in which they delve into the specifics of its content with a view to ensuring the full enjoyment of the right. In addition, and perhaps even more important, they delineate and discuss the repercussions of its existence on the increasing use of litigation before domestic courts and international adjudicatory bodies in matters pertaining to climate change. In doing so, climate change moves away from the exclusive government-to-government domain of high politics and descends into the everyday relationship of citizen to state, with all the consequent emphasis on immediacy, effectiveness, and, ultimately, democratic accountability.

The Rule of Law in Advisory Opinions of the International Court of Justice

The concept of the rule of law is important both for the domestic law of States and in international law. In practice, some difficulties arise due to the lack of an accurate definition of its content. There is an opinion that it is easier to refer to this concept than to define its content. The problem is indicated in the documents of the United Nations (UN). The UN General Assembly resolution of 16 September 2005, in the section devoted to the rule of law principle, emphasizes the need for its universal observance and application both in national legal systems and in international law. The documents adopted under the auspices of the UN also highlight an important role played by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the implementation of this concept. Uniform and impartial application of law by the court is a reflection of the idea of the rule of law. All the activities of the ICJ as one of the main UN bodies serve to strengthen and promote this concept. By adopting decisions and advisory opinions, the Court contributes to clarifying and strengthening the influence of international law on relations between States. The development of the idea of the rule of law also affects activities of UN bodies, increasing predictability of their activities. In its practice, the ICJ gives it exceptional legitimacy and a broad scope of action, due to which the rule of law contributes to the implementation of the goals and principles of the UN. The Court’s contribution to the promotion of the concept is particularly noticeable in the framework of ongoing activities for the peaceful settlement of international disputes, clarification and dissemination of international law and its application on an equal basis to all subjects.

REINFORCING THE HUMAN SECURITY RESPONSIBILITY FRAMEWORK FOR VIOLENCE PREVENTION AND ENTHRONEMENT OF PEACEFUL CO-EXISTENCE IN NIGERIA

Nigeria’s quest for peaceful co-existence between and among its diverse ethnic nationalities is seriously threatened by protracted violence and extreme cases of human insecurity across the country in recent years. It is true that violence in its entirety cannot be totally eliminated in human society, but it can be prevented by any responsible State. The view of this article, also, is that the extreme violence cascading Nigeria, which makes it impossible to actualize its desired peaceful co-existence among the culturally diverse communities can be prevented. However, the article asserts that peaceful co-existence can only be possible in Nigeria, if she would be willing and determined to reinforce the human security responsibility framework (HSRF) into its governance imperative. The HSRF is a people-centered, comprehensive, context-specific and violence prevention-oriented mechanism to foster peace, and engender development especially, in developing countries such as Nigeria. The adoption of the HSRF in this article, further reinvigorates the United Nations (UN) General Assembly Resolution 66/290, as a wakeup call on Nigeria to quickly identify and address the widespread and cross-cutting challenges of the survival, livelihood, and dignity of its people. Going further, the article argues that much had not been achieved in Nigeria regarding the promotion of a people-centered, comprehensive, and context-specific, as well as violence prevention-oriented policies targeted at engendering peaceful co-existence in the country. It stems the arguments on the recent incidences of violence across the country that have serious implication on the HSRF, and by extension, the desired peaceful co-existence of its diverse ethnic nationalities. The article, therefore, concludes that Nigeria should adopt the HSRF to safeguard the people and communities’ vital freedom, including freedom from fear, freedom from want, and freedom from indignity in order to achieve her most desired peaceful co-existence among the different ethnic nationalities, clamoured by the operators of the Nigerian State in every democratic dispensation.

