research topics in international law and diplomacy

40+ Best International Relations Research Topics: Global Dynamics Unveiled

• Post author By admin
• November 11, 2023

Explore the complex landscape of global affairs with our curated list of International Relations Research Topics. Delve into pressing issues, emerging trends, and fresh perspectives that shape the world stage.

Uncover the latest insights and navigate the intricacies of international diplomacy through innovative research avenues.

Embarking on the captivating odyssey of “International Relations Research Topics” is akin to donning the explorer’s hat in a vast, interconnected world.

As our globe tightens its bonds, the study of international relations becomes not just relevant but essential. In this article, we embark on a journey that doesn’t merely skim the surface; it delves deep into the beating heart of themes that intrigue scholars and mold the very narrative of our shared global drama.

Imagine traversing the echoes of historical events, resonating through the grand halls of diplomacy. Picture grappling with the contemporary puzzles that carve the geopolitical landscape, and unraveling the theoretical frameworks that scaffold our comprehension of international relations.

From the intricate dance of negotiation to the mosaic of global governance complexities, we’re set to embark on a thrilling adventure, spanning disciplines, cultures, and the sands of time.

So, fasten your seatbelts as we navigate the twists and turns of international relations research. Join us in dissecting real-world challenges through illuminating case studies and peering into the crystal ball of future trends that will shape the diplomatic stage.

The realm of international relations research isn’t just a scholarly pursuit; it’s a journey into the heart of human interaction on the international stage, a quest that promises both revelations and solutions.

Get ready for an expedition that transcends borders and plunges into the pulse of our shared global destiny.

Together, let’s unravel the dynamic and ever-evolving world of international relations research—a journey that promises not just academic enlightenment but a deeper understanding of the threads that weave our world together.

Table of Contents

International Relations Research Topics

Check out international relations research topics:-

Theories of International Relations

Power Dynamics Unveiled : Investigate the role of power in international relations and how realist perspectives shape foreign policy.

The Promise of Cooperation : Explore the principles of liberalism and how they influence diplomatic collaboration and international organizations.

Constructivism

Beyond Structures : Delve into the impact of ideas, norms, and identities on international relations, challenging traditional structural perspectives.

Critical Theories

Deconstructing Narratives : Examine critical approaches to IR, questioning established norms and advocating for social justice in global relations.

Foreign Policy

The united states’ foreign policy.

Evolution and Trends : Analyze the historical shifts and current trends in U.S. foreign policy, exploring its global implications.

China’s Foreign Policy

Rising Dragon : Investigate China’s geopolitical strategy, economic diplomacy, and its role in shaping international relations.

Russia’s Foreign Policy

Eurasian Ambitions : Explore Russia’s geopolitical objectives, alliances, and its impact on regional and global stability.

The European Union’s Foreign Policy

Unity in Diversity : Assess the coherence and challenges of the EU’s foreign policy, considering its unique supranational structure.

The Foreign Policy of the Middle East

Navigating Complexity : Examine the intricate foreign policies of Middle Eastern nations, addressing regional conflicts and global interactions.

International Law

The role of international law in the international system.

Legal Frameworks : Investigate the impact and effectiveness of international legal systems in governing state behavior.

The Sources of International Law

Foundations Unveiled : Explore the historical and contemporary sources influencing the development of international legal principles.

The Enforcement of International Law

Legal Realities : Assess the mechanisms and challenges in enforcing international law, addressing issues of compliance and accountability.

The Development of International Law

Evolutionary Trajectories : Trace the historical evolution of international law, analyzing its adaptive nature in response to global changes.

The Future of International Law

Innovations and Challenges : Speculate on the future directions and innovations in international law amidst evolving global dynamics.

International Organizations

The united nations.

Global Governance : Examine the role, challenges, and effectiveness of the United Nations in addressing global issues and conflicts.

The World Trade Organization

Trade Diplomacy : Assess the impact of the WTO on global trade dynamics, exploring its role in shaping economic relations.

The International Monetary Fund

Economic Stabilization : Investigate the IMF’s influence on global financial stability, economic development, and its role in financial crises.

The World Bank

Development Finance : Examine the World Bank’s role in funding development projects and its impact on global economic disparities.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

Collective Security : Analyze NATO’s evolving role in ensuring collective defense and maintaining regional and global security.

International Security

Nuclear weapons.

Arms Control Dilemmas : Explore the challenges of nuclear disarmament, arms control agreements, and the geopolitical implications of nuclear arsenals.

Global Threats : Investigate the causes, dynamics, and counterterrorism strategies in response to global terrorist threats.

Cyberwarfare

Virtual Battlefields : Examine the evolving landscape of cyber threats, state-sponsored cyber operations, and diplomatic responses.

Climate Change

Security Implications : Assess the security challenges posed by climate change, including resource scarcity, migration, and conflict risks.

Global Health Security : Explore the intersection of international relations and global health, focusing on pandemic preparedness and response.

International Development

The causes of poverty.

Structural Analysis : Investigate the root causes of poverty globally, examining the role of economic, social, and political factors.

The Impact of Globalization

Global Dynamics : Analyze the effects of globalization on economic, social, and political dimensions, considering both positive and negative impacts.

The Role of Aid

Humanitarian Assistance : Examine the effectiveness of international aid in promoting development, addressing crises, and reducing poverty.

The Role of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)

Civil Society Actors : Assess the contributions and challenges of NGOs in international development and diplomacy.

The Future of International Development

Sustainable Goals : Speculate on the future trajectories of international development, considering global challenges and innovative solutions.

International Political Economy

The global economy.

Economic Governance : Evaluate the structures and governance of the global economy, addressing issues of economic inequality and trade imbalances.

Trade Diplomacy Trends : Investigate emerging trends in global trade diplomacy, trade agreements, and their impact on national economies.

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) : Examine the role of FDI in shaping international economic relations, focusing on its impact on host and home countries.

Financial Governance : Assess the role of international financial institutions and governance mechanisms in maintaining global financial stability.

Development

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) : Explore the progress and challenges in achieving the SDGs, considering their impact on global economic relations.

International Environmental Politics

Global Responses : Evaluate international efforts to address climate change, analyzing agreements, policies, and the role of state and non-state actors.

Biodiversity

Conservation Challenges : Examine global initiatives and challenges in preserving biodiversity, considering the impact on ecosystems and human societies.

Cross-Border Impacts : Analyze international frameworks and strategies for addressing transboundary pollution, emphasizing cooperative solutions.

Water Resources

Hydro-Diplomacy : Investigate the geopolitical dimensions of water scarcity, transboundary water management, and the potential for conflict or cooperation.

Global Energy Security : Assess the geopolitics of energy resources, exploring the impact on international relations and national security.

International Human Rights

The universal declaration of human rights.

70 Years On : Reflect on the achievements and challenges in upholding the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Role of Human Rights Organizations

Advocacy and Impact : Assess the contributions and limitations of human rights organizations in promoting and protecting human rights globally.

The Challenges of Human Rights Protection

Contemporary Dilemmas : Examine current challenges and dilemmas in the protection of human rights, considering cultural, political, and legal perspectives.

The Future of Human Rights

Emerging Harmonies : Identify and analyze emerging human rights issues globally and explore diplomatic strategies for advancing human rights advocacy worldwide.

Future Trends

Check out the future trends:-

Diplomacy in the Digital Age

Cybersecurity Adventures: In an era of technological leaps, the specter of cyber threats looms large. Future international relations will be in the trenches, figuring out the playbook for norms, treaties, and group huddles to fend off cyber villains and safeguard our digital fortresses.

Guardians of Global Wellness

Pandemic Odyssey: The seismic impact of COVID-19 sounded the alarm for robust global health governance.

Imagine this: a future where nations join hands in a symphony of collaboration, fine-tuning pandemic preparedness, orchestrating vaccine ballets, and addressing health inequalities on the grand stage of global solidarity.

Environmental Diplomacy

Climate Crusaders: Brace yourself for a climate showdown! As the world heats up, international relations will groove to the beat of urgent climate action.

Imagine a dance floor where negotiations, agreements, and collaborations bust moves to mitigate environmental threats and jive with the rhythm of a changing climate.

Regional Power Play

Shapeshifting Dynamics: A plot twist is brewing as regional powers in Asia and Africa steal the spotlight, reshaping the global stage.

The future of international relations will be a blockbuster, navigating the rise of these regional superheroes alongside the traditional titans of global influence.

Tech-Driven Humanitarianism

Aid’s Tech Symphony: When humanitarian crises strike, enter the tech virtuosos! Drones, artificial intelligence, and other tech marvels take center stage, orchestrating a symphony of innovation to respond to crises and deliver assistance with superhero efficiency.

Cosmic Diplomacy

Space Odyssey Unleashed: As we soar into the cosmos, international relations will boldly go where no treaties have gone before.

