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The 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol are the only binding international instruments under which the parties of the instruments agree to protect refugees. However, there are gaps in the existing protection mechanisms for refugees at sea. Moreover, the South East Asian States are non-parties to the 1951 Refugee Convention; the States argue that they have no treaty obligation to accept Rohingya boat refugees. In this context, this article revisits the traditional view of ‘soft laws’, suggesting a fresh look at ‘soft laws’ regarding boat refugees. This article argues that even though the States are non-parties to international refugee law, the South East Asian States are members of the UN General Assembly, IMO, and ExCom. These international bodies have adopted numerous resolutions, guidelines and conclusions on refugee protection at sea; therefore, the States have international obligations to boat refugees according to Article 38(1)(C) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice 1945, the general principle of international law.

A trinity composed of legally binding regulations, an independent financial mechanism, and a compliance mechanism characterizes the institutional design of the Minamata Convention on Mercury. Meanwhile, few existing environmental treaties feature an independent financial mechanism as well as a compliance mechanism. Why did the Minamata Convention acquire two mechanisms? There are two rival hypotheses on uncertainty about institutional consequences and international agreements. The rational design school posits that countries can predict institutional consequences by acquiring all pieces of relevant information and views the trinity as a rational design to enhance developing countries’ regulatory capabilities under strict compliance. In contrast, the institutional diffusion school assumes that countries have limited information-processing abilities and use cognitive heuristics in designing institutions and argues that countries designed the trinity by learning from existing cases. In this paper, I compare the negotiations process of the Minamata Convention with that of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). To test the hypotheses, I examine how countries resolved informational uncertainty in both negotiations by utilizing negotiations records and personal interviews with key officials as data. The analytical results support the institutional diffusion hypothesis by indicating that the trinity within the Minamata Convention is a product of countries’ heuristic and incremental learning from existing treaties.

There, too often, the matter is left, B feeling that A is profoundly unclear about what he is asking for, and A reckoning that B’s refusal to have his difficulty indicates only a lack of depth and a narrowness of technique. A’s position is quite shocking, despite the fact that many discussions (both inside and outside philosophy) often come perilously close to it. Because if you and I can never know whether we are having the same experience in those situations where we both confront, e.g. a stoplight, and respond by saying “Red,” then we can certainly never know whether we are having the same experience when we are looking at triangles, or chairs, or tables, or other people, or any of the other philosophical furniture of the external world. To have the doubt which A expresses just is to entertain the most radical kind of solipsism, although many seem to have had the former without explicitly entertaining the latter. It is hardly satisfactory to point out here, as some recent philosophers, like B above, seem to have thought it sufficient to do, that the question is not a soluble one. This is precisely what A is claiming. Discussions often conclude therefore in agreeing that the difficulty is insoluble and then proceed to construct theories as to how it is that A and B ever manage to agree upon so much in the world, despite their disagreements about “basic” visual experience. Here words like “convention”, “agreement”, “stipulation”, and “ostensive”, are exercised rather heavily. We can, apparently, never really know that we have the same “inner” visual experiences. But we can, by various sorts of arbitrary agreements and conventional decisions, proceed to act as if we do have the same experiences. The value of the agreements and decisions is assessed pragmatically. If we can all succeed in managing our affairs in the world by agreeing that X and deciding that Y, then in so far do we rely on X and Y.

The Minamata Convention on Mercury, with its objective to protect human health and the environment from the dangers of mercury (Hg), entered into force in 2017. The Convention outlines a life-cycle approach to the production, use, emissions, releases, handling, and disposal of Hg. As it moves into the implementation phase, scientific work and information are critically needed to support decision-making and management. This paper synthesizes existing knowledge and examines three areas in which researchers across the natural sciences, engineering, and social sciences can mobilize and disseminate knowledge in support of Hg abatement and the realization of the Convention’s objective: (1) uses, emissions, and releases; (2) support, awareness raising, and education; and (3) impacts and effectiveness. The paper ends with a discussion of the future of Hg science and policy. Keywords: Environmental treaty implementation, Mercury, Minamata Convention, Science–polic, Toxic pollution, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. International Policy Lab, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (Dartmouth College. Toxic Metals Superfund Research Program. Award R13 ES028077-01), National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (Dartmouth College. Toxic Metals Superfund Research Program. Award P42ES007373)

