After Rhodesia's 1965 unilateral declaration of independence, which upheld white minority rule, sanctions were imposed to challenge the regime. However, support from allies like South Africa helped circumvent these restrictions, revealing the limitations and mixed effectiveness of sanctions.
With the Rwanda scheme, the UK government unleashes a regime of offshore asylum processing which is being considered by countries around the world. Such schemes though may be considered racist for their obvious neocolonial implications of removing and returning asylum seekers and refugees from the global north to the global south. More importantly though, such schemes undermine the commitment to abide by international human rights law and the obligations which attach to states in a particular rather than vicarious sense.
The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination’s design makes it a very promising legal instrument to combat racial discrimination in particular regarding its structural manifestations. Expecting this legal framework to be of use in combatting racism is not unrealistic, but is hindered by the lack of visibility of the Convention, a lack of resources for the Convention system, and, above all, the lack of political will of States to effectively implement their obligations under the Convention.
The contribution promotes the concept of intersectionality as a means of addressing the gap between what anti-racism law promises and what it delivers. Then, nationality serves as an example to illustrate if and how intersectionality can affect anti-racism law.
Drawing on conversations with a queer interlocutor who moved to Austria to escape persecution in their country of origin, I reflect on the limits of legal protection in the host country when and if it is not accompanied by social change. I focus on the tension introduced by anti-black racism that comes in the way of queer solidarity.
Germany, as a major greenhouse gas emitter, has a critical obligation to support developing countries affected by climate change; however, its adherence to the constitutional “debt brake” undermines this responsibility and exacerbates global inequalities.
By drawing upon insights of sociolegal thought, feminism and the US social context, this contribution argues that anti-racism law’s apparent ineffectiveness stems from its reliance on the inherently vague concept of “race”.
This contribution argues that, reading between the lines, the expression “systemic discrimination”, which the Court referred to in para. 223 of the Advisory Opinion, was used as a synonym for “apartheid”, even though the Court did not link this description to a breach of Article 3 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, but there does not appear to be any substantial difference between apartheid and systemic discrimination. This is because the word systemic is associated with crimes against humanity which is how apartheid is defined as a crime in international law.
This post examines the relationship between the Advisory Opintion and Israeli law with respect to the duty to distinguish between Israel and the OPT. While the Opinion requires States to distinguish between Israel and the OPT in their dealings with Israel, and to omit acts that may strengthen Israel’s hold of the Territories, calls for such distinction are a civil tort under Israeli law, and those making them can be denied entry to Israel. As a result, Israelis are unlikely to support the Opinion. This will contribute to the growing gap between the international discourse and the domestic discourse in Israel with respect to the OPT.
Police operations such as stops are prone for patterns of racial profiling. The contribution looks into the role of the new federal police commissioner (Polizeibeauftragte des Bundes) and his tools to address this.
13. September 2025
Giovanni Capoccia
12. September 2025
Anne Peters
12. September 2025
Anne Peters