Picture diplomatic efforts navigating the vast expanse of space, establishing norms, agreements, and governance frameworks for our cosmic endeavors.

Economic Resilience Revolution:

Economic Tango Redefined: The aftermath of global economic shocks reshapes the dance floor of economic alliances and trade relationships.

Future international relations will spin into action, crafting moves to enhance economic resilience and foster cooperation in an ever-changing economic landscape.

Digital Frontier Governance:

Regulating the Digital Wild West: Get ready for a showdown in the digital saloon! The digital realm takes the spotlight in international relations, where future trends include crafting international regulations, treaties, and norms to tame the digital frontier, ensuring data privacy and the ethical use of emerging technologies.

Migration Marvels:

Demographic Jigsaw: Demographic changes and migration challenges become key players in the international relations saga.

Nations collaborate on an epic script, developing comprehensive policies that address the impacts of migration on societies, economies, and the geopolitics stage.

Multilateral Makeover

Global Governance Remix: The future sees multilateral institutions donning a new look to tackle contemporary challenges.

Efforts to reform and adapt global governance structures take center stage, promising an international relations blockbuster that shapes the world’s destiny.

What are good topics for research in international relations?

Check out some of good topics for research in international relations:-

Digital Battlegrounds: Navigating Cybersecurity Challenges in Global Diplomacy

Unraveling the influence of cyber threats on shaping diplomatic relations and the imperative for a united front in the realm of cybersecurity.

China’s Global Odyssey: Decoding the Belt and Road Initiative

Embarking on an exploration of the economic, political, and geopolitical ripple effects stemming from China’s grand infrastructure and development venture.

Angels in Conflict: Humanitarian Interventions Unveiled

Delving into the intricacies of international humanitarian interventions, weighing their effectiveness against the ethical backdrop in conflict-ridden territories.

Climate Avengers: Global Governance Confronts Climate Change

Surveying the battlefield of climate change, evaluating the triumphs and tribulations of international agreements and organizations in fostering sustainability.

Beyond Borders: The Dance of Non-State Actors in Global Affairs

Spotlighting the silent influencers – NGOs, multinational corporations, and other non-state actors – and deciphering their impact on the world stage.

Refugee Realities: An International Collaboration Saga

Unmasking the challenges and collaborative opportunities on the global stage as nations grapple with the escalating refugee crisis .

Energy Chess: Geopolitics in Resource Distribution

Tracing the geopolitical moves dictated by the control and distribution of energy resources, a chess game shaping international relations.

Populism’s Echo: Global Diplomacy in the Age of Charismatic Leaders

Analyzing the crescendo of populist movements and leaders, exploring their influence on international relations, alliances, and diplomatic dynamics.

Nuclear Shadows: Proliferation Puzzles and Global Security

Assessing the shadow cast by nuclear weapons proliferation and unraveling strategies for global disarmament.

Multilateralism Unveiled: Charting the Future Course

Lifting the curtain on the role and relevance of multilateral institutions in the ever-evolving landscape of international relations, envisioning potential reforms.

Regional Harmony: Dynamics of Integration Explored

Unlocking the impact of regional organizations, like the European Union or ASEAN, on stability, economic collaboration, and political cohesion.

Soft Whispers: Cultural Influence in Global Affairs

Deciphering the art of soft power, cultural sway, and the dance of public diplomacy on the grand stage of international relations.

Trade Winds of Change: Global Commerce Post-Pandemic

Navigating the reshaped tides of global trade and supply chains in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rights Under Fire: Human Rights Amidst Conflict

Assessing the safeguarding of human rights in the tumult of conflict zones, and exploring avenues for accountability and justice.

AI on the Frontlines: Warfare in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Probing the ethical, legal, and strategic battlegrounds of integrating artificial intelligence into military operations and the face of warfare.

These topics now come alive with a touch of intrigue and exploration!

What topics do international relations students study?

Embarking on the adventure of international relations studies is like diving into a treasure trove of global complexities. A

s students navigate this dynamic field, they encounter a fascinating array of subjects that mirror the intricate dance of nations.

Here’s a sneak peek into the captivating topics that typically grace the desks of international relations students:

Global Political Economy

Unraveling the intricate threads of international trade, finance, and economic jamborees, exploring the rollercoaster ride of globalization, development dramas, and economic sagas.

Delving into the legal labyrinths that regulate the cosmic ballet between states, organizations, and individuals on the world stage—think treaties, human rights, and diplomatic choreography.

Security Studies

Analyzing the kaleidoscope of global security, from military acrobatics and conflict resolution gymnastics to the starring role of international organizations in the grand spectacle of peacekeeping.

Comparative Politics

Comparing political systems worldwide, a bit like political Tinder, but for countries—swipe left for autocracy, swipe right for democracy.

Diplomacy and Negotiation

Mastering the art and strategy of diplomacy—picture a chessboard where countries make their moves with diplomatic finesse, negotiating checkmates and stalemates.

Foreign Policy Analysis

Playing detective in the realm of global decision-making—think Sherlock Holmes meets geopolitics, dissecting the motives and influences behind a nation’s foreign policy.

Touring the bureaucratic wonders of global organizations like the United Nations, where policies are debated, resolutions are passed, and diplomatic handshakes abound.

Human Rights and Global Governance

Championing the cause of human rights on the world stage, a bit like the Avengers, but for justice, with discussions on global governance challenges thrown in.

Crisis Management

Learning the ABCs of handling international crises—from humanitarian dramas to political cliffhangers, because sometimes the world feels like a suspenseful blockbuster.

Area Studies

Taking a deep dive into the soul of specific regions or countries, unraveling their histories, cultures, political intrigues, and international relations soap operas.

These are just a few teasers from the thrilling curriculum that shapes international relations students into global aficionados, ready to decode the world’s greatest mysteries and challenges.

What are the main issues of international relations?

Embarking on the labyrinthine journey of international relations is like diving headfirst into a riveting saga filled with complex challenges and diplomatic intricacies. Here’s a closer look at the pulse-quickening issues that keep the global stage buzzing with anticipation:

Global Security and Conflict

Imagine the ongoing chess game of maintaining global peace, tackling conflicts, and deftly sidestepping the landmines of potential new hostilities.

Economic Inequality and Globalization

Imagine a high-stakes tightrope walk, balancing the pursuit of economic growth with the tightrope of fair wealth distribution in our interconnected, globalized world.

Climate Change and Environmental Sustainability

Feel the urgency of a call to arms against climate change, championing environmental protection, and orchestrating a symphony of international cooperation for sustainable development.

Human Rights Violations

Enter the battlefield of justice, where the quest to protect and champion human rights clashes with discrimination, persecution, and the shadows of injustice.

Global Health Challenges

Witness the epic quest against pandemics, the noble pursuit of equal healthcare, and the captivating dance where global health meets the intricate steps of international relations.

Nuclear Proliferation

Imagine delicate diplomatic waltz around the possession and potential use of nuclear weapons, involving disarming maneuvers, non-proliferation treaties, and diplomatic pirouettes.

Terrorism and Transnational Crime

Navigate the thrilling world of international intrigue where the threat of terrorism and cybercrime lurk, challenging the boundaries of nations.

Migration and Displacement

Step into the multifaceted dance of human migration, refugees seeking a new rhythm, and the drama of how these moves impact host countries and global stability.

Nationalism and Populism

Experience the resurgence of nationalist and populist movements, an unfolding drama influencing both domestic and international political stages.

Technological Advancements and Governance

Dive into the riveting tale of rapid technological advances, where cybersecurity challenges and the regulation of emerging technologies take center stage.

Public Health Crises

Respond to the urgent call of global health crises, epitomized by the dramatic plot twists of events like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Diplomatic Tensions and Alliances

Feel the diplomatic tension in the air, where alliances are forged and strained, as the geopolitical script continually rewrites itself.

These are not just global issues; they’re the characters and plotlines that make the grand narrative of international relations a thrilling and ever-evolving spectacle. Get ready for the next episode!

What are the topics of the International Relations Journal?

The International Relations Journal is like a treasure trove, unlocking the secrets of the ever-evolving world of international relations.

It’s a captivating journey through a kaleidoscope of topics, where the academic spotlight shines on:

Dive into the drama of war, the chessboard of nuclear politics, and the backstage workings of global peacekeepers.

Get tangled in the web of globalization’s impact on world economies, the intricate dance of international trade, and the role of financial bigwigs.

Embark on a legal odyssey, exploring the origins and applications of international law, dissecting treaties, and scrutinizing institutions like the International Court of Justice.

Take a cross-cultural road trip, comparing political systems, dissecting the birth and demise of democracies and autocracies, and peeking into the political economy and social policies across the globe.