Southeast Asian States Have Their Own Views on the Ukraine War

Southeast Asian States Have Their Own Views on the Ukraine War Jeffrey Reeves (bio) Just as Southeast Asia has emerged as the center of gravity for the countries of the global West's respective Indo-Pacific strategies, so too has the region become a priority area for Western diplomacy on the Russia-Ukraine war. Since the start of the conflict, the United States, in particular, has lobbied Southeast Asian states and the secretariat of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to condemn Russia's aggression and to comply with Western sanctions against Moscow. In May 2022, for example, the Biden administration raised the Ukraine war in discussions with Southeast Asian leaders at their summit in Washington and tried to insert language in a joint U.S.-ASEAN vision statement criticizing Russia's militarism, ultimately having to settle instead for more vague language on support for territorial sovereignty and international law.1 Similarly, in 2022, the entire Western cohort of the G-20 pressured then host Indonesia to include language criticizing Russia's invasion in the group's joint statement. According to one European sous-sherpa involved in the statement's drafting, China and India also partially supported this language, which therefore made it possible to include.2 In at least one instance, however, European leaders were unable to bring their Southeast Asian counterparts on side with their criticism of Russia. In a December 2022 joint statement following an EU-ASEAN summit, negotiators failed to draft a common critique of Russia's actions.3 Neither have Western leaders had much success in securing Southeast Asian state support in condemnation of the war at the bilateral level, aside from Singapore, which is unique in the region for its relative acceptance [End Page 55] of Western views on the Ukraine war. Indeed, for all the West's efforts to propagate a distinctly critical narrative of Russia in Southeast Asia, regional media, scholarship, and leadership remain either noncommittal to the idea of Russian censure or sympathetic to what they perceive as Russia's strategic logic. As the Ukraine war passed its one-year anniversary in February 2023, Southeast Asian states were decidedly less interested in the war and in criticizing Russia than before. Although in a March 2022 UN General Assembly resolution eight ASEAN members voted to condemn Russia (Vietnam and Laos abstained), polling now shows that Southeast Asian states lead the world in their disinterest toward the war.4 Large majorities of the public in Thailand (60%) and Malaysia (56%) and sizable numbers in Singapore (44%) and Indonesia (48%) believe that the war is not their business and that their states should not interfere.5 Far from being a region that is sympathetic to Western narratives on the Ukraine war, Southeast Asia stands out for its perceived detachment from the conflict. How can one explain Southeast Asian states' apathy toward the war at a time that stands out in many ways as a high-water mark for Western states' attention? While the diversity within and between Southeast Asian states makes it nearly impossible to answer this question comprehensively in short form, there are several trends and characteristics across the region that provide some degree of insight. First, there is a clear lack of consensus on the origins, strategic direction, and global impact of the Russia-Ukraine war among Southeast Asian states and within ASEAN. Second, most Southeast Asian states remain open to and interested in maintaining economic, political, and social ties with Russia despite Western pressure to limit or restrict engagement. Third, Southeast Asian states are, in general, more cynical about Western intentions toward the war than other states, particularly with respect to Washington's proclivity to use the conflict to justify the further isolation of China and NATO's attempt to use the conflict to expand its influence in Asia. In this essay, the author will draw on polling data, official statements, media, and scholarship from across Southeast Asia to detail regional states' contemporary views on the Ukraine war and demonstrate that Southeast Asian states are generally less concerned about Russia's invasion [End Page 56] of Ukraine than their European and North American counterparts, more critical of the war's...

The impact of the monetary gold principle on the determination of jurisdiction in the mixed maritime disputes.

Mixed maritime disputes are maritime disputes that involve the concurrent consideration of any dispute concerning sovereignty or other rights over continental or insular land territory, which according to Article 298(1)(a)(i) of United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, should be excluded from the jurisdiction of a court or tribunal referred to in Article 287. However, by means of treaty interpretation or consensus of two parties, International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and other Annex VII tribunals have increasingly broken through the limits to actively exercise jurisdiction. Judgements under the influence of this tendency will be firmly resisted by states whose sovereign interests are damaged. Moreover, these judgements will not only fail to resolve disputes, but will create more serious international law and international political disputes, such as the judgement on preliminary objections of Mauritius v. Maldives delimitation case. In this judgement, the Special Chamber of International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea circumvented the Monetary Gold principle by citing the International Court of Justice advisory opinion and United Nations General Assembly resolution, which had no legally binding force. It is proposed that this judgement could open Pandora's box of challenges to general principles of international law and jurisdiction over sovereignty disputes. For States with mixed maritime disputes to resolve the issues mentioned above, it is necessary to respond to lawsuits actively, avoid adverse consequences caused by default judgements and reach regional consensus, and avoid unfavourable International Court of Justice advisory opinions and United Nations General Assembly resolutions.

