The Evolution and Erosion of International Law
This project explores the past, present, and future of international law in the context of atrocity prevention. With the UN system under increasing strain, international law increasingly politicized, and mass atrocities rising globally, the project seeks to identify where international legal and institutional frameworks have succeeded, where they are failing, and how they must adapt to remain effective in the 21st century.
Successes and Failures
The series examines where international law still works, highlighting UN mechanisms that have prevented violence, legal frameworks like R2P and the Geneva Conventions that have supported accountability, peacekeeping missions that protected vulnerable populations, and preventive diplomacy that averted atrocities. It also documents where the system is breaking down: the weaponization of international law to serve geopolitical ends, violations of humanitarian law in conflicts from Syria to Sudan, and the promise and political limits of universal jurisdiction. This balanced assessment provides an honest accounting of what the international legal order can and cannot achieve.
Emerging Challenges and Adaptations
The series confronts authoritarian and geopolitical challenges to international law, including democratic backsliding, attacks on human rights frameworks, restrictions on humanitarian access, and strategies that shield perpetrators from accountability. It also looks forward, exploring how climate change may catalyze mass atrocities, whether international law can adapt or must be reinvented, and new developments including the recognition of ecocide, gender apartheid, and evolving understandings of gender persecution and children born of war. By engaging these emerging frontiers, the series charts pathways for strengthening atrocity prevention in a shifting global order.