International Relations Theory

Dip your toes into the sea of theories, from the hard-hitters like realism and liberalism to the avant-garde worlds of constructivism, critical theory, and postmodernism.

International History

Time-travel through historical sagas of diplomacy, the rollercoaster of war, the rise and fall of empires, and the game-changers like the Cold War, 9/11, and the transformative waves of the Arab Spring.

This isn’t just a journal; it’s a vibrant marketplace of ideas, where scholars and enthusiasts alike gather to decipher the complex symphony that is international relations.

In the captivating realm of international relations research, these topics serve as portals into the heart of our global narrative, inviting curious minds to embark on a journey through the complexities that define our interconnected world.

From the intriguing dance of technological diplomacy to the pressing challenges posed by climate change, each research avenue beckons exploration and deeper understanding.

As we navigate this intellectual landscape, the rise of artificial intelligence’s impact on global affairs, China’s ascendancy reshaping geopolitical dynamics, and the imperative for collective action on climate-related issues emerge as pivotal subjects.

These aren’t just topics; they are doorways into a world where every inquiry contributes to the ever-evolving story of our shared human experience.

The future of democracy faces crossroads, and the ethical dimensions of technology on human rights challenge us to contemplate the intersection of progress and ethical responsibility.

The multifaceted facets of international security weave a narrative that transcends borders, reminding us of our interconnected destinies.

As scholars and enthusiasts delve into these topics, the journal of international relations becomes not just a source of knowledge but a compass, guiding us through the intricate and dynamic terrain of our global society.

The landscape of international relations research is an open invitation to unravel, question, and actively participate in the ongoing dialogue that shapes our world. It’s a vibrant tapestry waiting to be explored by those curious enough to seek, understand, and contribute to the rich mosaic of our interconnected reality.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the key theoretical frameworks in international relations research.

International relations research draws on various theoretical frameworks, including realism, liberalism, and constructivism. Each offers unique perspectives on global affairs.

How does cultural diplomacy impact international relations?

Cultural diplomacy plays a crucial role in shaping international perceptions. It fosters understanding between nations and influences public opinion, contributing to soft power dynamics.

What are the pressing contemporary issues in international relations research?

Contemporary issues include geopolitical tensions, global health crises, and environmental challenges. Researchers delve into these topics to offer insights and solutions.

How does global governance contribute to international stability?

Global governance, facilitated by international organizations, contributes to stability by providing mechanisms for collaboration, conflict resolution, and the pursuit of common goals.

What role do case studies play in international relations research?

Case studies provide a practical application of theoretical frameworks to real-world scenarios. They offer nuanced insights into diplomatic challenges and successes.

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Article contents

Diplomacy and international law.

• David Clinton David Clinton Department of Political Science, Baylor University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.152
• Published in print: 01 March 2010
• Published online: 30 November 2017

Within the international society, law and diplomacy have always been complementary and interdependent. However, lawyers and diplomats deal with international issues differently, making them rivals to be the primary mode of international interaction. Diplomacy is the art and practice of conducting negotiations between representatives of states; it usually refers to international diplomacy, the conduct of international relations through the mediation of professional diplomats with regard to a full range of topical issues. Nations sometimes resort to international arbitration when faced with a specific question or point of contention in need of resolution. For most of history, there were no official or formal procedures for such proceedings. They were generally accepted to abide by general principles and protocols related to international law and justice. International law is the set of rules generally regarded and accepted as binding in relations between states and between nations. It serves as a framework for the practice of stable and organized international relations. Much of international law is consent-based governance. This means that a state member is not obliged to abide by this type of law, unless it has expressly consented to a particular course of conduct, or entered a diplomatic convention. Interdisciplinary courses, like diplomacy and international law, are designed to help one think critically about diplomatic and international legal issues in real-life contexts, while applying theory to practice and addressing some of the key questions facing the world today.

• international law
• international arbitration
• consent-based governance
• interdisciplinary courses

Introduction

Diplomacy and law are in some ways interdependent and have always been looked on as complementary facets of international society. Yet diplomats and lawyers approach international issues in distinctly different ways, and one frequent theme running through commentary on diplomacy has been that they are competitors to be the primary mode of international interaction, at least in situations short of war. They are the quarrelsome Siamese twins of international relations.

Traditional diplomacy conducted between the official representatives of states, of course, relies on states’ domestic law to provide the protection needed to uphold the principles of diplomatic immunity, and insofar as states make promises to one another in the course of conducting diplomacy, they do so on the assumption that each government rests on an effective system of law at home that will enable it to carry out the obligations that it has taken on. There is therefore a close connection in the traditional view of diplomacy between the conception of states as reasonably reliable maintainers of law within their borders, on the one hand, and states as competent makers and keepers of commitments in negotiations with other states, on the other (Gong 1984 ). The relationship between diplomacy and international rather than domestic law is more complex.

Similarities and Mutual Reliance

Diplomacy and international law in a sense grew up together, inseparable as manifestations of a complex European international system in which separate centers of political and military power sought autonomy and greater relative capabilities but, because they existed in close conjunction and necessarily transacted much business among themselves, required some means of regulating their relations. Relying on rules of law was one way of meeting this need; practicing diplomatic interchange was another. Both the regulations of law and the bargaining of diplomacy initially encompassed a variety of political or other units, but over time the increasingly dominant “states” both suppressed competitors for influence within the territory over which they declared themselves sovereign and excluded institutions other than their fellow states from the status needed to be either a party at law or a partner in negotiations. The limited character of international law reflected the same loose construction of international society that the experimental nature of diplomacy did; in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries both were in the process of discarding the presumptions of a civitas maxima founded in Christendom and governed by natural law, and moving toward a positivist conception of a society of secular states observing such rules as they agreed to among themselves and creating and sustaining such diplomatic practices and institutions as they found mutually advantageous.

As Stanley Hoffmann has noted, “The size of the diplomatic field determine[d] the degree of universality of the legal order” (Hoffmann 1965 :96). Yet one could say the same thing in reverse. The geographic extent of the international states-system and society as revealed on the map by those states that accepted common modes of diplomacy demarcated the area within which international law operated between juridically equal participants. Just as surely, the domain of the subjects of international law (as opposed to “barbarians” outside, who might be regulated by European international law but who had fewer rights under it and no role in making it) marked the scope of the diplomatic system (Gong 1984 ). The two activities were both inherent in a setting defined by a diversity of wills moderated by a degree of society among them. Neither was inevitable in the form that it eventually took – past international systems have developed rules other than legal ones, such as purely moral precepts; diplomatic institutions such as resident envoys have not generally been part of those prior systems – but that there would be rules of some kind, and that there would be some means of communicating and managing business among these many wills, does seem to have been required by the kind of world that the European international system turned out to be (Wight 1977 ; Bull 2002 :122–77).

Diplomacy and international law were and are mutually constitutive. Aside from asserted law laid down at a stroke by international judicial institutions, international law is the creation of diplomacy, either through bargaining at a multilateral gathering that results in a proposed convention that would stand as a general principle of law for the entirety or at least the bulk of the members of the states-system; or through discussions among a more limited number of states (perhaps only two) leading to a formal agreement that, if ratified, would have the status of a legal contract among or between them; or as a pattern of behavior that is eventually recognized as customary law (Goldsmith and Posner 2005 ). On the other hand, international law heavily regulates diplomacy, providing rules under which it is carried on – as in the Vienna Conventions on Diplomatic and Consular Relations of 1961 and 1963 , which codify centuries of developing practice on the security of diplomats (Wilson 1967 ; McClanahan 1989 ; Frey and Frey 1999 ; Barker 2006 ) – and the rules of construction of international agreements, which are borne in mind by diplomats as they negotiate. Every major ministry of foreign affairs has its legal office, the advice of which helps to shape its definition of its diplomatic objectives and the bargaining strategy it employs to obtain them. Insofar as diplomacy represents an attempt to advance some conception of justice, it has been suggested that the path lies through a quasi-judicial analogy – through the idea of judgment by one’s peers, under which states determine their actions toward a fellow state, in part, by their opinion on the justice of its external and internal conduct; they make their opinions known, and attempt to bring the target state to alter its behavior in accordance with those opinions, through the processes of diplomacy (Watson 1983 :40–51).

Differences and Perennial Rivalry

Nevertheless, the idea that international law and diplomacy are mutually incompatible has also been a recurrent feature of thinking about international relations. Because the two forms of interaction employ different criteria and different methods, they have frequently been thought to be characterized by contrasting spirits. The literature on “the ideal diplomat” that became a staple of writings on diplomacy from the Renaissance through the seventeenth century at times displayed skepticism about the suitability of lawyers to serve as diplomats. Callières advised against making magistrates diplomatic envoys, describing them as “ordinarily of a less flexible temper, of a more difficult access, and of a less engaging carriage” than are courtiers (Callières 1983 :169). By this, he meant that such judicial officers, accustomed to dealing with advocates who were attempting to persuade them in the magistrates’ own courts, tended to be officious and superior in their manner, while what was called for in a minister sent abroad to deal with sovereigns was the ability to please those superior in rank, and to fence skillfully with equals in negotiations. Yet it can also be inferred that Callières believed that suppleness of mind was essential to arriving at the accommodations inherent in diplomacy, while law consisted in the more unyielding application of settled rules.

