China’s adherence to the rules-based international system is selective, prioritizing certain rules in favour of others. States supportive of that ‘system’ – or, as some argue, systems[1] – should identify areas of mutual strategic interest so that they can draw China further into the global rules-based order and leverage China as a constructive player that potentially also contributes to improvements in such areas. This is particularly apposite at a time when the US is in retreat from multilateralism and Russia seems bent on disrupting the rules-based international order.

Supportive player

There are many reasons for actively engaging with China on mutual areas of interest. China is a committed multilateralist in many areas, recognizing that often international cooperation and frameworks hold the key to its domestic problems, for example in the fields of environmental sustainability and financial regulation.

China’s economic power is valuable in upholding international institutions: China is the UN’s third-largest donor (after the US and Japan) at a time when the UN is facing budgetary shortfalls. China is also the second-highest contributor to the UN peacekeeping budget, and the largest contributor of peacekeeping forces among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.

China also has a valuable role to play in the settlement of international disputes over trade and investment. China is a big supporter of the World Trade Organization (WTO)’s dispute settlement mechanism, and one of its most active participants;[2] China is currently playing an active role in negotiations to save the WTO’s appellate mechanism from folding in the wake of the US’s refusal to nominate new judges.

The last 15 years have also seen a major shift in Chinese attitudes to investment arbitration, from a general suspicion and limitation of arbitration rights to broad acceptance and incorporation of such rights in China’s trade and investment treaties. China is actively engaged in multilateral negotiations through the UN Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) on reforms to investor–state dispute settlement.

China has shown leadership on global climate change diplomacy, urging nations to remain committed to the Paris Agreement in the wake of the US decision to pull out, and has been an important interlocutor with the UK and the EU on these issues. As a strong supporter of the Paris Agreement, but also as the world’s top emitter of carbon dioxide, China has a crucial role to play in pushing forward implementation of the Paris targets. Despite its high emissions, China remains one of the few major economies on track to meet its targets,[3] giving it greater leverage to peer review other parties’ efforts.

A recent report by the UK parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC), on China and the rules-based international order, noted that where a body of trust and goodwill is developed with China, there is the possibility of discovering interests that coincide and the ability to work together on issues mutually regarded as of global importance. The report refers to a number of success stories from UK partnership with China in multilateral forums, including in counterproliferation and global health.[4]

Developing areas of global governance

As well as working with the current system, China is increasingly involved in the shaping of newer areas of international law – whether it be submissions to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) on procedural rules for the emerging deep-sea mining regime or pitching for a greater role in Arctic governance.[5]

This enthusiasm should be harnessed to promote the international rule of law, but at the same time there needs to be recognition of the strategic goals that drive China’s engagement. China’s interest in the Arctic, while including the desire to protect its ecology and environment, is also about access to marine resources, as well as about the Arctic’s strategic potential for China’s military.

China’s submissions to ITLOS on the rules of procedure for deep-sea mining are constructive, but also reflect an ambition to secure first-mover advantage when commercial mining eventually takes place. Like other major powers working in this policy area, China’s actions are guided by self-interest, but that doesn’t mean its goals can’t be pursued through multilateral rules.

China is also interested in creating new international structures and instruments that further its strategic aims. For example, with Russia (through the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) it has proposed an International Code of Conduct for Information Security in the UN.[6]

China is also pondering an array of options for dispute-resolution mechanisms for its Belt and Road projects, including the possibility of an Asian version of the international Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes, which might sit under the auspices of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).[7]

The creation of new instruments and institutions need not be a threat to the rules-based international order in itself. We have already seen a combination of the creation of parallel complementary regimes alongside the reform of existing institutions, for example in development financing through the AIIB or the New Development Bank (often referred to as the ‘BRICS Bank’); these two banks are relatively conventionally structured along the lines of Western-dominated institutions, albeit with greater Chinese control. Based on these examples, selective adaptation seems more likely than a hostile ‘Eastphalian’ takeover.[8]

Risks

There is, however, a real risk that in certain areas China may promote a rival authoritarian model of governance, assisted by an opportunistic convergence with Russia on issues such as human rights, development and internet governance. In areas where China’s core interests clash with those of the rules-based international order, China has shown itself to be unbending, as in its refusal to abide by the July 2016 decision of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in its dispute with the Philippines over the South China Sea.[9]

China is becoming more assertive at the UN, but while it seeks to project itself there as a responsible emerging global leader, it is promoting a vision that weakens international norms of human rights, transparency and accountability,[10] while also carrying out practices domestically that raise serious human rights concerns (not least the detention of hundreds of thousands of Uighurs in re-education camps in Xinjiang).[11]

China’s increased dominance geographically and geopolitically through its Belt and Road infrastructure projects carries with it a number of social and economic risks, including smaller states becoming trapped in unsustainable financial debts to China.

But at a recent Chatham House conference on Asia and international law, participants highlighted the limitations on how far China can shape an alternative governance model.[12] China currently lacks soft power, cultural power and language power, all of which are needed in order to embed an alternative model abroad. China also currently lacks capacity and confidence to build coalitions with other states in the UN.

Where it has tried to get buy-in from the international community for its new institutions, such as the China International Commercial Court (CICC) announced in July 2018, there has been scepticism about the standards to be applied.[13] Unless the court can demonstrate sufficient due process, international parties are likely to prefer other centres with a strong reputation for upholding the rule of law, such as those in London, Dubai and Singapore.

Where China does promote its own governance model at the expense of the rules-based international order, states are starting to push back, often in concert. EU member states so far have adopted a joined-up approach to the Belt and Road Initiative. With the exception of Italy, they have refused to sign a Memorandum of Understanding on participation unless China provides much greater transparency on its compliance with international standards.

The EU also recently presented a coordinated response to China on the situation in Xinjiang.[14] Similarly, members of the so-called ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence-sharing alliance (comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US) have acted together in relation to certain incidents of cyber interference attributed to China.[15]

There are also signs of pushback from smaller states closer to home in relation to challenges to national sovereignty, debt diplomacy and financial viability arising from Belt and Road projects. The Sri Lankan government recently reversed the award of a $300 million housing deal to China, instead opting for a joint venture with an Indian company.

China has been downscaling its investments as a way to counter some of the backlash it has received: the most recent Belt and Road summit put forward a more modest set of aspirations. This suggests that there is some scope for states to stand up to China and use leverage to secure better deals.

Many international institutions have been Western-dominated for years;[16] China, together with many emerging and middle powers, has felt for some time that the international architecture does not reflect the world we live in. Given that context, states that champion the rules-based international order should acknowledge China’s desire to update the international order to reflect greater multipolarity, globalization and technological change, while being clear-eyed about their engagement with China. This involves investing in a proper understanding of China and how it works.[17]

Where possible, cooperation with China should lead to outcomes that are backed up by international standards and transparency. The above-mentioned FAC report cites evidence that the UK’s support, and that of other developed countries, had a positive impact in shaping the governance and standards of the AIIB.[18] China has brought in international experts to advise on disputes before the CIIC, which may reassure would-be litigants.

China’s relationship with the rules-based international order needs to be assessed pragmatically and dynamically. China can be a valuable partner in many areas where its objectives are closely aligned with those of the international community – from trade to climate change to peacekeeping.

But where the country’s core interests are at odds with those of the wider international community, an increasingly confident China will strongly resist pressure, including on the South China Sea and human rights. In these areas, states supportive of international law can most powerfully push back through alliances and by ensuring that their own core values are not compromised in the interests of economic benefits.

Notes

[1] Chalmers, M. (2019), Which Rules? Why There is No Single ‘Rules-Based International System’, RUSI Occasional Paper, April 2019, London: Royal United Services Institute, https://rusi.org/occasional-papers/Which-Rules-Why-There-Is-No-Single-Rules-Based-International-System.

[2] See, for example, Moynihan, H. (2017), China’s Evolving Approach to International Dispute Settlement, Briefing, London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, https://www.chathamhouse.org/publication/chinas-evolving-approach-international-dispute-settlement.

[3] UN Environment (2018), Emissions Gap Report 2018, p. XVII, https://www.unenvironment.org/resources/emissions-gap-report-2018.

[4] House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee (2019), China and the Rules-Based International System: Sixteenth Report of Session 2017–19, p. 32, https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmfaff/612/612.pdf.

[5] Moynihan, H. (2018), ‘China Expands Its Global Governance Ambitions in the Arctic’, Expert Comment, 15 October 2018, https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/china-expands-its-global-governance-ambitions-arctic.

[6] Updated version proposed 9 January 2015.

[7] Moynihan, H. (2018), ‘Exploring Public International Law Issues with Chinese Scholars – Part Four’, Meeting Summary, 3 June 2018, https://www.chathamhouse.org/publication/exploring-public-international-law-issues-chinese-scholars-part-four.

[8] Chatham House (2019, forthcoming, ‘Security and Prosperity in the Asia-Pacific: The Role of International Law’, conference summary, https://www.chathamhouse.org/event/security-and-prosperity-asia-pacific-role-international-law.

[9] Permanent Court of Arbitration Case No. 2013-19 (Philippines v China), Award of 12 July 2016, https://pca-cpa.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2016/07/PH-CN-20160712-Award.pdf.

[10] Piccone, T. (2018), China’s Long Game on Human Rights at the United Nations, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/FP_20181009_china_human_rights.pdf.

[11] Wye, R. (2018), ‘‘The entire Uyghur population is seemingly being treated as suspect’: China’s persecution of its Muslim minority’, LSE Religion and Global Society blog, 18 September 2018, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2018/09/the-entire-uyghur-population-is-seemingly-being-treated-as-suspect-chinas-persecution-of-its-muslim-minority/.

[12] Chatham House (2019, forthcoming, ‘Security and Prosperity in the Asia-Pacific: The Role of International Law’.

[13] Walters, M. (2018), ‘Jury is out over China’s new commercial court, say lawyers’, Law Society Gazette, 1 November 2018, https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/law/jury-is-out-over-chinas-new-commercial-court-say-lawyers/5068125.article.

[14] The Economist (2019), ‘Hope remains for Western solidarity. Look at embassies in Beijing’, 17 April 2019, https://www.economist.com/china/2019/04/20/hope-remains-for-western-solidarity-look-at-embassies-in-beijing.

[15] In December 2018, the Five Eyes attributed the activities of a Chinese cyber espionage group targeting intellectual property and sensitive commercial property to China’s Ministry of State Security.

