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This chapter investigates why accidents are rarely construed as matters of security and considers the case for giving greater recognition to accidental insecurity in international law and politics. Accidents are far removed from the conventional conceptualization of security politics and yet represent a much bigger threat to most people’s lives than those most typical security concerns: war and terrorism. The average citizen of the world is actually far less threatened by military action from another State or a foreign non-State actor than they are in ways rarely labelled as matters of security. The chapter looks at transport accidents, structural accidents, workplace accidents, and personal accidents. Since the 1990s, both academic and ‘real world’ political discourse has increasingly granted security status to non-military issues in ‘widening’ and ‘deepening’ the agenda of international political priorities. However, security ‘wideners’ and even many human security advocates, while acknowledging that diseases, crime, environmental change, and natural disasters can sometimes be matters of security, are often still reluctant to grant this status to accidents. This reluctance seems to boil down to two objections: (i) there are no military or power politics dimensions inherent in accidents; (ii) accidents are not deliberate attacks on countries or people.

This chapter examines the issue of accountability in relation to international organizations (IOs). The research questions deserving most intense theoretical and empirical attention are, first, who should be accountable to whom and, second, to what extent they actually are. It outlines some approaches to answering these questions; highlights the most promising one; and sketches the contours of a possible solution to a major problem that plagues that approach. The chapter shows that the selection and design of IOs plays a special role in overall assessments of accountability. The most persuasive answer to the first question remains some version of the principle that everyone who is affected by a political decision should be able to influence that decision. Even under conditions of global interconnectedness, this does not mean that everyone should have a say on any decisions taken anywhere else: decision-makers should be accountable to specific constituencies in proportion to the power they wield over those constituencies.

This chapter examines the problems that could arise when a state invokes self-defence to justify action against terrorist groups in another state. It first considers indirect armed attack against armed groups and the controversy surrounding the use of self-defence where armed groups are controlled by a foreign state, with particular reference to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) jurisprudence. It then discusses the possibility that an armed attack could occur, permitting a forcible response in the context of international law, without attribution to a state by citing the Nicaragua case in which the ICJ pronounced that self-defence is permissible against a host state in effective control of an armed group. The chapter also looks at the case of Afghanistan and its relationship to Al Qaeda as an example of a state’s claims of self-defence against terrorism.

This chapter addresses international law in Afghanistan. States where the ‘post-conflict’ period is, in fact, a series of continuing sub-national conflicts, are often coded as ‘failed’ or ‘fragile’ and are also criticized as failing in their embrace of international law. In the case of Afghanistan, such ‘discourses of deficiency’ also erase some important legal history. For most of its history, Afghanistan has been contingent as a Westphalian state. This means that it has also had a fluid relationship with the institutions and norms of international law, including the normative discourse and practice of the international rule of law. Although Afghanistan has been a member of the United Nations since 1946, and thus a contributor to international law in the twentieth century, it is seen more as a subject of international law. After considering these issues, the chapter then highlights the complexity of Afghan’s location within, as well as its relationship with, international law, international legal institutions, and international legal norms.

This chapter traces the two major trends in thinking about Africa’s engagement with international law from a historical perspective: ‘contributionists’ who emphasize Africa’s contributions to international law, on the one hand; and critical theorists who examine Africa’s subordination in its international relations as a legacy that is traceable to international law, on the other. For authors such as Taslim Elias Olawale, ‘inter-civilizational participation in the process of crafting genuinely universal norms’ has historically involved Africa as a central player. This emphasis on Africa’s participation in the formation of international law amounts to contributionism. Critical theorists, such as Makau Wa Mutua, Siba Grovogui, Kamari Clark, Ibironke Odumosu, and Obiora Okafor, among others, by contrast focus on the manner in which modern international law continues the legacy of colonial disempowerment while providing spaces for resistance and reform.

This chapter describes cultural heritage law and management in Africa. Whether in the field of tangible and intangible heritage or the domain of movable and immovable cultural heritage, sub-Saharan Africa legislation and administration of cultural property have been blighted by the colonial past. Independence has not always been used as opportunity for a breaking off or breaking forth with the cultural heritage protection system installed by the former colonial power. It appears that the formulation and elaboration of cultural heritage laws are often designed on European concepts of the protection of cultural property. The laws are, therefore, not often adapted to the present African realities. This is a legacy of the colonial past. The chapter then considers the AFRICA 2009 programme, which has helped in many ways to enhance in manifold ways the conservation of immovable cultural heritage in sub-Saharan Africa through a sustainable development process.