This general report gives an overview of the implementation of children’s rights in the 21 Member States of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that submitted their papers to the 2014 Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law. They answered a questionnaire referring, first of all, to the definition of the child in the respective national laws, as well as to the most important rights of the child, such as the implementation of the best interest principle, the right of the child to know about his/her origin, the right of the child to be heard (right to participation), the right of the child to give medical consent, the rights of the child in the field of employment, prohibition of physical punishment, protection of the child through the deprivation of parental rights and in the case of inter-country adoption. The research presented in the national reports shows that there is a great degree of heterogeneity and asymmetry among the countries regarding not only the understanding of the rights of the child but also the level of their implementation in national laws. Most countries have adapted their legislation to incorporate the new rights of the child foreseen by the Convention, thereby significantly improving the legal position of children. However, both in these countries and in those that have not satisfactorily implemented the Convention, there remains room for a further improvement of children’s rights. Many factors will influence any further enhancement of children’s legal status in the world. Among them, human resources and political commitment are as important as factors related to economic development, the wealth of certain countries, mentality, culture, religion, and the general level of education. Nevertheless, the legal landscape of the regulation of the rights of the child has seen positive developments with a clear mandate for nations to keep a vigilant watch over the status of children’s rights and act together individually and within the UN framework to ensure their continued legal protection.

Today no one doubts that the Cape Town Convention is one of the most successful uniform law instruments, already boasting a significant number of Parties 15 years after its adoption. As it represents the international regime for security interests in aircraft, no practitioner in the field can work without knowledge of it. This Report analyses in what respects the Cape Town Convention differs from the existing laws of various jurisdictions, and how it will modify the latter once the State becomes a Party to it. Interestingly, the Cape Town Convention takes a rather modest approach to unifying divergent laws of nations in the traditional sense. Its impact will be greater in modernising the existent laws on secured transactions, which are sometimes outdated, complicated or not favoured by the investors in the capital market. Thus, the Cape Town Convention is not simply a successful example of uniform law, it also models a new role for private law unification, namely to modernise domestic legal systems and make the latter more competitive in the “law market.”

This General Report provides an analytical overview of critical issues concerning the interpretation and application—in forty-four jurisdictions—of the United Nations Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, commonly known as the New York Convention. The Chapter surveys and synthesizes national responses to a sample of questions on major Convention topics: implementation of the Convention, enforcement of agreements to arbitrate, grounds for refusal of recognition and enforcement under the Convention, and procedural issues in recognizing and enforcing foreign awards. This report concludes with an assessment of experience in the implementation of the Convention across jurisdictions.

The word landscape has multiple meanings in common language. It refers to a tract of land as well to its visual appearance. It used to denote a territory as well as historical and geographical regions and refers to an area shaped in a characteristic way by the people living in it. Landscape as scenery had an important influence on imagination and artistic presentation. Subtle differences exist between languages, which sometimes make translations confusing. Adjectives are used to describe more precisely the meaning in a given context. The distinction between natural and cultural landscapes has been important in the development of different approaches. Many other specifications, such as rural and urban landscape, countryside and picturesque landscape, add to the complexity. Formal definitions were made by conventions, such as the cultural landscapes in the UNESCO World Heritage Convention and the definition given by the European Landscape Convention. In particular, the latter initiated rethinking landscape policy and stimulated transdisciplinary approaches to landscape in an international perspective.

The problem of cooperation for rational actors comprises two sub problems: the problem of the intentional object (under what description does each actor perceive the situation?) and the problem of common knowledge for finite minds (how much belief iteration is required?). I will argue that subdoxastic signalling can solve the problem of the intentional object as long as this is confined to a simple coordination problem. In a more complex environment like an assurance game signals may become unreliable. Mutual beliefs can then bolster the earlier attained equilibrium. I will first address these two problems by means of an example, in order to draw some more general lessons about combining evolutionary theory and rationality later on.