In the twentieth century , with the emergence of international relations as a separate field of study, self-conscious of its independence from the older discipline of international law, this insistence on the distinction between the bargaining over interests in diplomacy and the assertion of rights in law became more general and more systematically argued. Carving out an autonomous realm of life known as the political, realist thought in particular drew the line distinctly, and not to the advantage of law. Kennan’s detection of the “legalistic-moralistic approach to international problems,” running “like a red skein” through American foreign policy since the turn of the century, left him with little confidence that fixed legal rules, prizing stability, could meet the most pressing need of an anarchical international system, a means of peaceful change. Easing the process of change was “a task for diplomacy” (Kennan 1951 :82–9). In this dichotomy between diplomacy’s agile accommodation to transformed realities and law’s unyielding resistance to them, Kennan followed the line of reasoning powerfully stated by both Carr and Morgenthau (Carr 1964 :170–223; Morgenthau 2006 :283–316, 452–82). Carr in particular asserted that diplomacy was not simply different from but was superior to international law as a way of achieving peaceful change, because the legal method of dealing with conflict was to shut its eyes to the interests at stake and endeavor to apply a supposedly neutral set of legal principles to parties who cared far more about prevailing than they did about complying with legal procedures, while the diplomatic-political method took every interest into account, thereby more fully appreciating the complexity of international disputes and the disadvantages felt by have-not states. Diplomacy, in this telling, was more likely to be the engine of change employed by the dissatisfied, international law to be the bulwark of resistance relied on by the supporters of the status quo.

For their part, students of international law tended to see fewer if any sharp contrasts between diplomacy and international law. Writing early in the twentieth century , Brierly treated them merely as different ways of achieving international cooperation or avoiding international conflict, distinguished mainly by the generality of the principles for settlement arrived at through legal channels and the specificity of the expedients produced through diplomatic ones (Brierly 1928 :197–203). Jessup, writing at mid-century, asserted, “There is no […] dichotomy […] between law and diplomacy,” and Dixon, entering the fray late in the century, added that “it should not be thought that any of the various methods of dispute settlement are exclusively ‘judicial’ or ‘diplomatic’” (Jessup 1949 :3; Dixon 2000 :263). A generalization might hold that those who have approached this subject from a background in diplomacy have tended to draw the distinction more firmly, while those who have treated it from the vantage point of law have more often concentrated on similarities between the two institutions (Reinsch 1922 ; D’Amato 1972 :82–95; Watson 1983 :40–51). Nevertheless, the Chichele Professorship of International Law and Diplomacy, which had been established in 1859 – half a century before the setting up of the Wilson Chair of International Politics at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth – was later shorn of half of its appellation, becoming the Chichele Professorship of Public International Law; the diplomatic yin disappeared, leaving only the legal yang.

In this decades-long debate, Kennan, Morgenthau, and Carr asserted the superiority of diplomacy over international law as a method of dealing with conflict; others, like Reinsch or Leonard Woolf , drew an equally clear line between the two but argued for the greater efficacy of law, and indeed advocated the replacement of diplomacy by law (Wilson 2003 ). One reason for the entire debate may have been the assumption that the functions of diplomacy are exhausted with dispute resolution, the ground on which diplomacy and law seem to run in parallel as clear alternatives. This view, however, slights the other facets of diplomacy. The ongoing representation of one participant in international society to another, the cultivation of common rather than conflicting interests, the advancement of the wellbeing of one’s citizens and their enterprises abroad – these diplomatic activities are distinguishable from the contests that may be directed either to court or to the negotiating table, and such non-conflictual aspects of diplomacy also proceed within the framework of a developed legal system. In other words, once the full complexity of both law and diplomacy is understood, the perceived necessity of choosing between them begins to seem less clear-cut (Berridge 2002 ; Bobbit 2002 :362).

The Influence of Culture

One suggested unity between diplomacy and law lies in the reliance by both on constitutionalism – on the idea that one can bind the future through agreed-on promises and contracts that embody law and comprise the fruit of diplomacy. This unity may be achieved at the cost of revealing another disparity, however: that between the Western world, which formed this amalgam of thought, and non-Western cultures, which, not resting on the same historical background, have adopted the forms of both law and diplomacy much more readily than their aims and assumptions. Universal formal adherence to the means (through the adoption of diplomatic institutions by all the new members of international society following decolonization, for example) fails to bring with it a comparable belief in the ends, of orderly, peaceful relations among juridically equal political units, guided by a set of norms transcending the interests of the players – ends that, if far from always adhered to in the European system, had been at least approximated to a greater degree than in other historical international systems (Bozeman 1971 :ix–xvii; 1994 :438–522). Such mistaking form for substance in a world now much more culturally diverse and riven with conflict could account for Bull’s somber view that only “on a narrowly legal view” could it be said that diplomatic institutions were strengthened in the twentieth century , and that the system-wide ratification of the Vienna conventions on diplomatic and consular relations “ushered in a period remarkable for a very high incidence of actual violation of diplomatic immunities” (Bull 2002 :177, 156).

Others suggest a similar link between diplomacy and international law as components of a Western-originated system grounded in a Western world-view, but the tie is of a negative character, both of these institutions being tainted by inequality – that is, inequality among political units, since the precepts and procedures of diplomacy and law have been systematically biased in favor of the interests of the dominant powers which originated them, and inequality among the human beings enmeshed in the institutions, especially regarding gender (with the ranks of diplomats being dominated by males, and females relegated to the role of diplomatic spouse, while international law is alleged to display a lack of concern toward abuses of special importance to women) (Der Derian 1991 ; True 2004 :151–62).

It has been argued that the very marriage of the forms of diplomacy with the concepts of law has proved damaging to the conduct of Western diplomacy. In a consideration of diplomacy somewhat reminiscent of Kennan’s critique, Cohen defines a Western, and in particular an American, “low-context” diplomatic negotiating style precisely in its reliance on “legalism” – the assumption that one negotiates by building up a persuasive case founded in logic and precedent in order to arrive at a clear and binding contract. By contrast, he finds that negotiators from “high-context” cultures may display emotion, appeal to status, employ what seems to low-context negotiators to be dissimulation, or calculate solely on the basis of power, but they will not be swayed by the arguments relied on, or the style congenial to, lawyers trying a case or drawing up a contractual agreement. Cohen, however, goes further than Kennan, who described the “moralistic-legalist approach” as an intellectual blind alley down which American diplomacy had been led at a fairly recent point in its history and out of which it could find its way if properly instructed; for Cohen, the “low-context” adoption of legal forms of thought in diplomatic contexts for which they were not suited was a natural outgrowth of fundamental Western cultural practices, carried to their fullest development in the American context and inculcated from childhood in every cultural setting, which would be dauntingly difficult to take up or put off at will (Cohen 1997 :135–42).

Diplomacy and Law: Cohabitation or Divorce?

Diplomacy begins with a consciousness of the limitations to one’s power. State and non-state practitioners of diplomacy generally find it impossible (or at least unacceptably costly) simply to take what they want; the existence of other centers of power and authority, possessing their own coercive resources and differing interests, makes proceeding by the sheer imposition of one’s will impossible. Practitioners of diplomacy “have therefore concerned themselves more with expediency, prudence and compromise” than with the handing down of orders (Watson 1992 :8). It is in the absence of that very expediency, prudence, and compromise that Kennan finds the “legalistic-moralistic approach” lacking. Still, law, too, assumes that one party to a dispute cannot simply impose its preferred solution, but must instead contend with or cooperate with, and at any rate on some points give way to, an independent will. Both diplomacy and law, in other words, rest on plurality, and on a preference for dealing peacefully rather than forcefully with the constantly varying pattern of conflicting and coinciding interests inherent in any setting of dynamic plurality. Each is willing to employ coercion – law as a punishment, visited upon the guilty for their crimes; diplomacy as an incentive, pressing the recalcitrant toward agreement. Yet the diplomat questions whether the law is flexible enough to withhold retribution from the guilty if mutual advantage demands ignoring legal violations, while the guardian of law fears the demoralizing effect of bargaining with lawbreakers instead of punishing them. Perhaps in a world in which the identities of those who pursue diplomacy are becoming ever more varied, and the consular, representational, and symbolic functions of diplomacy are becoming steadily more important, the similarities, divergences, and symbiotic action of these two forms of international interaction will form the focus of greater academic research and practical action.