Reconstructing Economic Self-Determination from the Third World Approach to International Law

International Law governing the relationship between states has been considered failed in reformatting the principle of economic self-determination (ESD) as a continual link of political self-determination in the post decolonisation era. Such situation has placed the principle to be a vague concept in terms of its meaning and application in current international law. Such situation has contributed to continual economic dependency of the Third World (TW) states on the first world as considered the more developed states. TW states face difficulty to develop their argument to demonstrate people national interest in current international economic context. Having utilised doctrinal and TWAIL approach, this paper argues that there has been a potential meaning of ESD which can be developed from fragmentation of documents in international law, particularly in the United Nations General Assembly Resolutions (UNGA resolutions), the Law of State Succession and the International Human Rights law. This meaning then shapes the fragmented sources to be a principle for TW to be used in their international economic relation, particularly in settling economic dispute relations with Western states.

The Blue Beret

The Blue Beret

The Open-Ended Working Group on Reducing Space Threats Through Norms, Rules and Principles of Responsible Behaviours: The Journey so Far, and the Road Ahead

Aware of the critical importance of outer space for humankind, the international community has ascertained the need for a secure and peaceful domain, and has proposed multiple mechanisms to achieve this goal, with varying degrees of success. The United Nations open-ended working group (OEWG) on reducing space threats through norms, rules and principles of responsible behaviours, convened under General Assembly resolution 76/231 is the latest effort to agree on space security mechanisms. With an open and inclusive approach to address the issue of space threats to space systems that brings together perspectives heretofore considered incompatible, this process presents a new chance for the international community to build the common understanding necessary to achieve space security. This article provides insight into the OEWG: how it came to be, its journey so far, and the road ahead. OEWG, space threats, space security, United Nations

ТЕРИТОРІАЛЬНА ЦІЛІСНІСТЬ ТА ПОЛІТИЧНА НЕЗАЛЕЖНІСТЬ ЯК ОСНОВОПОЛОЖНИЙ ПРИНЦИП МІЖНАРОДНОГО ПРАВА

This article discusses the list of fundamental principles of the United Nations. The fundamental principles of UN members are: 1) the principle that states refrain in their international relations from the threat of force or its use both against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, and in any other way incompatible with the goals of the Organization About United Nations; 2) the principle according to which states resolve their international disputes by peaceful means in such a way as not to endanger international peace, security and justice; 3) the principle regarding the obligation, in accordance with the Charter, not to interfere in matters falling within the internal competence of any other state; 4) the duty of states to cooperate with each other in accordance with the Charter; 5) the principle of equality and self-determination of peoples; 6) the principle of sovereign equality of countries; 7) the principle of conscientious fulfillment by the states of the obligations accepted by them in accordance with the Charter. The main attention is paid to the disclosure of the principle of territorial integrity and political independence. The author emphasized that UN member states and international organizations should in every way contribute to the establishment and implementation of the principles approved in the Declaration on the Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation between States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations (1970). It was noted that the fundamental ideas of the UN member countries are to promote the development of international relations of each member country, not to encroach on independence, democracy, territorial integrity, maximally contractual resolution of disputes that arise, and in the case of non-possibility, normative resolution of such disputes in courts. Violation of UN principles causes a negative reaction from other participating countries. The issue of applying the binding mechanism of the UN General Assembly resolution, which, unfortunately, today, is of a recommendatory rather than an imperative nature, needs to be resolved. It is also worth emphasizing the lack of a mechanism to bring the country, which violates the principles of the UN, to legal responsibility. After all, the absence of an effective mechanism of responsibility causes situations of further violations of international law and avoidance of responsibility.

