International Law

The Award in Oded Besserglik v. Republic of Mozambique, one of the very few publicly known intra African treaty-based investment arbitration cases, was issued 29th October 2019. The case started when in March 2014, a South African national (Mr. Besserglik) filed an application, before the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), against the Mozambique (the Respondent) on the grounds that his shares and interests in a joint fishing venture with some Mozambican State-owned enterprises, as well as his vessels, were unlawfully and fraudulently appropriated by the Respondent.

Following the conclusion of the four-part Symposium on COVID-19 and International Economic Law in the Global South, Afronomicslaw.org is pleased to announce three follow-up webinars to continue the conversation

Under the Model Conventions, each African country has lost taxation rights over cross-border workers who have been evacuated from it but who are still deriving income from it through telework. Telework, a term originally coined by Jack Nilles, is ‘the activity of working from home while communicating with your office by phone or email, or using the internet’. The COVID-19 pandemic has made social distancing an imperative and, consequently, we are witnessing an unprecedented reliance on telework.

The current international, regional and national architecture of Intellectual Property law confers privileges to foreign transitional interest blocks in order to profit from patents by extending, trademarks, copyrights and so on for longer periods of time. This legal enclave diminishes the possibility of developing technologies, including diagnostics, medicines, vaccines and other medical supplies vital to treating patients infected by COVID-19 and it hampers efforts to distribute them in a timely manner to all the countries currently affected by the pandemic. However, the creative elements of a new global system are emerging now, one characterized by coordination between WIPO, WTO and WHO.

This post analyzes the potential impact of COVID-19 on the African continent given systemic healthcare vulnerabilities and the need for contextualized containment strategies. It examines the historical role of international financial institutions in limiting domestic health spending and capacity. This post also delves into re-conceptualizing responsibility for pandemic and epidemic diseases.

Students who study law at the National University of Lesotho (NUL) participate in various moot court competitions involving a wide array of legal fields. One example is the John H. Jackson Moot Court Competition. NUL has taken part in this competition on four occasions- twice making it into the international final round. There are several challenges to teaching International Economic Law (IEL) at NUL (these have been traversed in an earlier piece). However, participation in moot court competitions has proved to be a novel way of overcoming some of these challenges.

“Africa’s riches” include its law students, and Africa has the means to unleash that resource for its own benefit and the world’s. To close the circle and exhort the law students and young lawyers of Africa: seize the opportunities, face the challenges, and remember, Nelson Mandela’s words; I never lose. I either win or learn.

This symposium presents two interesting memoirs of African students who have participated in these moots and have chosen paths of graduate studies that are related to international economic law and development studies. Mr Mishael Wambua a student at Strathmore University Law and last year winner and best oralist at the John H. Jackson writes about his experience and advice to future mooters. Ms Purity Maritim a former participant of the same moot and now a masters student at the Graduate Institute in Geneva also writes about her experiences and what she learnt from the moot. The other two contributions are from Mr Christian Campbell the Assistant Director FDI moot and Tsotang Tsietsi lecturer and moot coach from the National University of Lesotho. These two contributions present two interesting perspectives on the many directions that moot court competitions can take for Africa in the near future.

Given the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the present need for online educational materials and resources, the United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law (AVL) is happy to draw our attention to their free online educational resources. 

In this brief post, I want to make sense of Prabhash Ranjan’s brief critique of TWAIL perspectives on international investment law. My main aim is not to mount a defense of TWAIL project(s) on investment law because that might be done more eloquently by others. Instead, I want to make some brief comments about the political valence of, and the assumptions behind, the reservations that Professor Ranjan articulated in this post, and which also appear in his recent book on India and Bilateral Investment Treaties.