International Cooperation

Development, particularly in developing countries, in the current context requires thinking about how multiple global crises are interlinked, their impact on development prospects, and the narrative framing needed to generate positive and progressive systemic policy change.

The role of the international community in achieving adequate access to energy and reducing energy poverty, particularly at the regional level, is the central theme of Dr Victoria R Nalule’s book under this review.

Nalule’s book is a comprehensive critical analysis of the energy access and energy poverty issues that plague Sub-Saharan Africa (“SSA”). She conducts this discourse within the energy transition discussion and presents it through the lens of the sustainable development theory.

To ensure that innovative capacity is developed on the continent, it is pertinent to promote regional innovation. As a starting point, negotiators of the AfCFTA may consider including in the text appropriate provisions that will allow the collaboration and nurturing of innovative capacity in Africa. Open innovation is an approach that meets the needs of Africa and is worth considering.

The main finding of this contribution is that most universities offer enough courses on international aspects of law but do not ensure all their students get the minimum necessary, i.e., a sound introduction to the principles of public and private international law as well as ideally the skills to compare legal solutions in various jurisdictions (comparative law).

Halting the rapid transmission of COVID-19 and reversing the trend of consequential global distress is a global concern and goal. As the WHO has rightly pointed out, this goal is only achievable when everyone, everywhere can access the health technologies they need for COVID-19 detection, prevention, treatment and response. This highlights the importance of international cooperation and solidarity for restoring global health security, now and for the future.

The debate to what extent the societies are willing to allow the relativization of human rights and the democratic mechanisms is essential to bring what Boaventura de Sousa Santos calls “a novel clarity” that according to him: “[…]pandemic clarity and the apparitions it brings to light. The things it allows us to see and the way in which they are interpreted and assessed will determine the future of the civilization in which we live”.

In response to the COVID-19 crisis, the American Journal of International Law (AJIL) is issuing a worldwide call for papers for an Agora symposium to be published in the October 2020 issue of the Journal.  The topic – “The International Legal Order and the Global Pandemic” – recognizes that the present crisis raises foundational questions for the international legal order that extend beyond the immediate challenges to public health and economic stability.

Sub-regional judiciaries and implementing bodies in Africa should endeavour to avoid what the Kagame Report termed ‘[t]he chronic failure to see through African Union decisions [which] has resulted in a crisis of implementation.’ Hence, ECOWAS and the ECCJ should apply political pressure on Member States to implement the ECCJ judgments. Also, dualist countries in the sub-region should domesticate the Revised Treaty and the Protocol on the ECCJ into their national laws. This will enhance the implementation of the ECCJ decisions in the sub-region.

The call for an open, rules-based approach to investment facilitation at the multilateral level is informed by a tipping point in the international investment arena. As discussed below, this paradigm shift and various precedental challenges have made it imperative to seek international investment policy coherence.