Відносини «лікар - пацієнт - рідні пацієнта»: проблеми правового регулювання

The abstracts are stated as a consequence of the conclusions approved by the decision of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine «On the Recommendations of the Parliamentary Hearings on the topic: «Organization of the anti-cancer fight in Ukraine. Problems and the ways to solve them» from 02.09.2020 № 862-IX, and the World Health Assembly Resolution «Cancer prevention and control in the context of an integrated approach» (WHA70.12) dated by 2017. In particular, the Resolution calls on governments and the World Health Organization to accelerate actions aimed at achieving the goals mentioned in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by UN General Assembly Resolution A/70/L.1 on 25 September 2015, in order to reduce premature deaths from cancer. One of the key points of this Resolution is to call on countries to develop standards and tools for management of planning and implementation of activities in the field of prevention, early diagnosis, screening, cancer treatment, as well as palliative care and assistance to people after treatment, including children with cancer. The difficult situation with the provision of palliative care to cancer patients in the terminal stage of the disease, the lack of sufficient material base and qualified staff requires additional involvement of the patient’s relatives and persons supervising them in the assistance. Improvement and clear legislative regulation of legal norms that in one way or another affect the effective construction of the relationships «doctor-patient-patient relative» should be the key to achievement of the maximum effect. No conflict of interests was declared by the authors.

Addressing Crisis in Myanmar: The Role of NGOs in Promoting International Human Rights Standards

The Rohingya people have been victims of alleged severe human rights violations committed by the Myanmar government. In response to this situation, the United Nations (UN) has adopted some measures, including a United Nations General Assembly Resolution (UNGAR) A/RES/74/246 of 2019 that, inter alia, determines Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) as one of the key players in implementing its mandate. In practice, the NGOs' lack of international legal standing resulted in challenges in their operation. This paper examines the legal standing of NGOs' operations under international law. Specifically, it investigates NGOs' contributions to implementing UNGAR 74/246 in dealing with human rights violations in Myanmar. This article is based on legal research that combines library study and field research. The result indicated that Article 71 of the UN Charter needs to clarify the legal standing of NGOs’ operation in the international sphere, mainly to implement international human rights norms. In the context of the crisis in Myanmar, the NGOs have played a role as mandated by the UNGAR, including investigating gross human rights violations, providing gender-based protection and assistance, and assisting Myanmar in providing humanitarian assistance to all internally displaced persons within Rakhine. This paper recommends that all stakeholders cooperate to support the effectiveness of NGOs' contributions and peace-building efforts in Rakhine to achieve justice for all people in Myanmar.

CURRENT STATE AND LEVEL OF ACHIEVEMENT OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS IN THE SIBERIAN FEDERAL DISTRICT: ENVIRONMENTAL ASPECT

he authors in the article presented an overview of the sustainable development goals in the field of “ecology” for individual countries of the world and the Siberian Federal District of the Russian Federation (SFD). The purpose of the study is to analyze the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in rural areas in SFD regions at the moment according to the indicators presented by U.N. General Assembly resolution A/RES/70/1. In addition, the authors considered the factors influencing the achievement of the SDGs. The research methods were retrospective and statistical analyses. Furthermore, the study also examined indirect determinants, year by year, that affect the development of the SDGs in the regions. Finally, the study presents proposals for optimizing the environmental situation in SFD subjects and the effective management of measures to achieve the SDGs.