[16] Roberts, A. (2017), Is International Law International?, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[17] Parton, C. (2019), China–UK Relations: Where to Draw the Border Between Influence and Interference?, RUSI Occasional Paper, February 2019, London: Royal United Services Institute, p. 30, https://rusi.org/publication/occasional-papers/china-uk-relations-where-draw-border-between-influence-and.

[18] House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee (2019), China and the Rules-Based International System, p. 15.

This essay was produced for the 2019 edition of Chatham House Expert Perspectives – our annual survey of risks and opportunities in global affairs – in which our researchers identify areas where the current sets of rules, institutions and mechanisms for peaceful international cooperation are falling short, and present ideas for reform and modernization.

On 3 and 4 June, Chatham House will host a major conference in partnership with the UN Association (UK), supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates and Open Society Foundations, to reflect on the lessons learned from the remarkable life of Kofi Annan, who served as UN secretary-general from 1997 to 2006 and passed away almost a year ago, on 18 August 2018.

The conference will fall on the same days as Donald Trump’s state visit to the United Kingdom, which, though unplanned, brings into stark relief the ways in which current changes in international relations are affecting Kofi Annan’s legacy of UN-led multilateralism that Ban Ki-moon and now Antonio Guterres have carried forward.

A vision of multilateral governance

Kofi Annan advocated a vision of multilateral governance anchored in shared responsibility for global challenges and in promoting the rights and dignity of the individual. He placed the importance of individual freedom and justice alongside the global challenges of poverty and health. The launch of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the UN Global Fund on HIV/Aids, which brought together both strands of his approach to global governance, stand among his landmark contributions to international affairs.

Kofi Annan’s time as secretary-general also saw him involved in managing numerous crises. The 2003 US-led military intervention in Iraq raised acute questions about the purpose and future of the UN Security Council. The aftermath of the conflict also exposed serious failings in the broader UN system under his leadership.

It was to his credit that he leveraged the investigation into the corruption surrounding the UN’s 1995–2003 ‘oil-for-food’ programme in order to introduce procedures for greater scrutiny over UN financial programmes and personnel appointments. In 2000, he set up and then took on board the criticisms of the Brahimi Report into the failed UN peacekeeping operations in Rwanda and Srebrenica during his tenure as undersecretary-general for peacekeeping.

Global governance on the defensive

One can look back at Kofi Annan’s term as UN secretary-general as a period when ideas for how to improve global governance were in the ascendant, despite the persistence of civil wars and interstate disputes. Today, the persistence of long-standing conflicts and growing competition between the world’s major powers appear to be overwhelming the global agenda, putting ideas for global governance on the defensive.

America’s purposeful disengagement from and disruption of the multilateral institutions that it helped establish during the 20th century is a major factor in this shift. The principal difference with the Cold War is that China’s rise might divide America from its allies rather than unite them. 

China has become embedded in the global economy that America championed, creating new webs of interdependence. On the other hand, China is promoting a system of domestic and international governance that gives primacy to the state over the rights of the individual. In recent years, China has not only supported the world’s most repressive regimes, like North Korea, Venezuela and Zimbabwe, but also corrupt and opaque practices in countries in southeast Asia and Africa. And it is offering new digital surveillance tools that leaders in these countries can use to suppress popular dissent.

Despite concerns over its direction, most states around the world continue to engage China, even US allies in Europe and Asia. America, however, has decided to challenge it. With the world’s two most powerful states in confrontation, and Russia happy to play a disruptive role in between, there is little scope for state-led multilateralism to regain its momentum.

This rise of a more competitive international system has had a negative effect on Kofi Annan’s legacy, eroding some of its highlights, such as expectations for Responsibility to Protect, and weakening multilateralism and respect for human rights in general.

The question for the future is whether Annan’s successors can build on the more radical, transformative aspects of his tenure and bypass this state-led confrontation. The shift from the MDGs to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) could prove critical in this respect.

A more inclusive approach to complex problem-solving

In order to have a chance of achieving the SDGs, the world needs to deploy a more inclusive approach to complex problem-solving of the sort that Kofi Annan promoted with his Global Compact. Bringing the private sector and civil society proactively into multilateral responses offers the only prospect to end poverty and reduce inequality, build sustainable cities, and shift to responsible production and consumption, along with the other SDGs.

A more inclusive approach also means giving a greater sense of agency to individuals, who can now mobilize digitally and engage in responding to global challenges, such as creating more energy-efficient and climate-friendly lifestyles, with minimal government support. Annan was a pioneer of this more bottom-up approach to development and rights issues after leaving the UN, through his work on youth leadership against violent extremism and on transforming agriculture in Africa.

Thinking of systemic change as a more societal rather than government-led process demands leaders capable of mobilizing mass individual action towards public policy goals, as reflected, for example, in Secretary-General Guterres’ High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation.

The fact that Kofi Annan was dubbed by some ‘the secular pope’ points to people’s search for leadership towards shared global challenges that goes beyond what can be achieved by national action alone. If an important part of his legacy is the idea of more inclusive forms of global governance, then Kofi Annan has provided an essential starting point for the debates that will accompany the UN’s upcoming 75th anniversary.

The 1998 treaty which established the International Criminal Court (ICC) was adopted at a time when the world (or most of it) was willing to reach multilateral agreements on a variety of topics and was encouraging the development of international criminal justice. The two tribunals, set up by the UN Security Council, for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda had been relatively successful. The time was ripe for states to agree together to set up a permanent international court with wider scope than the two tribunals.

So the ICC was created, with jurisdiction over the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes; its jurisdiction for the crime of aggression developed later. The court was given the power to prosecute nationals of states that were parties to the ICC Statute, and also to prosecute where the crime was committed in the territory of a state party, whatever the nationality of the alleged criminals. The court had further jurisdiction when the Security Council referred a situation to it.

That was some 20 years ago. There is now a perception in many quarters that the ICC has not fulfilled the expectations of its founders. The court’s proceedings are cumbersome and lengthy. Many of the accused are still at large, including Omar al-Bashir, the former president of Sudan. Some €1.5 billion has been spent, and there have been only three convictions for the core international crimes.

There have been criticisms of the judges, the former Prosecutor and other officials, as well as concern over particular decisions of the court. The allegation that the court is only interested in crimes in Africa[1] is perhaps heard less frequently now than it once was (most of the African governments concerned referred the situations in their countries to the ICC themselves), and there has not been the mass walk-out of African states that was once predicted.

But in other quarters there is serious unease about the situation in the court. As the UK representative said at a meeting last year, ‘We cannot bury our heads in the sand and pretend everything is fine when it isn’t.’[2]

The negative assessment of the ICC’s work may be countered by the fact that it is the failure of states to cooperate with the court that causes many of the problems. Further, the expectations of states and civil society about the possibilities of international criminal justice have been so high that no court would be able to meet them. It is not possible for one court actually to ‘end impunity’ for international crimes,[3] nor to prevent war-related violence and mass atrocities, nor to satisfy all victims.

Moreover, the criticisms of the ICC come against the background of the global crisis for multilateralism more generally. The present US administration is notoriously hostile towards this international institution.[4]

On the plus side, the establishment of the court has encouraged states to revise their own laws on international crimes and to institute their own prosecutions where it is possible to do so. It is also claimed that the very existence of the court can be a deterrent to potential perpetrators of international crimes. The court has begun to add to the body of international criminal law and has increased the possibility that mass atrocities will be investigated.

But there is indeed some truth in the criticisms made of the internal workings of the court. One problem is that the particular combination of the civil and common law systems that has developed has produced cumbersome procedures regarding the representation of victims at most stages of the proceedings. It has also resulted in endless appeals from huge numbers of small decisions made by one chamber or another.

Then there are the management failures which have led to officials of the court being awarded compensation by the administrative tribunal of the International Labour Organization (ILO) because of the way they were treated by the court, and finally the decision of a few of the judges to take proceedings themselves at the ILO to have their salaries increased. 

Some ICC decisions have been met with surprise. For example, a former vice-president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Jean-Pierre Bemba, who was in the custody of the ICC for 10 years, was convicted by a unanimous trial chamber of various crimes and then succeeded on his appeal. Following this and the acquittal of former Côte d’Ivoire president Laurent Gbagbo,[5] there are concerns about the ability of the prosecution to succeed in cases against high-level alleged perpetrators.

Most recently, there has been criticism of the reasoning behind the appeal court decision regarding the immunity – or, rather, lack of immunity – of former president Bashir. And a decision of a chamber of the ICC not to authorize the opening of an investigation in Afghanistan has been seen as shielding the US from possible proceedings (though it has been welcomed by others as a pragmatic approach).

The message that certain problems with the ICC need fixing is coming not just from the writings of academics and the legal blogs,[6] but from governments too, including those, like the UK, which are among the foremost supporters of the court.

The former presidents of the ICC’s Assembly of States Parties (which comprises the representatives of all states parties) say that they ‘are disappointed by the quality of some of [the court’s] judicial proceedings, frustrated by some of the results, and exasperated by the management deficiencies that prevent the Court from living up to its full potential’.[7] 

Changes to remove the worst excesses of the procedures that have evolved could be effected without amendments to the treaty incorporating the ICC Statute. It may be that a change in culture is also needed. More modesty by the court, along with more realism from governments and civil society, is needed.

And, attractive as it might seem to push at the boundaries of the law, the court should be realistic in what it can achieve. It is next to impossible to prosecute a case effectively where there is no cooperation from the state on whose territory the crimes were committed.

What is needed is a court that can undertake efficient and effective criminal proceedings, delivering fair and impartial justice in the small number of cases which it is reasonable to expect it to address, in the light of the evidential challenges, limited resources and limited state cooperation.

Governments should decide together at the Assembly of States Parties to set in hand a review of the ICC’s operations. It has been suggested that a group of experts might be mandated to assess the management of the court;[8] on the basis of their report, governments could agree on the necessary improvements.

Not everything, however, can come within the remit of such a group. Governments should adopt new rules and practices to address matters such as the election process for judges and their training; governments might consider reaching their own understandings on how some provisions of the ICC Statute should be interpreted in practice. Governments should reach out to the many civil society organizations which have supported the court over the years, to ensure that they are involved in the process.

Measures of this kind cannot detract from the fact that the ICC is fundamentally sound and that its role is as necessary as when it was first established. As Richard Goldstone, former chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, has said, ‘If there were no ICC in existence today, many people in many countries would be agitating for and demanding one. That we have one is a singular achievement. It behoves us to make it the best possible and to assist it, as States, civil society, and individuals, in the best and most productive way possible.’[9]

Notes

[1] See, for example, du Plessis, M., Maluwa, T. and O’Reilly, A. (2013), Africa and the International Criminal Court, London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, July 2013, https://www.chathamhouse.org/publications/papers/view/193415.