• Barker, J.C. (2006) The Protection of Diplomatic Personnel . Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
• Berridge, G.R. (2002) Diplomacy: Theory and Practice . New York: Palgrave.
• Bobbitt, P. (2002) The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History . New York: Random House.
• Bozeman, A.B. (1971) The Future of Law in a Multicultural World . Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Bozeman, A.B . (1994) Politics and Culture in International History: From the Ancient Near East to the Opening of the Modern Age , 2nd edn. New Brunswick: Transaction. Originally published 1960.
• Brierly, J.L. (1928) The Law of Nations: An Introduction to the International Law of Peace . London: Oxford University Press.
• Bull, H. (2002) The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics , 3rd edn. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Callières, F. de (1983) The Art of Diplomacy . New York: Holmes and Meier. Originally published 1716.
• Carr, E.H . (1964) The Twenty Years’ Crisis: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations . New York: Harper. Originally published 1939.
• Cohen, R. (1997) Negotiation Across Cultures: International Communication in an Interdependent World . Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace.
• D’Amato, A. (1972) The Relevance of Machiavelli to Contemporary World Politics. In A. Parel (ed.) The Political Calculus: Essays on Machiavelli’s Philosophy . Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
• Der Derian, J. (1991) On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Western Estrangement . New York: Blackwell.
• Dixon, M. (2000) Textbook on International Law . New York: Oxford University Press.
• Frey, L.S. , and Frey, M.L. (1999) The History of Diplomatic Immunity . Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
• Goldsmith, J. , and Posner, E.A. (2005) The Limits of International Law . New York: Oxford University Press.
• Gong, G. (1984) The Standard of “Civilization” in International Society . Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Hoffmann, S. (1965) The State of War: Essays on the Theory and Practice of International Politics . New York: Praeger.
• Jessup, P.C. (1949) A Modern Law of Nations: An Introduction . New York: Macmillan.
• Kennan, G.F. (1951) American Diplomacy, 1900–1950 . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• McClanahan, G.V. (1989) Diplomatic Immunity: Principles, Practices, Problems . New York: St. Martin’s Press.
• Morgenthau, H.J. (2006) Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace , 7th edn. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Reinsch, P.S. (1922) Secret Diplomacy: How Far Can It Be Eliminated? New York: Harcourt, Brace.
• True, J. (2004) Feminism. In A.J. Bellamy (ed.) International Society and its Critics . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Watson, A. (1983) Diplomacy: The Dialogue Between States . New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Watson, A. (1992) The Evolution of International Society: A Comparative Historical Analysis . New York: Routledge.
• Wight, M. (1977) Systems of States . Leicester: Leicester University Press.
• Wilson, C.E. (1967) Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities . Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
• Wilson, P. (2003) The International Theory of Leonard Woolf: A Study in Twentieth-Century Idealism . New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Links to Digital Materials

Bernstoff, J. von. (2008) The Changing Fortunes of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Genesis and Symbolic Dimensions of the Turn to Rights in International Law. At http://ejil.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/19/5/903?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=diplomacy&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&volume=19&issue=5&resourcetype=HWCIT , accessed Apr. 2009. The European Journal of International Law is a publication devoted to analysis and discussion of various contemporary as well as re-occurring issues. It provides both immediate news-based commentary and a treatment of the deeper theoretical implications.

Gwertzman, B. (2008) Nuclear Agreement with North Korea is “A Useful Initial Step.” At www.cfr.org/publication/16653/nuclear_agreement_with_north_korea_is_a_useful_initial_step.html , accessed Apr. 2009. The Council on Foreign Relations is a non-partisan think-tank devoted to analysis and discussion of the international concerns facing today’s leaders. With a focus on the role of America in foreign relations, the Council frequently invites top government officials to debate any number of current affairs.

Lugo, L. (2007) International Religious Freedom: Religion and International Diplomacy. At http://pewforum.org/events/?EventID=139 , accessed Apr. 2009. Shah, T. (2006) Legislating International Religious Freedom. At http://pewforum.org/events/index.php?EventID=133 , accessed Apr. 2009. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life is an organization devoted to the interaction between religion and the public. Not only does it collect and analyze pertinent survey information, it also provides a neutral place for productive and fruitful discussions to occur with respect to the issues at hand.

Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961). At http://fletcher.tufts.edu/multi/diplomatic.html , accessed Apr. 2009. Part of Tufts University’s Fletcher School, the Multilaterals Project is a continuing effort to make easily accessible several key multilateral conventions as well as other important related documents. The project covers multiple issues including, but not limited to, arms control, human rights, and laws of war.

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International Law Research Paper Topics

This page presents a comprehensive collection of international law research paper topics , curated to aid students studying law in their research endeavors. International law is a multifaceted field with diverse areas of study, and this page aims to provide students with an extensive list of topics that can serve as a foundation for their research papers. By exploring these topics, students can delve into various aspects of international law, such as human rights, criminal law, environmental law, trade law, and humanitarian law, among others. This page also offers insights into how to choose compelling international law research paper topics, tips on writing a coherent and impactful paper, and highlights the custom international law research paper writing services provided by iResearchNet. The ultimate goal is to empower students to embark on an enriching and successful academic journey in the realm of international law research.

100 International Law Research Paper Topics

International law encompasses a vast array of subjects, reflecting the intricate and interconnected nature of global affairs. As students of law, exploring these topics can open new horizons and deepen their understanding of how international legal frameworks shape our world. This comprehensive list presents 10 categories, each comprising 10 diverse and thought-provoking international law research paper topics. Whether you are interested in human rights, environmental protection, trade regulations, or armed conflicts, these topics offer a wealth of opportunities for academic exploration and intellectual growth.

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• The Universality of Human Rights: A Global Perspective
• Human Rights and Armed Conflicts: Challenges and Protections
• Gender Equality and Women’s Rights in International Law
• The Role of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Promoting Human Rights
• Freedom of Speech and Expression in the Digital Age
• Human Rights Violations and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P)
• Children’s Rights and Child Protection Laws Internationally
• The Right to Asylum: Refugee Protection and International Law
• Combating Human Trafficking: International Legal Frameworks
• Indigenous Peoples’ Rights and Cultural Heritage Preservation
• Climate Change and Global Efforts for Environmental Protection
• Biodiversity Conservation and the Convention on Biological Diversity
• Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Environmental Justice
• Transboundary Pollution and International Liability
• The Role of International Courts and Tribunals in Environmental Disputes
• The Precautionary Principle in International Environmental Law
• Oceans Governance and the Protection of Marine Resources
• International Agreements on Wildlife Conservation and Endangered Species
• Indigenous Peoples and Environmental Rights: Perspectives and Challenges
• The Economics of Environmental Protection: Balancing Trade and Conservation
• World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Multilateral Trading System
• Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and Regional Economic Integration
• Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) Mechanisms in Trade Agreements
• Intellectual Property Rights and International Trade
• Trade and Labor Standards: Addressing Social Issues in Global Commerce
• Environmental Protection in International Trade: Conflicts and Synergies
• Trade Remedies: Anti-dumping, Countervailing, and Safeguard Measures
• Trade Liberalization and Economic Development: Case Studies
• Cross-Border E-Commerce and Digital Trade Regulations
• Challenges of Trade in Services: Legal and Regulatory Perspectives
• The International Criminal Court (ICC) and Its Role in Ending Impunity
• Prosecuting War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity: Legal Challenges
• Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Prosecute
• The Evolution of International Criminal Law: From Nuremberg to the ICC
• The Principle of Universal Jurisdiction: Holding Perpetrators Accountable
• Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in Post-Conflict Societies
• The Role of the United Nations in Combating International Crimes
• War Criminals and Refugees: The Intersection of Criminal and Migration Law
• Cyberwarfare and the Application of International Criminal Law
• Combating Terrorism: Legal Approaches and Human Rights Concerns
• The Geneva Conventions and the Protection of War Victims
• Targeted Killings and Drones: The Legal Challenges of Modern Warfare
• The Principle of Proportionality in Armed Conflicts
• War Crimes and Accountability in Non-International Armed Conflicts
• The Protection of Cultural Property in Armed Conflicts
• Autonomous Weapons and the Ethics of Lethal Autonomous Systems (LAS)
• The Role of National Courts in Prosecuting War Crimes
• The Humanitarian Impact of Economic Sanctions and Trade Embargoes
• Children in Armed Conflicts: From Recruitment to Rehabilitation
• Humanitarian Assistance and the Challenges of Providing Aid in Conflict Zones
• Comparative Constitutional Law: Analyzing Different Legal Systems and Their Impact on Global Governance
• The Role of International Law in Shaping Domestic Constitutions
• Constitutional Design and State Building in Post-Conflict Societies
• Human Rights and Constitutional Protections: Assessing the Impact of International Treaties
• Constitutionalism and the Rule of Law: Ensuring Effective Governance in International Relations
• Judicial Independence and the Enforcement of Constitutional Rights in International Contexts
• The Impact of International Institutions on National Constitutions
• The Right to Privacy in the Digital Age: Balancing National Security and Civil Liberties
• Federalism and the Division of Powers in Constitutional Design
• The Role of Constitutional Courts in Protecting Democratic Principles
• Cross-Border Mergers and Acquisitions: Legal and Regulatory Challenges
• International Commercial Arbitration: Enforcement and Recognition of Awards
• Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Multinational Corporations
• Foreign Investment Protection and Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs)
• International Contract Law and Choice of Law Clauses
• Dispute Resolution in International Trade: Litigation vs. Arbitration
• Intellectual Property Rights and International Business Transactions
• International Trade Law and the World Trade Organization (WTO)
• Corporate Governance and Compliance in International Business
• Environmental and Social Responsibility in International Business
• Double Taxation Treaties: Legal Implications and Challenges
• Transfer Pricing and Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS)
• Tax Havens and Their Impact on Global Taxation
• Taxation of Digital Economy and E-commerce Transactions
• Taxation of Multinational Corporations: Fairness and Equity Concerns
• Tax Avoidance vs. Tax Evasion: Legal Distinctions and Consequences
• Taxation of Foreign Source Income and Territorial vs. Worldwide Tax Systems
• Developing Countries and International Taxation: Bridging the Gap
• The Role of International Organizations in Shaping Global Tax Policies
• Addressing Tax Challenges Arising from the COVID-19 Pandemic
• The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and Its Implementation
• Maritime Boundaries and Dispute Resolution in the South China Sea
• Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) and Marine Resource Management
• Freedom of Navigation and Maritime Security in the Indian Ocean
• Environmental Protection in the High Seas: Addressing Pollution and Overfishing
• Piracy and Armed Robbery at Sea: Legal Responses and Jurisdictional Challenges
• Submarine Cables and Cybersecurity in International Waters
• The Role of International Tribunals in Resolving Maritime Disputes
• Deep Sea Mining and the Regulation of Exploitation of Marine Resources
• Indigenous Rights and Traditional Knowledge in Marine Conservation
• Diplomatic Negotiations and Conflict Resolution in International Relations
• The Role of Mediation in Resolving International Disputes
• International Arbitration: Institutional Frameworks and Best Practices
• The Use of Force and Armed Conflict: Legal Perspectives on Peacekeeping
• Compliance with International Court Judgments and Decisions
• The Settlement of Territorial Disputes: Case Studies and Legal Approaches
• The Role of Non-State Actors in International Conflict Resolution
• The Legality of Targeted Sanctions and Economic Coercion
• The Use of International Courts and Tribunals in Human Rights Disputes
• The Role of Regional Organizations in Conflict Mediation and Resolution