This paper addresses the processes by which the international community intervened and participated in the defining of Bosnian identity and the corresponding constitutional framework, as well as the continuous paradoxical tension between the ethnic local and claims to universalism of supranational legal norms. In particular, the 1995 Constitution and the architecture of its sovereignty have been contested through provisions of the European Convention of Human Rights. The analysis is further supported by the discussion of the architectonic structure of the Town Hall/National Library in Sarajevo that has had an important constitutional role since the collapse of the Ottoman period. The paper thus focuses on two sites for construction/deconstruction of Bosnian sovereignty: the constitutional framework and the more concretely visible architectural symbol of the Town Hall/National Library. This importance of a visual and spatial approach to Bosnian realities is carried further by the 1993 ‘Eulogy’ that Jean-Luc Nancy wrote for Sarajevo, as a site of the Melee.

The Baltic Sea is one of the marine water bodies suffering most from eutrophication with phosphorus deriving from agricultural operations. The countries sharing the marine environment of the Baltic Sea are gathered under the so-called HELSINKI convention, which among others aims to reduce the phosphorus input. Although since more than two decades in function the convention shows no significant effect on the P discharge from agriculture. This seems not to be the result of lack of knowledge involved in P dynamics in soils and handling options for P fertilizers but lack of handling of otherwise efficient codes of good agricultural practice. This chapter shows how Denmark as the first HELCOM state succeeded to reduce P discharges from agriculture by implementing a mandatory advisory/recommendation system.

Comparative research design, at its best, in an international project focused on a complex topic, is a dynamic, iterative and on-going process. In the CINHEKS study this proved to be the case, both by design and in several ways our team did not, nor could not, anticipate. The tensions between purposeful planning, inevitable setbacks and serendipity turned out to be one of the most interesting aspects of CINHEKS and the purpose of this chapter is to take a step back, well outside methodological convention, to holistically and critically reflect on the lessons learned during the planning and execution of the CINHEKS comparative study. This chapter is an analysis of our efforts regarding the complexities of the evolution of an international research project from its genesis to its conclusion. The authors, both members of the primary grant-writing team focus on research design and the relationship between successes beyond our wildest expectations and serious challenges we did not always fully appreciate or anticipate: And the ways in which the two ends of this spectrum are inextricably bound together.

The perception and application of the European Convention on Human Rights by various national jurisdictions depends fundamentally on the way in which the Convention has been introduced into national law, as well as, in some countries, by how constitutional jurisdictions shaped this relationship. The article examines the reception of the Convention by a few European states, with a special regard on the case of Romania. Romanian courts, including the Constitutional Court and the supreme court, had a hesitant approach of the principle established by 1991 Constitution of the priority of international law of human rights over domestic law. In the context of the diversity of sources of the European law of human rights, there is an active effort at the European level to create a more coherent order amongst this plurality of human rights protection instruments, in the context of the imminent adhesion of the European Union to the European Convention and of the high number of states-parties to the Convention. The most recent example is the adoption of Protocol no. 16 to the Convention, on 17 July 2013, which will help domestic jurisdictions in their efforts to incorporate the Convention’s standards into the internal law of the states-parties. With the analysis of all these aspects, the paper is aiming to contribute to the topical debate on the convergence of fundamental rights in Europe.

When Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden in 1953 became parties to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) there was no need for any kind of “rights revolution”, i.e. a reassessment of the role that the idea and concept of human rights had in the domestic, legal and political life of the Nordic states. The method used to implement the ECHR was passive transformation, that is an assessment that there was full normative harmony between the Convention and the domestic systems of law. The approach to the ECHR was characterised by a certain Nordic arrogance, a presumption that the countries of Southern or Central Europe had nothing to teach to the Nordic countries, known as champions in securing all aspects of the well-being of their inhabitants. It was of no importance that in the Nordic countries the individual is protected in another way than in countries that have a strong tradition of rights-based protection. In the Nordic tradition emphasis is put on protecting, in a rational and just way, the interests of human beings, through a political process and without giving individual rights any priority among various competing interests.