[2] GOV.UK (2018), ‘UK statement to ICC Assembly of States Parties 17th session’, 5 December 2018, https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/uk-statement-to-icc-assembly-of-states-parties-17th-session.

[3] As the preamble to the ICC Statute desires. See ICC (2011), Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, p. 1, https://www.icc-cpi.int/resource-library/Documents/RS-Eng.pdf.

[4] See the speech of John Bolton, US National Security Advisor. Just Security (2018), ‘Bolton’s Remarks on the International Criminal Court’, 10 September 2018, https://www.justsecurity.org/60674/national-security-adviser-john-bolton-remarks-international-criminal-court/.

[5] Gbagbo was accused of various crimes which took place after Côte d’Ivoire’s election in 2010, in which Gbagbo lost power to Alassane Ouattara. The case was terminated by the court following a year’s hearings in which the prosecution put forward its evidence.

[6] See, for example, Guilfoyle, D. (2019), ‘Reforming the International Criminal Court: Is it Time for the Assembly of State Parties to be the adults in the room?’, EJIL:Talk! blog post, 8 May 2019, https://www.ejiltalk.org/reforming-the-international-criminal-court-is-it-time-for-the-assembly-of-state-parties-to-be-the-adults-in-the-room/.

[7] Al Hussein, Z. R., Stagno Ugarte, B., Wenaweser, C. and Intelman, T. (2019), ‘The International Criminal Court Needs Fixing’, Atlantic Council, 24 April 2019, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/the-international-criminal-court-needs-fixing.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Goldstone, R. (2019), ‘Acquittals by the International Criminal Court’, EJIL:Talk! blog post, 18 January 2019, https://www.ejiltalk.org/acquittals-by-the-international-criminal-court/. Richard Goldstone is also a former justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa.

This essay was produced for the 2019 edition of Chatham House Expert Perspectives – our annual survey of risks and opportunities in global affairs – in which our researchers identify areas where the current sets of rules, institutions and mechanisms for peaceful international cooperation are falling short, and present ideas for reform and modernization.

With international trade discourse taking an increasingly transactional and sometimes belligerent tone, it would be easy to overlook the quiet revolution currently under way to bring new voices into trade policy development and monitoring. The traditional division of responsibilities between the executive and legislature – whereby treaties are negotiated and signed by the executive, and the legislature does what is necessary to implement them – may be undergoing some change.

Growing awareness of the implications of trade and investment treaties for many aspects of day-to-day life – food standards, employment opportunities, environmental quality, availability of medicines and data protection, just to name a few – is fuelling demands by people and businesses for more of a say in the way these rules are formulated and developed.

Various options for enhancing public and parliamentary scrutiny of trading proposals have recently been examined by two UK parliamentary select committees.[1] The reason for this interest is obviously Brexit, which has presented UK civil servants and parliamentarians with the unusual (some would say exciting) opportunity to design an approval and scrutiny process for trade agreements from scratch.

Doubtless, EU authorization, liaison and approval procedures (which include a scrutinizing role for the European Parliament) will be influential,[2] as will the European Commission’s experience with stakeholder engagement on trade issues.[3] The recommendations of both UK select committees to include human rights impact assessment processes as part of pre-negotiation preparations[4] echo calls from UN agencies and NGOs for more rigorous and timely analysis of the human rights risks that may be posed by new trading relationships.[5] Again, EU practice with what it terms ‘sustainability impact assessment’ of future trade agreements provides a potential model to draw from.[6] 

However, process is no substitute for action. Human rights impact assessment is never an end in itself; rather, it is a means to a positive end, in this case a trade agreement which is aligned with the trading partners’ respective human rights obligations and aspirations. It bears remembering, though, that the idea of assessing trade proposals for future human rights risks is a relatively recent one. Do we have the tools and resources to make sure that this is a meaningful compliance and risk management exercise?

Thus far there is little evidence that human rights impact assessment and stakeholder engagement exercises are having any real impact on the content of trade agreements.[7] This is the case even in the EU, where practice in these areas is the most advanced and systematic.[8]

There are several possible reasons for this. First, the methodological challenges are enormous. Aside from the crystal-ball gazing needed to forecast the social, economic and environmental effects of a trade intervention well into the future, demonstrating causal links between a trade agreement and a predicted adverse impact is often highly problematic given the number of other economic and political factors that may be in play.[9]

Secondly, there are many challenges around the need to engage with affected people and listen to their views.[10] The sheer number of possible impacts of a trade agreement on different individuals and communities, as well as the range of rights potentially engaged, makes this a difficult (some would say impossible) task. Some prioritization is always necessary.

This makes for difficult decisions about who to engage with and how. Perceived bias or an apparent lack of even-handedness – favouring business compared to civil society, for instance – can sow mistrust about the true aims of such a process, undermining its future effectiveness as participants begin to question whether it is genuine or worthwhile.[11]

The challenges are even more acute where impact assessment practitioners are tasked with investigating potential human rights impacts in other countries. Even if it is possible to get past the inevitable political sensitivities,[12] the sort of in-depth consultations required will be beyond the budget and time constraints of most assignments.[13]

There are good reasons why trade policy should be subject to greater public and parliamentary scrutiny, and why there should be more opportunities for public participation in the formation of new trading regimes. By building more opportunities for stakeholder consultation at these stages, we can acquire perspectives on trade that are not available from other forms of assessment and analysis.

However, policymakers should be wary of overstating the benefits of existing procedural models. Human rights impact assessment processes are still struggling to provide compelling analyses of the relationships between trade agreements and the enjoyment of human rights, let alone a roadmap for policymakers and trade negotiators as to what should be done.[14]

And financial and practical barriers to participation in stakeholder engagement exercises mean that, at best, these will provide only a partial picture of stakeholder impacts and views.

Experiences with human rights impact assessment of trade agreements so far demonstrate the need for realism about two things: first, the extent to which one can sensibly anticipate and analyse human rights-related risks and opportunities in the preparation stages for a new trading agreement; and, second, the extent to which problems identified in this way can be headed off with the right form of words in the treaty itself.

Both recent UK select committee reports place considerable faith in the ability of pre-project transparency and scrutiny processes to flush out potential problems and prescribe solutions. Of course, there may be cases where frontloading the analysis in this way could be useful, for instance where the human rights implications are so clear that they can readily be addressed through upfront commitments by the parties concerned, whether by bespoke or standardized approaches.

More often, though, for a trade agreement running many years into the future, human rights impacts and implications will take time to emerge, suggesting the need for robust monitoring and mitigation frameworks designed with longevity in mind. Ideally, pre-signing approval and assessment processes would lay the groundwork for future action by both trading partners, either jointly or separately (though preferably both).

To this end, as well as developing ideas for more robust substantive provisions on human rights, policymakers should consider the institutional arrangements required – whether pursuant to the trade agreement or by complementary processes – to ensure that human rights-related risks identified during the planning stages are properly and proactively followed up, that emerging risks are tackled in a timely fashion, and that there are opportunities for meaningful stakeholder contributions to these processes.

Notes

[1] UK Joint Committee on Human Rights (2019), ‘Human Rights Protections in International Agreements, Seventeenth Report of Session 2017–19’, HC 1833 HL paper 310, 12 March 2019, https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt201719/jtselect/jtrights/1833/1833.pdf; and House of Commons International Trade Committee (2018), ‘UK Trade Policy Transparency and Scrutiny, Sixth Report of Session 2017-2019’, HC 1043, 29 December 2018.

[2] European Parliament and Directorate General for External Policies (2019), Parliamentary scrutiny of trade policies across the western world, study paper, March 2019, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2019/603477/EXPO_STU(2019)603477_EN.pdf.

[3] European Commission (2019), ‘Trade policy and you’, http://ec.europa.eu/trade/trade-policy-and-you/index_en.htm.

[4] See UK Joint Committee on Human Rights (2019), ‘Human Rights Protections in International Agreements’, para 12; and House of Commons International Trade Committee (2018), ‘UK Trade Policy Transparency and Scrutiny’, paras 124–34.

[5] OHCHR (2003), Report of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on Human Rights, Trade and Investment, 2 July 2003, E/CN.4/Sub.2/2003/9, Annex, at para 63; UN Economic and Social Council (2017), ‘General Comment No 24 (2017) of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on State obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in the context of business activities’, UN Doc. E/C.12/GC/24, 10 August 2017, para 13; and UN General Assembly (2011), ‘Guiding principles on human rights impact assessment of trade and investment agreements’, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, UN Doc. A/HRC/19/59/Add.5, 19 December 2011.

[6] European Commission (2016), Handbook for Sustainability Impact Assessment (2nd ed.), Brussels: European Union, http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2016/april/tradoc_154464.PDF.

[7] Zerk, J. (2019), Human Rights Impact Assessment of Trade Agreements, Chatham House Research Paper, London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, https://www.chathamhouse.org/publication/human-rights-impact-assessment-trade-agreements.

[8] Ibid., pp. 11–13. For a detailed explanation of the EU’s approach to human rights impact assessment, see European Commission (2016), Handbook for Sustainability Impact Assessment.

[9] Zerk (2019), Human Rights Impact Assessment of Trade Agreements, pp. 14–21.

[10] Ibid., pp. 21–22.

[11] Ergon Associates (2011), Trade and Labour: Making effective use of trade sustainability impact assessments and monitoring mechanisms, Final Report to DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion European Commission, September 2011; and Gammage, C. (2010), ‘A Sustainability Impact Assessment of the Economic Partnership Agreements: Challenging the Participatory Process’, Law and Development Review, 3(1): pp. 107–34. For a civil society view, see Trade Justice Movement (undated), ‘Trade Justice Movement submission to the International Trade Committee inquiry into UK Trade Policy Transparency and Scrutiny’, https://www.tjm.org.uk/resources/briefings/tjm-submission-to-the-international-trade-committee-inquiry-into-uk-trade-policy-transparency-and-scrutiny, esp. paras 23–32.

[12] Zerk (2019), Human Rights Impact Assessment of Trade Agreements, pp. 20–21.

[13] Ibid., pp. 21–22.

[14] Ibid.

This essay was produced for the 2019 edition of Chatham House Expert Perspectives – our annual survey of risks and opportunities in global affairs – in which our researchers identify areas where the current sets of rules, institutions and mechanisms for peaceful international cooperation are falling short, and present ideas for reform and modernization.

