International law failures

And over the past seven decades, the UN has provided the framework for international laws, norms and mechanisms on everything from the promotion of human rights and gender equality to the regulation of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
These frameworks have often proved incredibly successful – the Montreal Protocol, for instance.

There is a persistent sense of failure in world affairs today.
The aspirations of modernity—to make progress in the well-being of both humankind and Planet Earth—are under constant attack and point towards regression rather than progression.
Climate change threatens to change everything in the decades ahead, and not for the better.

Within international law, two sets of rules have particular application.
They are human rights and the law governing the use of force, which consists of both rules on resorting to armed force and the rules on the conduct of force, also known as the law of armed conflict, the law of war or international humanitarian law.

As a rule, the external forces of public and private life can provide nothing more than help towards self-help

The problem of the “failed State” which we have considered in this article may perhaps, with hindsight, come to be seen as nothing more than an isolated episode in the history of international law