In conclusion, the field of international law offers a vast array of research topics that delve into critical global issues, ranging from human rights and environmental protection to trade and business regulations. Scholars and students of law can explore the complexities of international relations, the challenges of cross-border disputes, and the ever-evolving legal frameworks that shape the international community. The comprehensive list of international law research paper topics provided above serves as a starting point for students to delve deeper into their areas of interest and contribute to the understanding and development of international law. Through diligent research and critical analysis, they can further advance the principles of justice, equality, and cooperation on the global stage.

Exploring the Range of International Law Research Paper Topics

International law is a complex and dynamic field that governs the interactions between nations and other actors in the global community. As a crucial component of the global legal system, international law encompasses a diverse range of topics that have significant implications for peace, security, human rights, trade, and cooperation among nations. Researching international law research paper topics offers students a unique opportunity to delve into the intricacies of international relations, diplomatic relations, and the role of international organizations in promoting peace and stability.

• The Sources of International Law : This topic explores the various sources of international law, including treaties, customary international law, general principles of law, and decisions of international courts and tribunals. Students can investigate the hierarchy of these sources and their application in resolving disputes between states.
• International Human Rights Law : This area of international law deals with the protection and promotion of human rights on a global scale. Research topics may cover issues like the role of international human rights organizations, the enforcement of human rights treaties, and the impact of human rights violations on international relations.
• International Humanitarian Law : Also known as the law of armed conflict or the law of war, this branch of international law governs the conduct of parties during armed conflicts. Students can explore topics such as the protection of civilians in armed conflicts, the use of force in self-defense, and the prosecution of war crimes.
• International Environmental Law : With growing concerns about climate change and environmental degradation, international environmental law has become increasingly relevant. Research topics may include international agreements on climate change, biodiversity conservation, and the responsibility of states for transboundary environmental harm.
• International Criminal Law : This field focuses on the prosecution of individuals for international crimes, such as genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Students can investigate the role of international criminal tribunals, the challenges of obtaining evidence in international cases, and the pursuit of justice for victims of international crimes.
• International Trade Law : International trade is essential for global economic development and cooperation. Research topics in this area may cover international trade agreements, dispute settlement mechanisms in trade disputes, and the impact of trade policies on developing nations.
• Law of the Sea : This branch of international law governs the use and protection of the world’s oceans and resources. Students can explore topics such as the rights and responsibilities of states in their maritime zones, the protection of marine biodiversity, and the resolution of disputes over territorial waters.
• International Investment Law : As globalization continues to shape economic relationships, international investment law has gained prominence. Research topics may include the regulation of foreign direct investment, investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms, and the balance between investor rights and host state regulatory powers.
• International Arbitration and Mediation : International dispute resolution is essential for maintaining peaceful relations among states. Students can explore topics such as the effectiveness of international arbitration and mediation in resolving conflicts, the role of international organizations in facilitating dispute resolution, and the enforcement of arbitral awards.
• Cybersecurity and International Law : With the rise of cyber threats and cyber warfare, international law has grappled with issues of cyber sovereignty, cyber espionage, and the application of existing legal principles to cyberspace. Research topics may delve into the challenges of attributing cyber-attacks, the development of international norms for responsible state behavior in cyberspace, and the protection of human rights in the digital age.

In conclusion, international law offers a vast array of research paper topics that reflect the complexities and challenges of the global legal landscape. As students delve into these topics, they gain a deeper understanding of the intricacies of international relations, human rights, trade, and conflict resolution. Exploring the multifaceted nature of international law research allows students to critically analyze the role of law in shaping the conduct of states and the broader international community, fostering a deeper appreciation for the significance of international law in today’s interconnected world.

How to Choose International Law Research Paper Topics

Selecting a compelling and relevant research paper topic is essential to the success of any academic endeavor. In the context of international law, choosing the right research topic requires careful consideration of various factors that can shape the scope and impact of the research. Whether you are a law student, an aspiring international lawyer, or a researcher interested in global legal issues, the following guide provides valuable insights on how to choose international law research paper topics that are engaging, insightful, and contribute meaningfully to the field of international law.

• Identify Your Area of Interest : International law is a vast and diverse field encompassing numerous sub-disciplines, including human rights law, environmental law, international trade law, and more. Start by identifying your specific area of interest within international law. Reflect on the subjects that intrigue you the most and the issues you are passionate about. This will serve as the foundation for selecting a research topic that resonates with your academic and professional aspirations.
• Stay Abreast of Current Developments : International law is constantly evolving to address contemporary global challenges and opportunities. Keeping up to date with current international legal developments, landmark cases, and significant treaties and agreements can provide valuable inspiration for research topics. Consider exploring emerging issues and debates in the field, as these can offer unique opportunities for original research and innovative insights.
• Analyze Relevant Legal Frameworks : International law operates within a complex web of legal frameworks, including treaties, conventions, and customary international law. Analyzing these legal sources can help you identify gaps, contradictions, or areas where further research is needed. Topics that delve into the interpretation and application of international legal instruments can add depth and value to your research.
• Consider Timeliness and Relevance : A relevant and timely research topic is more likely to capture the attention of readers and contribute to ongoing discussions in the field. Consider the significance of your chosen topic in the context of current global events, policy debates, or emerging challenges. Topics that address pressing international issues, such as climate change, human rights violations, or cybersecurity threats, can have a significant impact on both academic and policy circles.
• Review Existing Literature : Conduct a thorough literature review to understand the existing body of research on your chosen topic. This will help you identify gaps in the literature that you can explore in your research. Additionally, reviewing existing studies can provide insights into the methodologies and approaches used by other researchers, informing your own research design.
• Balance Complexity and Feasibility : While it is essential to select a topic that reflects the complexities of international law, it is equally important to ensure that your research is feasible within the scope and limitations of your academic assignment or project. Avoid overly broad or ambitious topics that may be challenging to address comprehensively within the available time and resources.
• Consult with Professors and Experts : Seek guidance and advice from your professors, academic advisors, or experts in the field of international law. They can provide valuable insights into potential research topics, relevant literature, and methodologies. Engaging in discussions with experienced scholars can help refine your research question and add depth to your analysis.
• Focus on Practical Implications : Consider the practical implications of your research topic in the real world. How might your findings impact international relations, legal practices, or policymaking? Research that offers practical solutions to global challenges or sheds light on pressing legal issues can have a more significant impact on the field of international law.
• Address Controversial Issues : International law often involves contentious and complex topics that evoke strong opinions and debates. Embracing controversial issues can lead to thought-provoking research that challenges existing norms and perceptions. However, ensure that you approach such topics with sensitivity and a commitment to unbiased analysis.
• Conduct a Preliminary Study : Before finalizing your research topic, conduct a preliminary study to gather relevant information and assess the availability of data and resources. This will help you determine whether your chosen topic is viable and whether you can access the necessary materials to conduct a comprehensive study.