Summary

• Although sieges may conjure up images of medieval warfare, they are still used by armed forces today, in international and non-international armed conflicts.
• International law does not define sieges, but their essence is the isolation of enemy forces from reinforcements and supplies. Sieges typically combine two elements: ‘encirclement’ of an area for the purpose of isolating it, and bombardment.
• Questions of the compatibility of sieges with modern rules of international humanitarian law (IHL) arise when besieged areas contain civilians as well as enemy forces.
• Sieges are not prohibited as such by either IHL or other areas of public international law.
• Three sets of rules of IHL are relevant to sieges. The first comprises the rules regulating the conduct of hostilities. The second is the prohibition of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, along with the rules regulating humanitarian relief operations. The third comprises the rules on evacuation of civilians.
• The application of IHL to sieges is unsettled in some respects. This briefing does not purport to resolve all the difficulties or address all the issues in detail.
• While it may go too far to say that it is now impossible to conduct a siege that complies with IHL, the significant vulnerability of civilians caught up in sieges puts particular emphasis on the need for both besieging and besieged forces to comply scrupulously with the legal provisions for the protection of civilians and to conclude agreements for their evacuation.

Does the rule of law matter to maritime security? One way into the question is to examine whether states show a discursive commitment that maritime security practices must comply with international law. International law thus provides tools for argument for or against the validity of certain practices. The proposition is thus not only that international law matters to maritime security, but legal argument does too. In this article, these claims will be explored in relation to the South China Sea dispute. The dispute involves Chinese claims to enjoy special rights within the ‘nine-dash line’ on official maps which appears to lay claim to much of the South China Sea. Within this area sovereignty remains disputed over numerous islands and other maritime features. Many of the claimant states have engaged in island-building activities, although none on the scale of China. Ideas matter in such contests, affecting perceptions of reality and of what is possible. International law provides one such set of ideas. Law may be a useful tool in consolidating gains or defeating a rival's claims. For China, law is a key domain in which it is seeking to consolidate control over the South China Sea. The article places the relevant Chinese legal arguments in the context of China's historic engagement with the law of the sea. It argues that the flaw in China's approach has been to underestimate the extent to which it impinges on other states' national interests in the maritime domain, interests they conceptualize in legal terms.

The UK Supreme Court’s ruling last Wednesday has, at least temporarily, scuppered the prime minister’s plans to limit parliamentary debate before the looming Brexit deadline. Some of the prime minister’s allies have attacked the ruling as a ‘constitutional coup’. But a close reading reveals that the court has stayed within its remit to interpret, rather than make, the law.

In a carefully reasoned judgment, the court emphasized that the case was not about Brexit. But the judges certainly did not shy away from the extraordinary nature of the matters before it, noting that such factual situations have ‘never arisen before and are unlikely ever to arise again… But our law is used to rising to such challenges and supplies us with the legal tools to enable us to reason to a solution.’

The key question before the court was whether the prime minister’s decision to seek prorogation was ‘justiciable’ – i.e. amenable to being reviewed by a court. The English and Scottish courts earlier on in these proceedings had come, dramatically, to opposing views on this.

The Supreme Court was not dissuaded by the inherently political considerations involved in the prime minister’s decision, stating that while ‘courts cannot decide political questions, the fact that a legal dispute concerns the conduct of politicians, or arises from a matter of political controversy, has never been sufficient reason for the courts to refuse to consider it’.

The court went on to emphasize that the Crown’s remaining prerogative powers (exercised on the advice of the government or directly by ministers) have long been subject to judicial scrutiny; such oversight is essential to guarding the separation of powers underpinning the UK’s constitution.

So far, so conventional. The full bench of the Supreme Court was required to grapple, though, with a prerogative power that had never been tested before in the courts. And so they delved back to the 1611 Case of Proclamations: ‘the King hath no prerogative, but that which the law of the land allow him’. In the court’s view, the legal issue to be resolved was the scope of the power to prorogue (the existence of this particular prerogative not being in dispute).

With no case law available to provide direct guidance on this question, the court, instead, relied on two fundamental principles of the UK’s constitution – parliamentary sovereignty and parliamentary accountability. What would be the logical consequence of an unlimited power to prorogue? The ability to shut parliament permanently.

The conclusion: this particular prerogative power had limits. The court held that:

‘A decision to prorogue Parliament (or to advise the monarch to prorogue Parliament) will be unlawful if the prorogation has the effect of frustrating or preventing, without reasonable justification, the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions as a legislature and as the body responsible for the supervision of the executive. In such a situation, the court will intervene if the effect is sufficiently serious to justify such an exceptional course.’

Having come to this conclusion, the court was left to examine what justification had in fact been given, noting that the prime minister’s motives were irrelevant. It noted that no clear reason had been given – the relevant documents were all concerned with preparing for the Queen’s speech.

Noting evidence on normal practice for such preparations, including from a former prime minister, the court found it ‘impossible… to conclude…that there was any reason – let alone a good reason – to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament for five weeks’.

The court’s decision was neither inevitable nor a radical departure from legal tradition. It represents the gradual evolution of the long-established legal principle that the crown’s powers are set by the law and supervised by the courts.

Courts have traditionally been reticent to rule on prerogative powers which are ‘high politics’ by nature – classic examples include declaring war and negotiating treaties. In recent years, though, the judiciary has shown a growing confidence to grapple with the contours of those prerogative powers that remain. Deference is still shown when looking at how those powers have been used as opposed to the limits of the prerogative in question.

The Supreme Court ruling won’t reassure those who worry about the emergence of an activist court willing to wade (improperly) into the political arena. Nor will it necessarily bring comfort to those anxious about an unwritten constitution in an era where political conventions are fast unravelling.

But divisive court rulings are nothing new, nor are ministerial outbursts about inconvenient judgments. In the current environment, politicians should take particular care not to send mixed messages which undermine the independence of the UK’s judiciary. Public trust in British institutions is dangerously low and the UK can ill-afford further damage to its reputation as a country steeped in democracy and the rule of law.

Summary

• Online political campaigning techniques are distorting our democratic political processes. These techniques include the creation of disinformation and divisive content; exploiting digital platforms’ algorithms, and using bots, cyborgs and fake accounts to distribute this content; maximizing influence through harnessing emotional responses such as anger and disgust; and micro-targeting on the basis of collated personal data and sophisticated psychological profiling techniques. Some state authorities distort political debate by restricting, filtering, shutting down or censoring online networks.
• Such techniques have outpaced regulatory initiatives and, save in egregious cases such as shutdown of networks, there is no international consensus on how they should be tackled. Digital platforms, driven by their commercial impetus to encourage users to spend as long as possible on them and to attract advertisers, may provide an environment conducive to manipulative techniques.
• International human rights law, with its careful calibrations designed to protect individuals from abuse of power by authority, provides a normative framework that should underpin responses to online disinformation and distortion of political debate. Contrary to popular view, it does not entail that there should be no control of the online environment; rather, controls should balance the interests at stake appropriately.
• The rights to freedom of thought and opinion are critical to delimiting the appropriate boundary between legitimate influence and illegitimate manipulation. When digital platforms exploit decision-making biases in prioritizing bad news and divisive, emotion-arousing information, they may be breaching these rights. States and digital platforms should consider structural changes to digital platforms to ensure that methods of online political discourse respect personal agency and prevent the use of sophisticated manipulative techniques.
• The right to privacy includes a right to choose not to divulge your personal information, and a right to opt out of trading in and profiling on the basis of your personal data. Current practices in collecting, trading and using extensive personal data to ‘micro-target’ voters without their knowledge are not consistent with this right. Significant changes are needed.
• Data protection laws should be implemented robustly, and should not legitimate extensive harvesting of personal data on the basis of either notional ‘consent’ or the data handler’s commercial interests. The right to privacy should be embedded in technological design (such as by allowing the user to access all information held on them at the click of a button); and political parties should be transparent in their collection and use of personal data, and in their targeting of messages. Arguably, the value of personal data should be shared with the individuals from whom it derives.
• The rules on the boundaries of permissible content online should be set by states, and should be consistent with the right to freedom of expression. Digital platforms have had to rapidly develop policies on retention or removal of content, but those policies do not necessarily reflect the right to freedom of expression, and platforms are currently not well placed to take account of the public interest. Platforms should be far more transparent in their content regulation policies and decision-making, and should develop frameworks enabling efficient, fair, consistent internal complaints and content monitoring processes. Expertise on international human rights law should be integral to their systems.
• The right to participate in public affairs and to vote includes the right to engage in public debate. States and digital platforms should ensure an environment in which all can participate in debate online and are not discouraged from standing for election, from participating or from voting by online threats or abuse.

Marysia Zalewski's work has taught us, as a collective of feminist scholars, to be cautious of neat instruction manuals and coherently set out plans of action; of claims to sure knowledge about danger, violence, and its subjects and remedies; of the fanfare of grand arrivals; and of the quieter staking of ground that has been seemingly won. Zalewski has persistently reminded us in different ways that we/she does ‘not even know what gender is or does’. Far from a flippant response to the emptiness of gender mainstreaming policies, this seemingly simple statement instead serves as a glaring post-it note on the margins of our texts about International Relations theory, feminism, sex/gender and violence— both those that we read, as well as those that we write. However, this lesson is often forgotten in our rush to understand and establish gendered harms as valid and important, and to seek their redress. Gleaning insights from Zalewski's work, this article critically considers possible responses to the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize. Its aim is not to delve into a discussion of the politics or effects of the Peace Prize as such, but to instead use the 2018 Peace Prize as a marker—a moment to consider the possibility for critique in relation to sexual violence.

Feminist interventions in international politics are, more often than not, understood (and visible) as interventions in relation to policy documents. These policies—in this case the United Nations Security Council's resolutions on Women, Peace and Security—often feature as the end point of feminist advocacy efforts or as the starting point for feminist analysis and critique. In this article the author responds to the provocations throughout Marysia Zalewski's work to think (and tell) the spaces of international politics differently, in this case by working with the concept of feminist failure as it is produced in feminist policy critique. Inspired by Zalewski's Feminist International Relations: exquisite corpse, the article explores the material and imaginary spaces in which both policies and critique are produced. It picks up and reflects upon a narrative refrain recognizable in feminist critiques on Women, Peace and Security policy—that we must not make war safe for women—as a way to reflect on the inevitability of failure and the ostensible boundaries between theory and practice. The author takes permission from Zalewski's creative interventions and her recognition of the value of the ‘detritus of the everyday’—here a walk from New York's Grand Central Station to the UN Headquarters, musings on the flash of a particular shade of blue, and the contents of a footnoted acknowledgement, begin to trace an international political space that is produced through embodied and quotidian practice.

