Dr Yuan Yi Zhu is an assistant professor of international relations and international law at Leiden University.
There are few better symbols of Europe’s military fecklessness during the brief era of relative peace that followed the end of the Cold War than the 1997 Ottawa Treaty, which banned the use of anti-personnel landmines by its signatories. The same is true of the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), which outlawed cluster munitions.
The government’s iron determination to surrender the Chagos Islands to Mauritius is puzzling. Why are ministers so keen to hand over territory that has been British since 1814, which is home to a critical UK-US military base, to a country thousands of miles away? And why does Britain need to pay Mauritius a reported £9
Last November, when the House of Commons voted on her assisted suicide legislation, Kim Leadbeater told her colleagues that the Bill would face ‘further robust debate and scrutiny’, including ‘line-by-line scrutiny in Committee’. But judging by the disgraceful scenes at her Bill committee’s first formal sitting on Tuesday, Kim Leadbeater and her supporters have given up on any pretence
Last year, a Mauritian politician raised eyebrows in Britain when he told a political rally that ‘England has agreed to pay us a compensation’ to the tune of ‘many billions of rupees’ as part of the deal to hand over the Chagos islands to Mauritius. Still, a billion Mauritian rupees only converts to around £17 million, so
Before MPs voted to support the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, Kim Leadbeater, who has sponsored the bill, rose on a point of order. There were murmurs in the House. Then Leadbeater said, a little sheepishly, that she wanted to correct the record. She had wrongly implied that serving members of the judiciary
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity (a third warrant was issued against a Hamas commander, believed to be dead). In so doing, the ICC has undermined – perhaps fatally – its own credibility,
Of all Keir Starmer’s appointments to government, none have been so personal or politically significant as his choice of Attorney General. The Prime Minister’s politics have been shaped, refined and hardened by his time as a human-rights barrister. The role of Attorney General – the government’s chief legal adviser and the minister responsible for the
We’re finishing the year by republishing our ten most popular articles from 2022. Here’s number one: Yuan Yi Zhu’s piece from April on Canada’s euthanasia policy. There is an endlessly repeated witticism by the poet Anatole France that ‘the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under
Without Queen Elizabeth II, Head of the Commonwealth, there would be no Commonwealth today at all. Long after the organisation had lost its charm for both British progressives, who increasingly saw it as an imperial hangover, and conservatives, dismissive of what they viewed as a grouping of ex-colonials asking for money and making awkward demands,
There is an endlessly repeated witticism by the poet Anatole France that ‘the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.’ What France certainly did not foresee is that an entire country – and an ostentatiously progressive one
The resignations of Lords Reed and Hodge from Hong Kong’s highest court is not much of a surprise, except perhaps to those who did not realise that serving British judges still administered justice in the territory. Their decision to quit follows soon after the Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, decided to withdraw government support for the continued