This chapter reflects on examples where some domestic and regional African courts have engaged directly and indirectly with international environmental law (IEL). Generally speaking, African states have had and continue to have a tenuous and/or superficial relationship with IEL. Having said this, Africa is also a site for innovation and progressive development in the area of IEL, especially through the work of the courts. Regional quasi-judicial institutions are pioneering the innovative jurisprudential development of environmental norms, while domestic African courts are increasingly, either directly or indirectly, interpreting, applying, and further refining IEL. Collectively, while one must be wary of the challenges and barriers to the implementation of IEL, such innovation bodes well for the potential and gradual development of a more amicable and constructive relationship between IEL and Africa.

This chapter argues that contemporary accounts of Africa and International Criminal Law (ICL), divergent and acrimonious as may be, generally rely on a foreshortened history of this relationship, one that begins in the 1990s. In contrast, the chapter aims to show that ‘Africa’ and Africans were present at ICL’s inaugural moment in 1919, and that for much of the ensuing period ‘Africa’, Africans (and later African states) have been a ‘present absence’, to use Toni Morrison’s phrase, but present and represented nonetheless. Moreover, by tracing the story of Africa and Africans’ ‘present absence’ in ICL from since 1919, and the continued silencing thereof in historiography of the field today, the chapter aims to highlight three threads of critique—concerning ICL’s racial politics, imperial entanglements and ‘regime of representation’—that weave their way, at times together at times apart, from 1919 until the present. The chapter will end by re-considering the relationship between Africa and ICL in light of this longer history, arguing that when doing so the question becomes not whether ICL (or the ICC) might be a field that operates on neo-colonial and racist lines, but whether it might have been anything else (or might yet be).

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the setting up of university law schools in many African nations led to often bitter battles over the purpose of legal education. The stakes in these struggles were high. Deliberately neglected under colonial rule, legal education was an important focus for the leaders of new states, including Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana. It was also a significant focus for expatriate British scholars and American foundations seeking to shape the development of new universities in Africa. Disputes centered on whether training would have a wholly academic basis and be taught exclusively in the University of Ghana or be provided in addition through a dedicated law school with a more practical ethos. This debate became entangled in a wider confrontation over academic freedom between Nkrumah’s increasing authoritarian government and the university, and indeed in wider political and class struggles in Ghana as a whole. Tensions came to a head in the period between 1962 and 1964 when the American Dean of Law was deported along with other staff over allegations of their seditious intent. This chapter documents these complex struggles, identifying the broader political stakes within them, picking out the main, rival philosophies of legal education which animated them, and relating all of these to the broader historical conjuncture of decolonization. Drawing on a review of archival materials from the time, the chapter shows that debates over legal education had a significance going beyond the confines of the law faculty. They engaged questions of African nationalism, development and social progress, the ambivalent legacy of British rule and the growing influence of the United States in these territories.

This chapter argues that the impact of Islam on the contribution of North Africa in the production of the norms of international law has been but relative. It must be associated with another reality, which is that of the relationships between powers and their competition for domination. All through the centuries of coexistence of the Muslim empires and the European nations, their reciprocal relations were guided by war strategies and by the power games that dominated the Mediterranean world. If there is a contribution of the Muslims to international law, it is in the field of the protection of the laws of the persons, particularly in the laws of the Dhimmi, and more precisely in the laws of the religious minorities and the humane treatment of the war prisoners that it could be found.

This chapter describes the security regime of the African Union(AU) mandated to promote peace and stability under the AU: the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) established in 2003. The chapter charts the institutional development of the mechanisms under the APSA against a volatile threat matrix and the deployment of these mechanisms in situational exigencies. It also illustrates the nature of the APSA as a security regime complex by unpacking the dense network of partnerships that operate within it. The chapter next demonstrates the pillars on which the APSA rests by engaging with select interventions made under each pillar. While the chapter concludes that the APSA has been proven to be an indispensable mechanism in addressing some conflicts, it also partly mirrors the past, present, and potential future of the large and fragmented continent it was designed for. The APSA is therefore not the penultimate representation of a collective security apparatus, but an evolving work in progress.