The United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union has ramifications beyond the UK and the EU. This article analyses the impact of the Brexit referendum on the UK's political capital in the United Nations Security Council; a dimension of Brexit that has received little attention thus far. Drawing on extensive elite interviews we show that the UK has considerable political capital in the Council, where it is seen as one of the most effective actors, but the reputational costs of Brexit are tarnishing this image. With case-studies on the UK's role in Somalia and Yemen we show how the UK has been able to further its interests with dual roles in the EU and Security Council, and the risks posed by tensions between trade and human rights after Brexit. We also analyse what it takes to be influential within the Security Council and argue that more attention should be paid to the practices of diplomacy. Influence is gained via penholding, strong diplomatic skill and a well-regarded UN permanent representative. The UK accrues political capital as a leader on the humanitarian and human rights side of the Council's agenda, but this reputation is at risk as it exits the EU.

Michelle Bachelet, as a young woman you became involved with political issues, supporting Chile’s transition to democracy following the Augusto Pinochet regime. What first sparked your interest in politics and what was it like for you as a young woman in Chile at this time?

I guess it’s related to the environment that I lived in as a child because none of my parents were involved in politics but they were people who were interested in what happened to other people. We would have interesting discussions about what was going on in Chile and around the world and I had grown up being a person who wanted to be part of finding solutions to different challenges.

When I was a student, there were lots of things happening in Chile that I became interested in even though I was in medical school at the time. Then came an important political moment in the 1970s for Chile and I thought that I needed to help make Chile a better place for everyone – that my voice alone would not be enough – so I wanted to meet other people who might have answers to the questions I had. That’s when I became politically active.

I always say that, in my milk bottle, the word responsibility was included because I always have felt responsible for things. My parents also always used to tell me that we’re all human beings and, although we might have differences, we should all have dignity and be respected and have the same rights and opportunities because it is the right thing to do. So that’s how I became what I became.

You became the first woman in Latin America to hold the post of minister of national defence in 2002 and pushed to include more women in conflict resolution. Given that the inclusion of women in peace processes increases the likelihood of agreements being reached, yet women are largely excluded from the negotiating tables, why should more women in peace and security be prioritized? 

I used to push hard to have more women as negotiators and mediators at different levels when I was minister of national defence but I was told ‘We don’t have enough women with the capacity’. Of course that was not true. So one of the tasks I set myself was to build a roster of capable women so that tomorrow nobody could use this excuse. 

We built a roster, but still, as you say, there was a tendency not to have women included at all levels. I think this is because there’s still machoism and sexism that exists at some levels. Some men feel that women are weaker, that they’re not capable enough, and that’s not true. Women are important because women have the right skills to be negotiators and mediators.

I have to say that UN Secretary-General António Guterres has done a great job by appointing women in half of all the posts for special envoys and special representatives in conflict places. But we still need to do more. 

Why do I believe women make a difference? Conflicts matter to both women and men because they impact both, but usually, the experiences of women are invisible in the eyes of many who work in negotiating and mediating peace. That’s why you need people that can bring this perspective to the table. 

The other thing is that women can often get close to other women in conflict places, and in that case, they can get a lot of useful information from women on the ground because they don’t feel threatened by other women. This is particularly true of women who have been victims of sexual violence who are more willing to tell another woman what they have experienced. 

But, at the end of the day, women are half of the population of the world and I think we need them to be represented adequately.

In 2006, you became the first female president of Chile, what was this like for you and did you feel pressure taking up this mantle?

Yes of course. I mean, there were a lot of people who would say ‘I want to vote for you but I don’t think it’s a woman’s place’. Journalists would also ask you ‘You are divorced and don’t have a man by your side. How are you going to cope?’ and I would respond by saying ‘I have always done it myself.’

Sometimes if I took some time to make a decision, because I thought it needed a bit more time to reflect on what to do, they would say ‘She doesn’t take decisions’ but if you made a quick decision then they would say ‘She improvises’. I’m not complaining, I’m just describing the kinds of things that go on, and these are the things I have spoken about with other female leaders from around the world. For example, I once talked to Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the former prime minister of Denmark, and she would tell me that during the election campaign they would discuss the size of her purse and if she had a boyfriend. I mean, really, people tend to diminish women by talking about unsubstantial issues – there will be a lot of attempts to try to bring a woman’s self-esteem down. 

What I would say is, if you know exactly why you are there and what you want to do as a president, parliamentarian or whatever and you’re sure that what you want to do is the right thing – and the smart thing – then do it. Pick a team that is honest, that works with the same passion as you and that is loyal to you but is not afraid to tell you when things aren’t working. But it’s hard and difficult and politics is getting nastier every day.

You said politics is getting nastier. Julia Gillard recently spoke to me about the dark side of social media for women. In what ways do you think politics is changing for women in particular?

I remember seeing that, in the European Parliament, about 85 per cent of women have experienced psychological violence whether they have received death threats or threats of rape and all kinds of things just because they’re female.

There is also a bias against women during election campaigns where people say she cannot be elected because she’s not capable just because she’s a woman. 

Then there are those that, as I mentioned before, try to talk about personal things or spread fake news. Politics has always been about debate between people with different positions, and that’s fine, but I think sometimes you see it goes past the limit in terms of respect for the other person.

Then there is the language. Failing to understand that the other person is a competitor, not an enemy, and using language to, sort of, symbolically destroy the other one is not right. I see it everywhere and I think that’s not what politics is for – we came to serve the people and words matter. 

I think all of these things are making a lot of people not want to get involved in politics anymore because it’s not the kind of environment that we want to be in. But I hope, on the other hand, that if we have more women in politics, maybe we can turn that trend to a more positive and constructive one, where there can still be intense debate but in a way where everybody feels that we’re all part of the same country and we can all build the country together.

How did you find your male counterparts responding to you as leader? Was there a time, for example, your gender became an issue for you while you were in office?

When I was a student of medicine, what mattered was whether you were a good student or a good doctor, not if you were a man or a woman, but in politics, I found that when I appointed ministers, some of them struggled with me being a woman. For example, sometimes I would conclude a meeting by saying ‘We’re going to do this’ but there would be a male minister who would have to have the last word. Or some of them, particularly the more senior ones who had been in senior positions before, found it challenging to accept a secondary role to a woman.

On the other hand, with the military, I had no problem. Neither as minister of defence and neither as president because they understood the chain of command.

It’s interesting to look at women in other leadership positions too. For example, I remember a friend who worked in a place many years ago and she would tell me that she needed to swear and almost to spit on the ground so that men would respect her because the majority of the leaders there were men. I said to her ‘You don’t need to look like a man to be a leader.’

Perhaps sometimes it’s more difficult because strength is understood in different ways but my message would be that you can be a leader in your own way. 

While president of Chile, you introduced a number of policies aimed at addressing women’s rights issues notably on the gender pay gap and on sexual and reproductive rights for women.

How do you view your legacy on these issues? Were there other policies you wanted to implement but were unable to? And how would you like these initiatives to be furthered today in light of, for example, the rolling back of reproductive rights for women in some parts of the world?

We went from trying to improve the legal framework that applies to women to creating the Ministry of Women and Gender Equity. We also tried to push for changing the electoral roll with quotas for women which we got to an extent but not as much as I wanted. There was no appetite for having a quota for 40 per cent of all those elected to be women so we settled for 40 per cent of all candidates to be women. We still improved a little bit in terms of the number of women being elected from 14 per cent to 24 per cent through this but I didn’t get everything I wanted. Nevertheless, during my time in office, we were able to increase the representation of women in the Senate and the House which was positive. 

On sexual and reproductive rights, in Chile, abortion was criminalized so we were able to decriminalize abortion and we also advanced LGTBI rights and so on. We also developed a better legal framework for dealing with sexual violence but of course sexual violence is a complicated issue that cannot be solved in a short period of time and we need to continue working strongly on that.

The other thing I’m a believer of is the importance of early child development which is good for both boys and girls. So we set up a network of kindergartens free of charge, particularly for poorer people, because there are so many women who cannot afford to put their children in kindergartens while they study or work. So we tried to do lots of things to expand women’s opportunities and women’s rights during my time in office.

Women are increasingly making it to the top level of politics around the world, yet in Latin America, the number of female heads of states has dropped to 0 following a generation of female political leaders across the continent.

Why do you think this is the case and could we see this change again in the future? Do you think Chile is likely to see another female president soon, and if so, who do you think could take up the mantle?

The truth is that there was a moment that I think the region had four or so female heads of states, and although there are currently some female vice presidents, the number of presidents is 0 but I wouldn't be able to say that this is necessarily a bad thing. There doesn’t need to be a female president every time. We need to have female leaders where their citizens believe that they’re the best people to lead their countries.

But we do need to do more to support women making it to the top so they can have all the skills needed to be a president or a prime minister and work more with young women too so that they can think of themselves as being able to take up such positions of leadership in the future. 

In Chile, I hope, of course, there will be another woman president one day but I have no idea when. I will not run again, I can tell you that, but I hope when the time comes, the people of Chile will believe in them.

In your current role, you have said that ‘The climate crisis is the greatest threat to human rights’ and that climate change and gender equality are inextricably linked. How do you see this link and what does that mean for how these issues should be addressed?

Climate change is the biggest threat to human rights because it affects the right to life, to food, to health and to live without violence, and if we are not able to tackle it, it will lead to water scarcity, food insecurity, forced migration and conflict – all of which we are seeing already.

Why is it linked to gender equality? There are many reasons. One of them is that women, who make up half the global population, are usually among the most vulnerable people in the world. Today there are billions of people who don’t have access to water, sanitation or housing with women having less access to all of these tools that would permit them to adapt [to a changing climate].

For example, women will be more affected by food insecurity because imagine a woman who is pregnant without food. She will likely end up being underweight, and then afterwards, this will impact her child who will be at risk of malnourishment. We see it everywhere where women avoid eating so that their children can eat.

Furthermore, if we have water scarcity, that will also affect women because today, in many parts of the world, women and girls fetch the water for their families. If water becomes increasingly scarce, they will have to walk longer to fetch it, and today we already see women and girls who are subject to sexual gender-based violence as they carry out their day-to-day tasks. 

That’s why we need to provide women with the tools to empower them and to devise gender-responsive policies to climate change. 

Throughout your career, have you seen the scale and pace of change for human rights, particularly women’s rights, around the world that you would have wanted?

It depends on how you look at things. It has been over 70 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was written when maternal mortality was incredibly high in many parts of the world and women did not have the vote everywhere.

If you look from that time to now, of course, women’s rights have seen a lot of progress. Maternal mortality has reduced and women can vote I think [in almost every democracy].

