International Law in Brief

Photo by Kevin Harber

On August 28, 2025, Juliette de Rivero, the Chief of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) Branch of the Office of the United Nations, announced that the United States has withdrawn its engagement from the UPR. The review of the United States’ fourth cycle was scheduled for November 7, 2025, but the government failed to submit its National Report by the August deadline.

The UPR serves as a cooperative mechanism for the Human Rights Council to review state fulfillments of human rights obligations. During each cycle, UN members and observer states...

Photo by Michele Benericetti (CC BY-ND 2.0)

On October 6, 2025, the European Commission released a revised amendment to the EU-Morocco trade agreement concerning Western Sahara, a territory disputed between Morocco and the Algeria-backed Polisario Front. Listed by the UN as a “non-self-governing territory,” Western Sahara has been under Moroccan occupation since 1975. Its people, the Sahrawi, continue to seek independence, while the region remains contested.

The amendment responds to rulings by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which emphasized that...

On October 26, 2025, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) adopted the ASEAN Declaration on the Right to a Safe, Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment. The Declaration takes place in a context of increasing regional environmental degradation and climate vulnerability in Southeast Asia. It also goes along with growing international recognition, under the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the UN General Assembly’s 2022 resolution on the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, that environmental protection constitutes a fundamental human right...

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) found that Serbia violated Article 8 (right to respect for private life) of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 (protection of property), in a case concerning the impact of a neighboring construction project on the applicant’s living conditions and the market value of her property.

The construction of a six-storey building less than two meters from the applicant’s ground-floor apartment resulted in loss of natural light and ventilation. Further, the experts concluded that the apartment was transformed...