Models of legal support for implementing the official remembrance policy in Russia and other European countries: Comparative analysis

This article looks at the issues of legal support for implementing the official remembrance policy in Russia and other European countries. The evolution of remembrance policy is shown through the transition from the predominant role of religion to the incorporation of “memorial laws”. Factors that have led to the current revision of history have been identified. Common guidelines have been elucidated for all European countries regarding the historical past: they have been developed within the bounds of the United Nations and reflected in UN General Assembly resolutions, educational programs, international commemorative days, etc. It was concluded that European countries over the past three centuries have had a more or less similar way of emphasizing the main event, around which conceptual framework for the stances on history were constructed: at the end of the 18th century this was the French Revolution and in the 20th century — World War II. It has been demonstrated that the presence of numerous evaluations of such historically significant “points”, the use of the past to attain current political goals, the particularities of national laws, and the formation of new international union shave all led to the development of various models of legal support for implementing the official remembrance policy in Europe, which is reflected in the use of both different terminology and legal means. The categorization of protective, patriotic, post-traumatic, restorative and conciliatory models is proposed, which could be further split into subcategories. It has been highlighted how crucial legal instruments are to both stopping and averting the “memory wars” that many European nations are now engaged in.

Reasons for Asian neutralism regarding the russian-Ukrainian war

Abstract. The article analyses the reasons for the neutrality of ASEAN, Central Asia, India, and China regarding the russian-Ukrainian war. It explains the historically neutral foreign policy course of the ASEAN countries in view of the 1971 Kuala Lumpur Declaration on the creation of a zone of peace, freedom, and neutrality in Southeast Asia. The study examines the position of Asian countries during the votes on the following UN General Assembly resolutions: 2 March 2022, the resolution ES‑11/1 condemning the russian invasion of Ukraine and demanding the complete withdrawal of russian troops and the cancellation of the decision to recognise the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics; 12 October 2022, the resolution condemning illegal ‘referenda’ in the temporarily occupied territories of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions; 14 November 2022, the draft resolution entitled ‘Furtherance of remedy and reparation for aggression against Ukraine’. The authors put forward a set of recommendations for the specialists from the MFA of Ukraine on strengthening the coordination with the ASEAN member states, Central Asian countries, India, and China and expanding the Ukraine Defence Contact Group (the Ramstein coalition) to include those countries for the sake of defeating the russian invader. The article stresses that the russian-Ukrainian war is the largest war in Europe since World War II that goes beyond the scope of a bilateral conflict. The war has a fundamental impact on the security, military, political, economic, and other components of the globalsystem of international relations; it devastates the European security system and the entire global political and security order. Keywords: ASEAN, Central Asia, diplomacy, peace, neutrality, the United Nations (UN), Southeast Asia (SEA), russian-Ukrainian war, Ukraine, position.

The General Assembly Resolution ˝Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts˝ of 2022: Where We Stand 30 Years after

The General Assembly Resolution ˝Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts˝ of 2022: Where We Stand 30 Years after

The Right to a Healthy Environment and Law's Hidden Subjects

In this essay I reflect upon whether and how the recent international recognition of the right to a healthy environment might––or might not––provide greater support for efforts to define and protect the rights of what one could term “law's hidden subjects,” namely future generations and nature. Although there are several examples of rights-based regimes that aim to protect future generations and nature, few would disagree that these hidden subjects require better legal protection, and that thoroughgoing reform of existing human rights law is overdue. I argue that the international recognition of a human right to a healthy environment might contribute less to such reforms than what one would have intuitively expected. One reason for this is because the formulation of the right does not provide anything new in terms of more comprehensive recognition and protection of rights of nature and future generations. Although it is an important symbolic event that signifies broad consensus on the importance of rights-based environmental protection, many domestic and regional legal regimes already protect future generations, while some even offer innovative rights of nature provisions. At best, UN General Assembly Resolution 76/300 merely reinforces the status quo ante.