But over the last few years, we have seen a pushback on women’s rights, particularly in some areas like sexual and reproductive health rights, and that it something that concerns me a lot.

So I would say we’re not there yet. I hope we will be able to push back the pushback and move forward. Because if we go on along the same trajectory as we are now, we will have economic equality for women in 120 years, which is too long. I mean, nobody wants your great, great, great grandchildren to have to wait so long for equality. We need to stand up for women’s rights – and for all human rights – now and accelerate the progress we’ve been making.

In the past couple of months, there have been ongoing protests in Chile and around the world. What in your estimation is driving the protests and in what ways should governments, civil society and others respond to help address their demands?

I think it’s a phenomenon we are seeing in Chile and many places around the world. It’s a new process where young people are voicing their grievances but with no particular leaders. It’s what some people are calling a ‘new power’ and I think the situation in Chile is very similar to what’s happening in Lebanon, Hong Kong and elsewhere but with different triggers. 

In some places, people are challenging the outcome of an election; in other places, they are protesting because leaders want to change the constitution to be re-elected again; in other places, it can be, like in the case of Chile, a result of economic issues following the increase of the price of what you would call the Underground here. These inequalities lead to a mistrust in our institutions and in traditional leaders and I think this is a universal experience at the moment.

The current political and economic system is not delivering and it’s failing to meet people’s needs. So these young people protesting don’t see, in the current political and economic system, the solutions to the concerns they have.

The other thing that is interesting is the role social media has played in many of these recent protests. Social media has become a different way to allow people to learn from each other. When the students in Chile decided to protest against the increasing price of public transport, they went to the Metro and jumped over the barriers and then, two weeks’ later, I saw it in New York. Hundreds of students, for different reasons – against police brutality – doing exactly the same thing. So they learn from each other and they see what works in one place. 

So I think there is something in the world that is making people go to the streets. If it’s peacefully done then that’s fine. The problem is that sometimes it has triggered a harsh response from governments and that leads to more violence. 

I believe what needs to be done is to try to set up a national dialogue that includes all sectors of all societies where governments listen to the grievances that people have. You cannot change things in a day but I think people are reasonable enough to understand if you are committed to change. 

That’s why the UN has developed the Agenda 2030 on Sustainable Development to leave no one behind. It probably won’t solve everything, but it will, I guess, if we are able to achieve the goals, help us have a planet that’s for everyone. 

A healthy civic space is vital for an enabling business environment. In recognition of this, a growing number of private sector actors are challenging, publicly or otherwise, the deteriorating environment for civic freedoms.

However, this corporate activism is often limited and largely ad hoc. It remains confined to a small cluster of multinationals leaving potential routes for effective coordination and collaboration with other actors underexplored.

This roundtable will bring together a diverse and international group of business actors, civil society actors and foreign policy experts to exchange perspectives and experiences on how the private sector can be involved in issues around civic space. The meeting will provide an opportunity to explore the drivers of – and barriers to – corporate activism, develop a better understanding of existing initiatives, identify good practice and discuss practical strategies for the business community.

This meeting will be the first of a series of roundtables at Chatham House in support of initiatives to build broad alliances for the protection of civic space. 

Attendance at this event is by invitation only. 

PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT IS POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. 

The United Nations (UN) Security Council is stuck in a peacekeeping trilemma. This is a situation where the Council's three strategic goals for peacekeeping operations—implementing broad mandates, minimizing peacekeeper casualties and maximizing cost-effectiveness—cannot be achieved simultaneously. This trilemma stems from longstanding competing pressures on how the Council designs UN peacekeeping operations as well as political divisions between peacekeeping's three key groups of stakeholders: the states that authorize peacekeeping mandates, those that provide most of the personnel and field capabilities, and those that pay the majority of the bill. Fortunately, the most negative consequences of the trilemma can be mitigated and perhaps even transcended altogether. Mitigation would require the Council to champion and implement four main reforms: improving peacekeeper performance, holding peacekeepers accountable for misdeeds, adopting prioritized and sequenced mandates, and strengthening the financial basis for UN peacekeeping. Transcending the trilemma would require a more fundamental reconfiguration of the key stakeholder groups in order to create much greater unity of effort behind a re-envisaged peacekeeping enterprise. This is highly unlikely in the current international political context.

International criminal justice provides a stark reminder that state sovereignty is not an absolute, and that the world’s most heinous crimes should be prosecuted at an international level, particularly where domestic systems lack the capacity or will to hold perpetrators to account. 

The post-Cold War period witnessed a dramatic rise in the number of international tribunals with jurisdiction over war crimes and serious human rights abuses in countries including Cambodia, East Timor, Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Yugoslavia. With these processes approaching, or having reached the end of their dockets, many have called for the creation of new tribunals to address more recent conflicts, including the army crackdown in Myanmar in 2017 that resulted in evidence of crimes against humanity against the Rohingya. 

In January this year, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) imposed emergency provisional measures on Myanmar, instructing it to prevent genocidal violence against its Rohingya minority. But a final judgement is expected to take years and the ICJ has no way of enforcing these interim measures. Myanmar has already responded defiantly to international criticism. 

Model for justice

Myanmar is not the first country to face scrutiny for such crimes in Southeast Asia. The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), more commonly known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal was established in 1997 to prosecute Khmer Rouge leaders for alleged violations of international law and serious crimes perpetrated during the Cambodian genocide. This provides an opportunity to consider whether the Tribunal can act as a ‘hybrid’ model for justice in the region. 

The first lesson that can be taken from the Cambodian context is that the state must have the political will and commitment to pursue accountability. It was indeed the Cambodian government itself, who requested international assistance from the United Nations (UN), to organize a process for holding trials. The initial recommendation of the UN-commissioned Group of Experts was for the trial to be held under UN control, in light of misgivings about Cambodia’s judicial system. Prime Minister Hun Sen rejected this assessment and in prolonged negotiations, continued to spearhead the need for domestic involvement (arguably, in order to circumscribe the search for justice). This eventually resulted in the creation of a hybrid body consisting of parallel international and Cambodian judges and prosecutors with supermajority decision-making rules.   

It is worth noting that the Hun Sen government initially chose to do business with former Khmer Rouge leaders, until it became more advantageous to embrace a policy of putting them on trial. It is possible to infer from this that there will be no impetus for action in Myanmar until it is domestically advantageous to do so. At present, this appetite is clearly lacking, demonstrated by de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi shying away from accountability and instead defending the government’s actions before the ICJ.

One unique aspect of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal has been the vast participation by the Cambodian people in witnessing the trials as well as widespread support for the tribunal. This speaks to the pent-up demand in Cambodia for accountability and the importance of local participation. While international moral pressure is clear, external actors cannot simply impose justice for the Rohingya when there is no domestic incentive or support to pursue this. The reality is that the anti-Rohingya campaign has galvanized popular support from the country’s Buddhist majority. What is more, the Rohingya are not even seen as part of Myanmar so there is an additional level of disenfranchisement.

Secondly, the Cambodian Tribunal illustrates the need for safeguards against local political interference. The ECCC was designed as national court with international participation. There was an agreement to act in accordance with international standards of independence and impartiality, but no safeguards in place against serious deficiencies in the Cambodian judicial system. Close alliances between judges and the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, as well as high levels of corruption meant the tribunal effectively gave Hun Sen’s government veto power over the court at key junctures. Despite the guise of a hybrid structure, the Cambodian government ultimately retained the ability to block further prosecutions and prevent witnesses from being called. 

In Myanmar, political interference could be a concern, but given there is no popular support for justice and accountability for crimes committed against the Rohingya, the prospects of a domestic or hybrid process remain unlikely. However, there are still international options. The investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) into crimes that may have taken place on the Myanmar–Bangladesh border represents a potential route for justice and accountability. The UN Human Rights Council has also recently established the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM), mandated to collect and preserve evidence, as well as to prepare files for future cases before criminal courts.

Finally, the Cambodian case illustrates the culture of impunity in the region. The ECCC was conceived partly as a showcase for international standards of justice, which would have a ‘contagion effect’ upon the wider Cambodian and regional justice systems. 

Cambodia was notorious for incidents in which well-connected and powerful people flouted the law. This culture of impunity was rooted in the failure of the government to arrest, try and punish the Khmer Rouge leadership. The Tribunal, in holding perpetrators of the worst crimes to account, sought to send a clear signal that lesser violations would not be tolerated in the same way. Arguably, it did not achieve this in practice as Cambodia still has a highly politicized judicial system with high levels of corruption and clear limits to judicial independence. 

What this illustrates is that the first step towards accountability is strengthening domestic institutions. The United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar has urged domestic authorities to embrace democracy and human rights, highlighting the need to reform the judicial system in order to ensure judicial independence, remove systemic barriers to accountability and build judicial and investigatory capacity in accordance with international standards. Based on this assessment, it is clear that domestic institutions are currently insufficiently independent to pursue accountability.

The ECCC, despite its shortcomings, does stand as proof that crimes against humanity will not go completely unpunished. However, a process does not necessarily equal justice. The region is littered with justice processes that never went anywhere: Indonesia, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. International recourse is also challenging in a region with low ratification of the ICC, and the absence of regional mechanisms like the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the European Court of Human Rights, and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (although their remit is not mass atrocity prosecutions). 

The Cambodian case study illustrates the challenges of ensuring justice and accountability within the region. The end of impunity is critical to ensure peaceful societies, but a purely legalistic approach will fail unless it is supported by wider measures and safeguards. It is these challenges, that undermine the prospects for ensuring justice for the Rohingya within Myanmar.

During this extraordinary global public health emergency, governments must strike the right balance between assertive measures to slow the spread of the virus and protect lives on the one hand, and respect for human autonomy, dignity and equality on the other.

International law already recognises the grave impact of pandemics and other catastrophic events on social order and provides criteria to guide states in their emergency action. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights permits curbs on the right to ‘liberty of movement’ so long as restrictions are provided by law, deemed necessary to protect public health, and consistent with other rights in that treaty.

Freedom of expression and association, and the rights to privacy and family life are also qualified in these terms under international and regional human rights treaties. But, as emphasised in the Siracusa Principles, any limitations must not be applied in an arbitrary or discriminatory way, and must be of limited duration and subject to review.

International law also guarantees the right to the highest attainable standard of health, while states are specifically required to take steps to prevent, treat and control epidemics under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Even in health emergencies, access to health services must be ensured on a non-discriminatory basis, especially for vulnerable or marginalised groups.