In conclusion, choosing the right international law research paper topic is a critical step in producing a successful and impactful piece of academic work. By identifying your area of interest, staying informed about current developments, analyzing legal frameworks, and considering the timeliness and relevance of your topic, you can select a research question that is both intellectually stimulating and practically significant. Engage with existing literature, seek guidance from experts, and balance the complexity and feasibility of your research to ensure a rewarding and insightful exploration of international law issues.

How to Write an International Law Research Paper

Writing an international law research paper requires careful planning, rigorous research, and a structured approach to presenting your arguments and findings. Whether you are a law student or a seasoned researcher, mastering the art of academic writing in the field of international law is essential to communicate your ideas effectively and contribute to the broader legal discourse. This section provides a comprehensive guide on how to write an international law research paper, from choosing a suitable research question to crafting a well-organized and persuasive paper.

• Define Your Research Question : The first step in writing an international law research paper is to define a clear and focused research question. Your research question should be specific, relevant, and aligned with your area of interest within international law. It should address a significant legal issue or gap in the literature and demonstrate your research objectives.
• Conduct a Thorough Literature Review : Before diving into your research, conduct a comprehensive literature review to understand the existing scholarship on your chosen topic. This will help you identify key debates, theoretical frameworks, and gaps in the literature that your research can address. A strong literature review serves as the foundation for your research paper and provides context for your study.
• Develop a Well-Structured Outline : Organize your research paper with a clear and logical structure. Create an outline that includes an introduction, literature review, methodology, main body sections, analysis of findings, and conclusion. Each section should flow seamlessly into the next, guiding the reader through your research process.
• Craft a Compelling Introduction : The introduction sets the tone for your research paper and should capture the reader’s attention. Start with a hook or a thought-provoking question related to your research topic. Provide background information on the issue at hand and clearly state your research question and objectives. Conclude the introduction with a strong thesis statement that outlines the main argument of your paper.
• Conduct Rigorous Research : International law research papers require a robust research methodology. Depending on your research question, you may use various methods, such as legal analysis, case studies, empirical research, or comparative analysis. Ensure that you use credible and authoritative sources for your research and cite them properly using the appropriate citation style (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago).
• Analyze and Present Your Findings : In the main body of your research paper, present your findings and analyze them in-depth. Use a clear and coherent structure to present your arguments and evidence. Use relevant case law, treaties, and legal principles to support your analysis and draw well-reasoned conclusions.
• Address Counterarguments : Acknowledge and address counterarguments to your research findings. Demonstrating that you have considered opposing viewpoints and providing a thoughtful rebuttal strengthens the credibility and persuasiveness of your research.
• Consider Policy Implications : In international law, research often has practical implications for policymakers and legal practitioners. Discuss the potential policy implications of your findings and offer recommendations for addressing the legal issue at hand. This demonstrates the real-world relevance of your research.
• Maintain a Cohesive Writing Style : Use clear and concise language throughout your research paper. Avoid jargon and technical terms that may confuse the reader. Maintain a cohesive writing style, ensuring that each paragraph and section contributes to the overall argument of your paper.
• Write a Strong Conclusion : The conclusion is your opportunity to summarize your key findings, restate your thesis statement, and highlight the significance of your research. Avoid introducing new information in the conclusion and instead, focus on leaving the reader with a lasting impression of your research’s importance and potential impact.
• Edit and Revise : After completing your first draft, take the time to edit and revise your research paper. Check for clarity, coherence, grammar, and proper citation. Consider seeking feedback from peers or professors to gain valuable insights and improve the overall quality of your paper.
• Review Formatting and Citations : Ensure that your research paper adheres to the required formatting guidelines, such as font size, margins, and line spacing. Double-check your citations and references to avoid plagiarism and maintain academic integrity.

By following these steps and guidelines, you can craft a well-structured, persuasive, and impactful international law research paper. Remember to approach your research with curiosity and dedication, as it is through thorough exploration and analysis that you can make meaningful contributions to the field of international law.

iResearchNet’s Custom Research Paper Writing Services

At iResearchNet, we understand the challenges that students and researchers face when tasked with writing a compelling international law research paper. International law is a complex and ever-evolving field, and producing a high-quality research paper requires extensive knowledge, critical thinking skills, and time. To help you overcome these challenges and excel in your academic pursuits, we offer custom international law research paper writing services that cater to your specific needs and requirements.

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• Custom Written Works : We believe in providing personalized solutions to each client. When you choose our custom writing services, you can be confident that your research paper will be tailored to your unique research question, instructions, and academic level.
• In-Depth Research : Our writers are skilled in conducting thorough research on a wide range of international law topics. They have access to a vast array of academic resources, legal databases, and scholarly journals to ensure that your research paper is well-grounded in current and authoritative sources.
• Custom Formatting : Our writers are well-versed in different citation styles commonly used in academic writing, including APA, MLA, Chicago/Turabian, and Harvard. They will format your research paper according to your specified style guidelines.
• Top Quality : At iResearchNet, quality is our top priority. We are committed to delivering research papers that meet the highest academic standards and demonstrate critical thinking, analytical skills, and originality.
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International law and the politics of diplomacy

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Diplomacy is the social practice by which states interact with other states. It takes place in the medium of international law as states use international law to explain and justify their policies to other states and other audiences and to understand them themselves. It is clear to see that in practice, states invoke law to strengthen their positions relative to other states by constructing justifications that situate their policies and preferences as consistent with international laws and norms. This is a ubiquitous practice in contemporary international politics. It can also be used to inform a theory of diplomacy as the intersection of international law and international politics. This chapter advances two substantive points about diplomacy: first, that it is a social practice of states, and second, that the practice consists of reconciling state behavior with international law. The first section explains what is entailed in seeing diplomacy both as a practice and as state centric, including the dynamic between state officials and “new actors” in diplomacy such as activists, media, and non-state actors. The second section examines diplomacy's connection to compliance, contestation, and the rule of law in world politics. Diplomacy makes state behavior sensible by explaining it in terms of existing international legal forms. It is therefore productive of foreign policy and international law. The contemporary international order rests on a widely shared commitment to the international rule of law - the belief that the primary virtue of states and the main machinery of international stability depend on compliance with international law. Public diplomacy operates in the context of this commitment. States strive to be seen as acting consistently with their legal obligations, and public diplomacy is to substantiate and defend that position. In doing so, however, it is shaped by the tendency for states to see international rules as naturally consistent with their own interests and desires. As a result, competing claims about compliance are standard fare, and they cannot be resolved by recourse to either legal formalism or deliberative procedures. I end the chapter by presenting implications for the philosophy of international law, for the concepts of compliance and noncompliance, and for the agent-structure debate in international theory.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

• General Social Sciences

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• 10.1017/CBO9781316162903.002

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• Politics Keyphrases 100%
• International Law Keyphrases 100%
• Diplomacy Keyphrases 100%
• International Politics Keyphrases 37%
• Social Practices Keyphrases 25%
• State Behavior Keyphrases 25%
• Public Diplomacy Keyphrases 25%
• Rule of Law Social Sciences 22%

T1 - International law and the politics of diplomacy

AU - Hurd, Ian F

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © Cambridge University Press 2015.