This chapter discusses the concept of aggression. Article 39, the opening clause of the United Nations Charter’s collective security system, contains the term ‘act of aggression’, the existence of which in a given case falls to be determined by the United Nations (UN) Security Council. Recalling Article 39, the UN General Assembly, in 1974, adopted a resolution on the Definition of Aggression (Resolution 3314 (XXIX)). As the term ‘act of aggression’ is used alongside the terms ‘threat to peace’ and ‘breach of the peace’ in Article 39, the UN Security Council is not bound to determine the existence of an act of aggression to activate the Charter's collective security system and authorize the use of force by one or more States in order to maintain or restore international peace and security. In the view of the International Court of Justice and the International Law Commission, the prohibition of aggression forms part of customary international law. Here again, however, the distinct legal significance of the concept compared to ‘use of force’ and ‘armed attack’ is of quite limited reach. Contrariwise, the concept of aggression has been of considerable importance in the realm of international criminal law since the latter’s inception.

Military air operations remain the domain least regulated by international law. This chapter begins by discussing the history of air operations, including efforts to develop the law of air warfare. It then examines the law of air warfare from the perspective of airmen. It does so by addressing four main questions: (1) Where may air operations be conducted? (2) Who and what may be attacked? (3) How must air operations be conducted? (4) What weapons may be used?

This chapter examines Alberico Gentili’s life and teaching; Gentili and the history of international law; and Gentili and the doctrine of war. In Oxford, Alberico Gentili wrote a large number of works, which can be divided in four main groups: treatises on topics of the civil law, law of nations, issues pertaining to political theology, and various questions of legal erudition. His major works include Three Books on the Law of War, Two Books on the Roman Armies, and Two Books of Spanish Attorneyship.

This chapter examines existing ‘Alternative Dispute Resolution’ (ADR) options—such as negotiation, mediation, conciliation, and arbitration—with a view to assessing their efficacy in relation to cultural heritage disputes. Indeed, even a cursory consideration of the practice reveals that the vast majority of restitution claims arising in the past few decades have been settled through such means. Admittedly, this is due to the fact that ADR procedures combine important virtues. The first advantage of ADR resides in the parties’ power to tailor the settlement process according to their interests and the circumstances of the dispute. Second, private settlement is likely to be speedier and cheaper. Third, these mechanisms provide for flexibility and creativity. Fourth, since disputes are resolved out of the public eye, extra-curial resolution ensures confidentiality. Lastly, ADR entails neutrality and fairness.

This chapter details the process of the appointment of arbitrators. In modern usage, arbitration is binding, and anything else created by agreement is some form or another of what might generically be referred to as third-party assisted negotiation. This explains why arbitration contemplates an odd number of arbitrators; indeed, laws regulating arbitration frequently explicitly require it. It follows that the ‘odd’ arbitrator, i.e. the one whose voice will be decisive in the event of failure of unanimity, must be appointed jointly, or by a neutral mechanism agreed by the arbitrants. That is simple enough when the process calls for a sole arbitrator. However, if the tribunal is to be composed of three arbitrators, it is often agreed that each side may select anyone it wishes provided they satisfy minimal criteria—such as professional qualifications and the readiness to declare themselves independent and impartial. The chapter then considers the different appointment methods. It specifically evaluates the practice of unilateral appointments, which introduces an adversarial element into the very deliberation of the arbitral tribunal.

This chapter examines the concept and source of arbitral jurisdiction. In the context of arbitration, the term ‘jurisdiction’ typically refers to the ‘power’ or ‘authority’ of the arbitral tribunal to decide a dispute. A decision about whether a tribunal has jurisdiction will frequently be made by the tribunal itself, but that decision is not and cannot be a source of its jurisdiction, and cannot be a definitive determination of that jurisdiction, because the authority of that decision depends on the very question under review. A degree of deference may be given to the tribunal’s determination of these questions by national courts, but self-evidently a tribunal may not confer authority on itself. Thus, the ‘power’ of a tribunal comes more indirectly from two sources. First, the cooperation of national courts, which may readily recognize and enforce arbitral awards and may also act in support of arbitration in various other ways. Second, the potential reputational consequences of non-compliance with an arbitral award, which may lead a party to comply with it voluntarily. The legal framework for arbitration applied by most national courts is set out in the New York Convention 1958, and this remains a key basic source of the standards which are applied to determine when an arbitral tribunal is considered to have jurisdiction.