Abuse of coronavirus emergency measures

Many governments have taken pains to craft emergency laws that respect human rights, such as permitting reasonable exceptions to lockdowns for essential shopping and exercise, and making them subject to ongoing parliamentary review and sunset clauses. But even laws that appear to be human rights compliant can still easily be misapplied, as the recent debates about over-zealous policing of people walking and travelling in the UK illustrate.

And disturbing stories are emerging from states where police brutality is entrenched. In Kenya, a 13-year-old boy was reportedly shot on the balcony of his home by police enforcing a coronavirus curfew. Authorities in the Philippines' are allegedly locking those caught defying the curfew in dog cages.

As the recent history of counterterrorism demonstrates, emergency laws tend to be sticky, remaining on the statute books far longer than desirable.

The virus is also proving a powerful accelerant for the current global authoritarian drift which is so detrimental to progress on human rights. Many authoritarian leaders have seized the opportunity to further reduce constraints on their power.

Hungary's prime minister Viktor Orbán has used the pandemic as a pretext for new laws enabling him to rule by decree, completing the country's transition to an elected dictatorship. In Brazil, president Jair Bolsonaro has suspended deadlines for public bodies to reply to freedom of information requests. Iran is the latest of many repressive states in the Middle East to ban the printing and distribution of all newspapers. In China, the government brushed off criticism over ‘disappearances’ of whistleblowers and citizen journalists who questioned its response to the crisis.

Others have exploited the turmoil to undermine justice for human rights abuses - Sri Lanka's president Gotabaya Rajapaksa pardoned one of the only soldiers held accountable for crimes during the country's brutal civil war.

Coronavirus also places liberal values under further strain. Fear is a major driver in the appeal of populist authoritarians and the virus is stoking it. One poll showed 73% of British citizens agreed coronavirus is just the latest sign that the world we live in is increasingly dangerous. Extremists are exploiting these fears to spread hate by blaming the outbreak on ethnic or religious groups, and encouraging those infected to spread it to these groups.

The closure of borders helps reinforce xenophobic tendencies, and high public tolerance of emergency measures could easily spill into normalisation of intrusive digital surveillance and restrictions on liberty for other reasons well into the future.

Disadvantaged groups face a higher level of risk from the crisis. The health of aboriginal Australians is so poor that those aged 50 and above are being urged to stay home, advice otherwise given to those over 70 in the general population. The Moria refugee camp on Lesbos is reporting no soap and just one water tap for 1,300 refugees. In the UK, asylum seekers struggle to self-isolate in shared accommodation and have a daily allowance of just £5.40 for food, medicine and toiletries. Women's rights groups are reporting a spike in domestic violence.

For countries racked by war and extreme poverty, the impact is catastrophic. The virus is set to run rampant in slums, refugee camps and informal settlements where public health systems - if they exist at all - will struggle to cope. And detainees are among the most at risk, with the UN calling for release of political prisoners and anyone detained without sufficient legal basis.

But the crisis has galvanised debate around the right to health and universal health coverage. Many governments have quickly bankrolled generous relief packages which will actually safeguard the socio-economic rights of many, even if they are not being justified in those terms. Portugal and Ireland have rolled back barriers to accessing healthcare for asylum seekers and other marginalised migrants.

The pandemic strikes as many powerful governments have become increasingly nationalistic, undermining or retreating from international rules and institutions on human rights. But as the crisis spreads, the role of well-established international human rights standards in shaping and implementing effective - but also legitimate - measures is becoming ever clearer.

The virus has reminded us of our interconnectedness as human beings and the need for global cooperation to protect our lives and health. This may help to revive popular support for human rights, creating momentum for the efforts to tackle inequality and repression - factors which have made the global impact of coronavirus so much worse than it might have been.

The recognition by Ukraine of the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to consider grave crimes allegedly perpetrated in its territory has led to the ICC Prosecutor’s preliminary examination identifying a wave of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

There are claims of persecution, forced conscription, deportation, sham trials, enforced disappearances, and property seizure - in Crimea. As well as killings, torture, inhuman treatment, sexual violence, and indiscriminate shelling - in Donbas. The court now needs to decide whether to open a full investigation which could lead to charges against specific individuals, as in the trial currently taking place in the Netherlands over MH-17.

However, the ICC does remain a court of last resort as Ukraine retains the principal power to prosecute grave violations perpetrated in its eastern regions and Crimea, with the court only stepping in if Ukraine (or another court with jurisdiction) is either unwilling or unable to do so.

As the evidence mounts up, Ukrainian investigators, prosecutors and judges are becoming more open to cooperation with foreign experts, law firms, human rights NGOs and younger domestic professionals - a significant proportion of whom are women.

Transformation shows determination

This is an unusual shift, given the rigid hierarchical nature of post-Soviet institutions, with elderly males in most of the top positions. The transformation shows the determination to see perpetrators of crimes in Crimea and Donbas tried by the ICC, with joint professional development trainings and joint communications about the alleged crimes.

Ukraine has also been strengthening its institutions. The Prosecutor’s Office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea has been improving quality control of its war crime proceedings, and has taken a strong pro-ICC stance. The Office of the Prosecutor General established a special department to monitor the armed conflict proceedings, and two specialised war crime units have been formed in Donbas.

Although too early to assess progress - given recent prosecution reform and that much-needed legislation on international crimes is still pending – these are promising signs of Ukraine’s intent to take a specialised approach to armed conflict violations. And Ukrainian civil society organisations are also playing a more important role, documenting alleged crimes and sending evidence to the ICC.

Any intervention by the ICC in Ukraine also has a considerable impact on the wider dynamics of addressing international crimes, further extending the court’s reach beyond a focus on Africa which has attracted widespread criticism since it began in 2002.

The ICC has already opened investigations in Georgia, Bangladesh/Myanmar, and Afghanistan, with preliminary examinations in Colombia, Venezuela, Iraq/UK, Palestine, and The Philippines. But the Ukrainian case would further develop the European subtleties of the court’s jurisprudence.

Although the ICC is currently investigating the 2008 Russia-Georgia war, the active phase of that armed conflict lasted for just five days whereas Russia’s military involvement in Ukraine has been ongoing for the six years. The temporal difference in no way diminishes the suffering of victims and the necessity for the proper investigation, prosecution and compensation in the Georgian context.

And yet, going by even the preliminary findings of the ICC prosecutor, the spectrum of war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly perpetrated in Ukraine is much wider. Some incidents, such as the illegal construction of the Crimean Bridge, is an amalgam of the violations against property, cultural heritage and the environment. Cumulatively, the Ukrainian and Georgian cases would substantially contribute to the development of the court’s emerging European lenses.

The Russia-Ukraine armed conflict is also the first instance of armed hostilities of such magnitude and duration in Europe since World War II and the Yugoslav Wars. The ICC’s readiness to take on such geopolitically challenging cases which leave itself open to attack will be tested.

But by examining new contexts - including Ukraine - the ICC would develop a more layered reading of the nature and scope of the crimes it works on. For example, alleged indoctrination and use of children by armed groups in eastern Ukraine is likely to differ from the known practices of abducting and recruiting child soldiers in Africa.

Investigating evidence of Russia’s persecution of pro-Ukrainian activists - forcing them out of Crimea - coupled with the creation of favourable conditions for Russian citizens to relocate to Crimea could lead to proving the existence of a policy of mass colonisation of the peninsula - adding new layers to the court’s jurisprudence on population displacement. And previously under-prosecuted crimes may come to the fore, such as attacks on cultural property or causing the destruction of the environment.

Although the ICC proceedings on Ukraine – along with those being held by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) - are unlikely to bring immediate results, Ukraine has developed an international adjudication strategy based on the available viable options and what can be practically delivered.

The simple act of a reputed international court outlining Russia’s alleged violations in Crimea and Donbas and naming those individually responsible would be an impactful achievement in itself, regardless of whether Russia pays any attention or compensation.

And any international judgments or those of domestic courts such as the Dutch MH-17 proceedings and Russia’s response - predicted to be non-compliance - is an important argument for continuing sanctions against Russia over its conduct in Ukraine.

The mutually reinforcing effect of both the Crimea and Donbas proceedings within Ukraine and at international courts should not be underestimated. These investigations into war crimes, terrorism and human rights issues are deeply relevant - not only for the conflict itself, but also for the development of international law.

Part One of this series assesses Ukraine’s efforts to hold Russia accountable as a state at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

When powerful liberal democratic states are found to be complicit in extreme violations of human rights, how do they respond and why do they respond as they do? Drawing on the example of the United Kingdom's complicity in torture since 9/11, this article demonstrates how reluctant the UK has been to permit a full reckoning with its torturous past. We demonstrate that successive UK governments engaged in various forms of denial, obfuscation and attempts to obstruct investigation and avoid accountability. The net effect of their responses has been to deny the victims redress, through adequate judicial processes, and to deny the public adequate state accountability. These responses are not simply aimed at shielding from prosecution the perpetrators and those who have oversight of them, nor preventing political embarrassment. The various forms of denial and obstruction are also designed to ensure that collusion can continue uninterrupted. A core concern of intelligence officials and ministers has been to prevent any process that would lead to a comprehensive prohibition on involvement in operations where torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment are a real possibility. The door remains wide open, and deliberately so, for British involvement in torture.

The outbreak of popular discontent in Chile in October of last year caught many observers by surprise. What began as a protest against a metro fare hike has transformed into widespread rejection of the economic and political model in place since the return to democracy in 1990, accompanied with unprecedented violence which raises questions about the state's ability to maintain rule of law. 

Professor Andrés Velasco, Dean of the School of Public Policy at the LSE, and Dr Robert Funk, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Chile will join us for a discussion on the causes of the current protest.

What are the prospects for reform and a return to normality? Is this the end of the much-lauded Chilean model?

Trade and investment between the UK and Latin America is woefully underdeveloped. Latin America’s agricultural powerhouses Brazil and Argentina only accounted for a total of 1.6% of the UK’s agricultural market across eight sectors in 2018, all of those areas in which Argentina and Brazil have substantial comparative advantages. 

Conversely, UK exports to the large Latin American economies remain far below their potential.  To cite a few examples, in 2018 in the electrical equipment sector, the UK only exported $95.7 million of those products to Brazil, making the ninth largest economy in the world only the 42nd export market for those goods from the UK; Mexico only imported $91.4 million of UK-made electrical goods, placing it directly behind Brazil as UK’s market for those goods.

As we look to the future, any improvement to the relationship will depend on two factors: 1) how the UK leaves the EU and 2) whether Latin American agricultural producers can improve their environmental practices and can meet the production standards established by the EU and likely maintained by a potential post-Brexit Britain.

