Author: Stefan Talmon

Published: 10 November 2025 Author: Stefan Talmon

On 1 March 2024, Nicaragua instituted proceedings against Germany before the ICJ for alleged violations by Germany of its obligations deriving from the Genocide Convention, the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols, ‘intransgressible principles of international humanitarian law’ and other norms of general international law in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly the Gaza Strip. Nicaragua claimed, inter alia, that by its conduct Germany had not only failed to fulfil its obligation to prevent the genocide allegedly committed by Israel against the Palestinian people but had itself contributed to the commission of that genocide and to the illegal regime of apartheid imposed by Israel on the Palestinian people. At the same time, Nicaragua requested that the ICJ indicate provisional measures in order to preserve Nicaragua’s rights that were allegedly violated by Germany’s conduct. In its Order of 30 April 2024, the Court decided by fifteen votes to one that the circumstances, as they presented themselves to the Court, were not such as to require the indication of provisional measures. (more…)

Published 30 April 2025  Author: Stefan Talmon

On 1 February 2024, the National Assembly of Nicaragua approved a legislative declaration condemning the genocide and collective infanticide carried out by Israel against the Palestinians in Gaza and demanding from North American and European countries the immediate cessation of attempts at the ethnic extermination of the Palestinian people.

On 23 January 2024, Nicaragua became the first State to intervene in the case concerning the Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel), in which South Africa had instituted proceedings against Israel before the International Court of Justice for alleged violations by Israel of its obligations under the Genocide Convention in relation to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. (more…)

Published: 4 April 2025  Author: Stefan Talmon

In light of the unstable security environment marked by Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and its ongoing military threat to the Euro-Atlantic community, the Ministers of Defence of Poland and the three Baltic States – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – on 18 March 2024 announced their countries’ intention to withdraw from the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction (Ottawa Convention). At the time, the Convention had 133 parties. On 1 April 2025, Finland followed suit. The country’s prime minister wrote on the platform X: ‘Finland will prepare for the withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention.’ (more…)

Published: 2 April 2025  Author: Stefan Talmon

From 30 March to 2 April 2025, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier paid the first official visit of a federal president to the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan. Upon his arrival in Armenia the presidential office posted a story about the visit on the President’s Instagram account. One of the images posted showed the flag of the ‘Republic of Artsakh’. The flag with its horizontal tricolour of red, blue, and orange with a white sideways zig-zag chevron in the fly, which is based on the Armenian tricolour of red, blue and orange, served as the national flag of the Armenian separatist entity that had existed in the Garabakh region of Azerbaijan between 1991 and 2023. In September 2023, Azerbaijan recaptured the Armenian-occupied area and the institutions of the self-declared ‘Republic of Artsakh’ announced their dissolution from 1 January 2024. (more…)

Published: 26 March 2025  Author: Stefan Talmon 

Since the autumn of 2022, Ukraine had accused Iran of supplying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to Russia for its war of aggression against Ukraine. In January 2024, the United States announced that Russia also intended to purchase missile systems from Iran. Shortly thereafter, Germany joined the other G7 countries expressly cautioning Iran against providing ballistic missiles to Russia. On 15 March 2024, the G7 issued a statement saying: (more…)

Published: 24 October 2024  Authors: Rohan Sinha and Stefan Talmon 

In 2013, a new term entered German political discourse – ‘Völkerrecht des Netzes’, a term translated into English in official documents as ‘International Network Law’. Political parties expressed their wish for or their commitment to an ‘international network law’, and politicians vowed to work for an ‘international network law’. A translation better capturing the meaning of the term would have been ‘International Law of the Internet’ or ‘International Internet Law’ as the idea behind the term was that international law should be used to regulate the Internet, to protect the human rights and fundamental freedoms of citizens in the digital world and to augment opportunities for democratic participation in the global communications network. This led Germany, together with Brazil, to table a draft resolution at the UN General Assembly in December 2013 on ‘The right to privacy in the digital age’. The resolution, which was adopted unanimously, affirmed for the first time that ‘the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online, including the right to privacy.’ (more…)

Published: 19 September 2024  Authors: Pauline Brinkmann, Iria Lores Wallenfang and Stefan Talmon

On 11 July 2011, the Regional Court in Darmstadt sentenced Graham S. (G.S.) to life imprisonment for the murder of businessman Michael Meng (M.M.). Graham S. was the lover of Salina Meng (S.M.), the murder victim’s wife. She had been summoned during the trial as a witness, but refused to testify, as she was by then engaged to Graham S. (more…)

Published: 17 September 2024  Authors: Rohan Sinha and Stefan Talmon

On 15 December 2021, the Higher Regional Court of Berlin sentenced Russian national Vadim Krasikov (Vadim K.), alias Vadim Sokolov (Vadim S.), to life imprisonment for the murder of Tornike Khangoshvili (T. Ka.), a Georgian citizen of Chechen ethnicity, in central Berlin’s Kleiner Tiergarten park on 23 August 2019. The Court determined that Krasikov ‘had been commissioned by State authorities of the central government of the Russian Federation to eliminate the victim, among other things because of his role in the second Chechen war between 2000 and 2004 and as the leader of a Chechen militia.’ In an unprecedented act, the Court stated explicitly in its ruling that the murder ‘was an act of State terrorism.’ The Court held: (more…)

Published: 3 September 2024  Author: Stefan Talmon

On 3 May 2019, German customs and federal police stopped a car with diplomatic registration plates on the A17 motorway from Prague to Dresden for a routine inspection. During the search of the vehicle, officers found 70kg of heroin in two suitcases, neatly packed in 140 packs of 500 grams each, with a street value of more than €3 million. When the two vehicle occupants — Battushig B., Vice-Consul of the Mongolian Consulate General in Istanbul, and Erdenebayar S., his driver, from the domestic service at the same consular post — were to be arrested, they claimed consular immunity. As the two men were not accredited to Germany, however, they were provisionally detained by the police. The following day, the Dresden District Court issued an arrest warrant and ordered their pre-trial detention. (more…)

Published 29 August 2024  Author: Stefan Talmon

In a judgement of 2 August 2024 on a civil law claim for damages, a German judge invented the concept of ‘nature’, or an individual ecosystem such as a river or forest, as an ‘ecological person’ with its own subjective rights. Based on Articles 2 and 3(1) in connection with Article 37 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and the doctrine of human rights documents as ‘living instruments’, the Regional Court of Erfurt, siting as a single judge, found a comprehensive right of ecological persons ‘to have their existence, preservation and regeneration of their life cycles, structure, functions and development processes respected and protected.’ The Court argued that ‘the recognition of specific rights of ecological persons through the interpretation and application of existing Union law is necessary because of the importance and urgency of the ecological challenges – climate change, species extinction and global littering – and the threat of irreversible damage’ (LG Erfurt, Urteil vom 02.08.2024 – 8 O 1373/21). (more…)