СУЧАСНА МІЖНАРОДНА ГУМАНІТАРНА СИСТЕМА: ДИНАМІЧНІ ЗМІНИ В УМОВАХ ПОГЛИБЛЕННЯ ГУМАНІТАРНИХ КРИЗ

The main factors contributing to the spread of humanitarian crises in the modern global economy are highlighted, including conflicts, climate change, and socio-economic instability. It is argued that conflicts are rapidly spreading and intensifying worldwide between various countries, resulting from the escalation of contradictions and the intensification of rivalry among major powers. The most dramatic manifestation of geopolitical confrontation has been the war on the European continent. It is identified that climate change, as a factor of humanitarian crises, manifests in the reinforcement of anthropogenic influence and the increase in environmental crimes, and in the proliferation of extreme weather events and natural disasters leading to numerous human casualties and material losses, as well as in the failure of climate change mitigation policies by governments and major companies. Significant influence on the deepening of humanitarian crises is provided by socio-economic instability, resulting from inequality, internal conflicts, low levels of socio-economic development in countries, etc. These factors create an extremely complex contemporary humanitarian landscape. The spread of humanitarian crises ensures a continuous increase in the demand for humanitarian assistance. The contemporary international humanitarian system is a network of entities providing responses to humanitarian crises in accordance with the principles laid down in UN General Assembly Resolution 46/182. The scale of modern humanitarian assistance is analysed based on indicators of the number of countries and the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance. It is found that the main part of the financing of international humanitarian assistance is provided from the budgets of donor countries, with the United States remaining a leader among them. It is determined that russia's war against Ukraine has caused a severe humanitarian crisis, resulting in the largest migration flows of refugees and internally displaced persons. The existing system of international humanitarian assistance has encountered certain problems in its provision, as international humanitarian organizations working in Ukraine during the early stages of the war demonstrated insufficient preparedness and ineffective planning, and as a result, were unable to provide rapid infusion of resources to strengthen and expand existing local response mechanisms. Key words: international assistance, international humanitarian system, humanitarian assistance, crisis, humanitarian crisis.

Race, Palestine, and International Law

In 1922, the League of Nations inscribed the goal of establishing a settler colony in Palestine for the Jewish people—in denial of the national self-determination of the Indigenous Arab population—in public international law. The Palestine Mandate juridically erased the national status of the Palestinian people by: (1) framing the Arabs as incapable of self-rule; (2) heightening the significance of establishing a Jewish national home; and (3) distinguishing Palestine from the other Class A mandates for possessing religious significance that exceeded the interests of any single national group. A century later, the still-unresolved “question” of Palestine remains central to struggles for anti-racism and anti-colonialism in international law. This essay revisits two flashpoints in the tangled history of Palestine and international law, where questions of race and racism have been central: first, ongoing debates over the regime and crime of apartheid; and second, the now-repudiated UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, recognizing Zionism as a form of racism and racial discrimination. Both stories demonstrate the importance of understanding race and colonialism as conjoined concepts, neither of which can be properly understood in isolation from the other.

A Study on Nomenclature Debate on the ‘Use of Force,’ ‘Armed Attack’ and ‘Aggression’ as the Right to Self Defence

International Law on Armed Conflict lays down specific guidelines on the conduct of the States, the parties who are signatories and conform to the international comity. The paper highlights the implications of the preamble of the United Nations Charter, which was introduced by the comity of international players in the Second world war to mitigate any possibility of another war. The state signatories to the charter not only aspired to restore peace but also to bring about standard norms of the conduct of civilized states through this Charter. The present paper discusses the juxtaposition of specific terminologies, which are considered one of the most important provisions of the UN Charter. The paper attempts to study Article 2(4), which prohibits the use of force by the member states. However, the juxtaposition of Article 51 along with Chapter VIII of the Chapter is also discussed, giving regard to the peculiarity of the expression ‘armed attack and ‘aggression’ in light of states’ right to self-defence. The paper throws light upon the negotiating history of these Articles along with other important documents like UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 and the Statute of Rome of the International Criminal Court, which has defined and illustratively underlined the meaning and context of the term ‘aggression.’ The jurisprudential evolution is also brought astute by the pronouncement of the International Court of Justice. The paper deliberates upon the interpretational journey of the text and the context of the provisions of the Charter and other documents and attempts to read between the lines of these terminologies to understand the present-day relevance and meaning of these provisions akin to the ongoing international armed conflicts in the world.