In the first meeting of the working group,  Chatham House convened a range of policymakers, practitioners and academics to explore this topic in depth, identify the key issues driving this trend, and begin to consider how improvements might best be made. Subsequent meetings will focus on specific sectors in commerce and investment.

We would like to thank BTG Pactual, Cairn Energy plc, Diageo, Equinor, Fresnillo Management Services, HSBC Holdings plc and Wintershall Dea for their generous support of the Latin America Initiative.

This event is part of the Chatham House Global Trade Policy Forum. We would like to take this opportunity to to thank founding partner AIG and supporting partners Clifford Chance LLP, Diageo plc and EY for their generous support of the forum. 

This event is part of the Chatham House Global Trade Policy Forum. We would like to take this opportunity to thank founding partner AIG and supporting partners Clifford Chance LLP, Diageo plc, and EY for their generous support of the forum.

The COVID-19 epidemic has hit every aspect of American life. The upcoming November general elections will not be immune to the virus’ impact and may be scheduled to happen while the pandemic remains active, or has returned.

There is a danger the epidemic forces change to the way voting takes place this fall, amplifying risks around election security and voter suppression that ultimately undermine the integrity of the elections.

This is further highlighted by the US Supreme Court’s last-minute ruling along ideological lines to restrict an extension on the absentee voting period in the Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary despite the level of infections in the state, forcing voters into a trade-off between their health and their right to vote. The US could be thrown into a political crisis in addition to the health and economic crises it already faces.

Bipartisan sentiment

While France, Chile and Bolivia have already postponed elections in the wake of COVID-19, there is a bipartisan sentiment that the US elections should be held as scheduled on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. This is enshrined not only in America’s sense of itself – having weathered elections during a civil war, a world war and heightened terrorist alert before – but also in its federal law since 1845.

Despite increasing appetite for federal elections to go ahead in November, there are serious vulnerabilities, which are already becoming visible as connections are drawn between mail-in voting and voter fraud, greater voter access and disadvantages for the Republican party, and city polling closures and Democratic voter suppression.

Concerns around voting access have gained the most attention. If voting in-person is untenable or risky (especially for vulnerable health populations), voters must have alternative means to cast ballots.

During negotiations for the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives proposed $4 billion in state election grants and a nationally-mandated period for early voting and no-excuse absentee voting.

But the final CARES Act sidestepped the access question and stripped funding to $400 million for election security grants to ‘prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus, domestically or internationally, for the 2020 Federal election cycle’. Without knowing exactly what is in store from a cyber-threat perspective, the actual cost for basic election security upgrades is estimated to be $2.1billion. And that is a pre-COVID-19 calculation.

With social-distanced voters likely to be getting more election information than ever from social media, information security is critical to prevent influence from untrustworthy sources. And opportunities for cyber intrusions are likely to increase as states transition to greater virtual registration, plus absentee and mail-in balloting.

This will open new doors on well-documented, existing voter suppression efforts. With the Supreme Court clawing back the Voting Rights Act in 2013 - allowing certain states to make changes to election and voting laws without federal pre-clearance - heightened election security requirements, such as exact match campaigns and voter purges, have been used to justify voter suppression.

As more vote remotely in the remaining primaries (many now rescheduled for 2 June) and the November general elections, the added burden on states around verification will only increase temptation to set aside ‘non-compliant’ ballots. Especially as some in the Republican Party, including Donald Trump, have advocated a contested view that higher turnout favours the Democratic Party.

A fundamental principle of US democracy is that losers of elections respect the result, but history shows that election results have been contested. In 2000, it took weeks for a result to be confirmed in the presidential election. More recently, in the 2018 race for governor in Georgia, allegations of voter suppression raised questions about the validity of the eventual result.

Without proper access, security, and verification the electoral process – whenever it takes place – will become vulnerable to questions of integrity. The federal response to the initial spread of COVID-19 saw costly delays which pushed the US into a public health crisis and economic contraction.

Any narrative thread of election illegitimacy with November’s elections will further pull apart the fabric of a country already frayed by coronavirus. Federal and state authorities must start planning now for how the US will hold elections in the midst - or immediate aftermath - of COVID-19.

This event is  part of the Chatham House Global Trade Policy Forum and will take place virtually only.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank founding partner AIG and supporting partners Clifford Chance LLP, Diageo plc, and EY for their generous support of the Chatham House Global Trade Policy Forum.

Please note this event is taking place between 2pm to 3pm BST. 

The pressure of the coronavirus pandemic is adding to a widely held misconception that trade in food products is bad for the environment due to the associated ‘food miles’ – the carbon footprint of agricultural products transported over long distances.

This concept, developed by large retailers a decade ago, is often invoked as a rationale for restricting trade and choosing locally-produced food over imports. Consuming local food may seem sensible at first glance as it reduces the carbon footprint of goods and generates local employment. 

However, this assumption ignores the emissions produced during the production, processing or storage stages which often dwarf transport emissions. Other avenues to address the climate change impact of trade are more promising.

Demystifying food emissions

In the US, for example, food items travel more than 8,000 km on average before reaching the consumer. Yet transport only accounts for 11 per cent of total emissions with 83 per cent – mostly nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4) emissions – occurring at the production stage.

US Department of Agriculture data on energy use in the American food system echoes this finding, showing that processing, packaging, and selling of food represent ten times the energy used to transport food.

In practice, it may be preferable from an environmental perspective to consume lamb, onion or dairy products transported by sea because the lower emissions generated at the production stage offset those resulting from transport. Similarly, growing tomatoes under heated greenhouses in Sweden is often more emissions-intensive than importing open-grown ones from Southern Europe.

Seasonality also matters. British apples placed in storage for ten months leads to twice the level of emissions as that of South American apples sea-freighted to the UK. And the type of transport is also important as, overall, maritime transport generates 25 to 250 times less emissions than trucks, and air freight generates on average five times more emissions than road transport.

Therefore, air-freighted Kenyan beans have a much larger carbon footprint than those produced in the UK, but crossing Europe by truck to import Italian wine might generate more emissions than transatlantic shipments.

Finally, one should take into account the last leg of transport. A consumer driving more than 10 km to purchase 1 kg of fresh produce will generate proportionately more greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than air-freighting 1 kg of produce from Kenya.

Shifting consumption towards local foods may reduce GHG emissions in sectors with relatively low emissions intensities but, when non-carbon dioxide emissions are taken into account, this is more often the exception than the rule.

Under these circumstances, preventing trade is an inefficient and expensive way of reducing GHG emissions. Bureau et al. for example, calculate that a global tariff maintaining the volume of trade at current levels until 2030 may reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by 3.5 per cent. However, this would be roughly seven times less than the full implementation of the Paris Agreement and cost equivalent to the current GDP of Brazil or 1.8 per cent of world GDP.

By preventing an efficient use of resources, such restrictions would also undermine the role of trade in offsetting possible climate-induced production shortfalls in some parts of the world and allowing people to access food when they can’t produce it themselves.

Reducing the climate footprint of trade

This is not to say that nothing should be done to tackle transport emissions. The OECD estimates that international trade-related freight accounted for over 5 per cent of total global fuel emissions with shipping representing roughly half of it, trucks 40 per cent, air 6 per cent and rail 2 per cent. With the projected tripling of freight transport by 2050, emissions from shipping are expected to rise between 50 and 250 per cent.

Furthermore, because of their international nature, these emissions are not covered by the Paris Agreement. Instead the two UN agencies regulating these sectors – the International Civil Aviation Organization and the International Maritime Organization – are responsible for reducing these emissions and, so far, significant progress has proven elusive.

Regional or bilateral free trade agreements to further stimulate trade could address this problem by exploiting comparative advantages. Impact assessments of those agreements often point towards increases in GHG emissions due to a boost in trade flows. In the future, such agreements could incorporate – or develop in parallel – initiatives to ensure carbon neutrality by connecting carbon markets among contracting parties or by taxing international maritime and air transport emissions.

Such initiatives could be combined with providing additional preferences in the form of enhanced market access to low-carbon food and healthier food. The EU, as one of the chief proponents of bilateral and regional trade agreements and a leader in promoting a transition to a low-carbon economy could champion such an approach.

This article is part of a series from the Chatham House Global Trade Policy Forum, designed to promote research and policy recommendations on the future of global trade. It is adapted from the research paper, Delivering Sustainable Food and Land Use Systems: The Role of International Trade, authored by Christophe Bellmann, Bernice Lee and Jonathan Hepburn.

This event is part of the Chatham House Global Trade Policy Forum and will take place virtually only.

International trade has a crucial role to play in tackling climate change. The production and transport of goods is a major contributor to green-house gas emissions, as is the delivery of certain cross-border services. At the same time, it looks inevitable that the COVID-19 pandemic will lead to a radical re-think of global supply chains as companies and governments seek to build in greater resilience while at the same time preserving as far as possible the efficiency gains and lower costs that global supply chains generate when operating normally.

Future international trade rules will have a crucial role to play in addressing both challenges; they represent both an opportunity and a risk. If designed well, they could play a very important role in re-enforcing moves towards a more sustainable use of resources, greater overall alignment of economies with the Paris Agreement, and greater economic resilience. But they could also, if poorly designed and implemented, or overly influenced by strategic political considerations, have significant unintended and negative implications. These include: reduced economic efficiency, increased poverty, unnecessary economic decoupling and reduced consensus on the broader mitigation and adaptation measures required to meet the challenge of climate change.

Against this background, a number of key questions arise: In what areas, if any, do we need to modify or adapt key principles underlying the system of global trade rules in order to respond to the twin challenges of responding to climate change and building greater economic resilience?  Which are the most promising/practical areas on which trade policy experts should focus now to re-launch/re-energize discussions on WTO reform, including, for example, dispute settlement? What national economic policies will be needed to complement the development of new/reformed trade disciplines in these areas? How might future political changes, such as a change in the US administration, affect the prospects for and political momentum behind such deliberations? What in any eventuality is the best way to build the required political momentum?
 
This roundtable is convened by the Global Economy and Finance Programme and the US and the Americas Programme and it is part of the Chatham House Global Trade Policy Forum. The event will take place virtually only.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank founding partner AIG and supporting partners Clifford Chance LLP, Diageo plc, and EY for their generous support of the Chatham House Global Trade Policy Forum.

Please note this event is taking place between 2pm to 3pm BST.

This event is part of the US and Americas Programme Inaugural Virtual Roundtable Series on the US and the State of the World and will take place virtually only.

This event will take place from 14:00 – 15:00 BST.