PY - 2015/1/1

Y1 - 2015/1/1

N2 - Diplomacy is the social practice by which states interact with other states. It takes place in the medium of international law as states use international law to explain and justify their policies to other states and other audiences and to understand them themselves. It is clear to see that in practice, states invoke law to strengthen their positions relative to other states by constructing justifications that situate their policies and preferences as consistent with international laws and norms. This is a ubiquitous practice in contemporary international politics. It can also be used to inform a theory of diplomacy as the intersection of international law and international politics. This chapter advances two substantive points about diplomacy: first, that it is a social practice of states, and second, that the practice consists of reconciling state behavior with international law. The first section explains what is entailed in seeing diplomacy both as a practice and as state centric, including the dynamic between state officials and “new actors” in diplomacy such as activists, media, and non-state actors. The second section examines diplomacy's connection to compliance, contestation, and the rule of law in world politics. Diplomacy makes state behavior sensible by explaining it in terms of existing international legal forms. It is therefore productive of foreign policy and international law. The contemporary international order rests on a widely shared commitment to the international rule of law - the belief that the primary virtue of states and the main machinery of international stability depend on compliance with international law. Public diplomacy operates in the context of this commitment. States strive to be seen as acting consistently with their legal obligations, and public diplomacy is to substantiate and defend that position. In doing so, however, it is shaped by the tendency for states to see international rules as naturally consistent with their own interests and desires. As a result, competing claims about compliance are standard fare, and they cannot be resolved by recourse to either legal formalism or deliberative procedures. I end the chapter by presenting implications for the philosophy of international law, for the concepts of compliance and noncompliance, and for the agent-structure debate in international theory.

AB - Diplomacy is the social practice by which states interact with other states. It takes place in the medium of international law as states use international law to explain and justify their policies to other states and other audiences and to understand them themselves. It is clear to see that in practice, states invoke law to strengthen their positions relative to other states by constructing justifications that situate their policies and preferences as consistent with international laws and norms. This is a ubiquitous practice in contemporary international politics. It can also be used to inform a theory of diplomacy as the intersection of international law and international politics. This chapter advances two substantive points about diplomacy: first, that it is a social practice of states, and second, that the practice consists of reconciling state behavior with international law. The first section explains what is entailed in seeing diplomacy both as a practice and as state centric, including the dynamic between state officials and “new actors” in diplomacy such as activists, media, and non-state actors. The second section examines diplomacy's connection to compliance, contestation, and the rule of law in world politics. Diplomacy makes state behavior sensible by explaining it in terms of existing international legal forms. It is therefore productive of foreign policy and international law. The contemporary international order rests on a widely shared commitment to the international rule of law - the belief that the primary virtue of states and the main machinery of international stability depend on compliance with international law. Public diplomacy operates in the context of this commitment. States strive to be seen as acting consistently with their legal obligations, and public diplomacy is to substantiate and defend that position. In doing so, however, it is shaped by the tendency for states to see international rules as naturally consistent with their own interests and desires. As a result, competing claims about compliance are standard fare, and they cannot be resolved by recourse to either legal formalism or deliberative procedures. I end the chapter by presenting implications for the philosophy of international law, for the concepts of compliance and noncompliance, and for the agent-structure debate in international theory.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84940542915&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84940542915&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1017/CBO9781316162903.002

DO - 10.1017/CBO9781316162903.002

M3 - Chapter

AN - SCOPUS:84940542915

SN - 9781107099265

BT - Diplomacy and the Making of World Politics

A2 - Sending, Ole J.

A2 - Pouliot, Vincent

A2 - Neumann, Iver B.

PB - Cambridge University Press

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Practice theory and the study of diplomacy: A research agenda

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Prior to joining CFR, he has served as a senior advisor on Iran at the State Department, a fellow at Yale University, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and Middle East Center at University of California, Berkeley—my alma mater. And is most recently the author of The Last Shah: America, Iran in the Fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty .  Steven, Ray, David, and I will have a discussion for about twenty minutes and then open things up for your questions. So, Ray, can we start—(background noise)—who’s talking to me? So, Ray, can we start with you? How does the death of Iran’s president in this helicopter crash change the power structure in Iran? Not only was he the president, the betting was he was going to replace the ayatollah, supreme leader.   TAKEYH: Well, this certainly was a succession crisis that the regime did not anticipate. And it creates a measure of paralysis in how it works. Ebrahim Raisi was a fairly lackluster president. He lacked the imagination and the skill for that job. But he was Ali Khamenei’s ideal president because he was so in line with him with everything that he said, and so forth.   Whether he was suitable successor to the current leader I’m not entirely sure, because he lacked that sort of skill and cunning that you need for that job. But he was—certainly would have been part of the structure that would appoint the new supreme leader. So in that particular sense, that particular structure—which is fairly opaque—has to be reconsidered anew, and perhaps a new member added to the commission that was already investigating that possibility and vetting various candidates. He could very well have come up to that job, given the fact that the Islamic Republic is sort of a grading on a grade inflation basis these days.   In terms of the—and, obviously, they have to have a new president. That opens up the possibility of election within fifty days. That opens up a lot of old wounds about who’s going to allowed to be run, who’s not going to run, and who will actually be anointed to become the next president. So it will create some sort of a division within the elite once more. Those divisions, of course, have always been there, as the Islamic Republic has been so relentlessly purged of the old establishment figures in the past few years. So, once again, you begin to see those wounds be aggravated.   And then the decision will be about who should be the next president and whether you go for the younger generation that are waiting for his turn, or some of the more seasoned political figures. My guess is, it’s probably going to be one of the members of the younger generation who are a dominant faction in the parliament, and so forth. In terms of Iran’s foreign policy, it doesn’t really affect it that much. Raisi rarely, essentially, said anything about matters of international relations other than supporting whatever the regime was doing at the time. He doesn’t—he didn’t seem to take initiative, foreign policy was not an area where he was active, like his predecessor President Rouhani.   In terms of the management economy, the economy is cratering at high inflation, unemployment rates, and his policies have largely been criticized on that front. And, as I said, on the security issues he would usually be an affirmative voice for what was happening, as opposed to initiate his own—his own ideas, and so forth. So there’ll be some changes, but those changes are going to be particularly in the realm of succession about who is to succeed and what is a process of succession.  And also it will be impacted, in terms of the country has to have another election in fifty days. It can potentially go beyond that. And that will create some degree of political space where you begin to see all disagreement surface and the possibility of some degree of disquiet at home, given the fact that the Iranian people are going to be summoned to certify another choice for president that they had very little to do with. That may create some degree of popular agitation. And that’s what the regime has to be very concerned about.   This is only the second time the Islamic Republic has had to deal with a president who was killed before his term expired. The first time, ironically enough, was in 1981-1982, when Ali Khamenei rose to the office of presidency, because his predecessor was blown away by a terrorist. So they haven’t had that kind of experience for a long time. And now they have to deal with this issue, at a time when they’re dealing with so many other issues whether it’s in the region or at home. And this was a complication that the system certainly didn’t need.   ROBBINS: So, just really quickly, were you surprised that they so quickly attributed to mechanical failure and didn’t go for the conspiracy theory? Maybe that the Israelis were behind it, perhaps?  TAKEYH: Well, the conspiracy theories are going to be pervasive throughout the country anyways. The official explanation is never accepted. So they’re going to be attributing it to Israelis, to the Americans. They’re going to be attributing to internal political factions, this and that. So the official explanation is unlikely to be accepted, because it appears that in Iran today nobody dies of natural causes or accidents. So some conspiracy theories will find their way into the political atmosphere in that country, irrespective of the—of the official explanation. But I think the official explanation is not only correct, but also does not invite for the confrontation at this time with Israelis.  ROBBINS: I mean, I think that’s mainly why I was asking it. It seemed almost, dare we say, a responsible response on their part.  TAKEYH: Right. It would be very difficult for Israelis to build that mountain so quickly anyways. But so I think incompetence is usually the way to go on these issues. These helicopters were, I believe, Bell helicopters that the shah was building in Isfahan in 1978-79. And Javad Zarif has actually complained about the fact that the sanctions on the aviation industry has caused these mechanical failures. So for those who want to see if the sanctions work, well, they seem to have worked in this case, in an indirect way. But, you know, the existing explanation seems sufficient for their purposes at the moment.  ROBBINS: Thanks. David, the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan said today that he had requested warrants for prosecution for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, for Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ leader within Gaza, for Mohammed Deif, Hamas’ military leader, for Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ Qatar-based political leader. What does that mean, a request? What comes next? And can you talk a little bit about the crimes? President Biden, I think, said all of this was outrageous. Is this it? Is this an indictment? And what do we take away from this?  SCHEFFER: Well, thanks, Carla. The procedure under the International Criminal Court is that the prosecutor must request an arrest warrant, which we would consider to be an indictment. And that has to be then approved by a three-judge panel on what’s called the Pre-Trial Chamber of judges. What’s a little unusual—and that can take weeks, it can take months. There’s varied practice before the ICC as to how quickly these judges actually arrive at these determinations. It would not surprise me whatsoever if the judges take a few months. It also would be a little surprising to me if perhaps they did not reach decision before their summer break in August. I would think they’d sort of pin that as an objective, to try to reach a decision before the August break at the court. But it certainly—unless, you know, I’m shocked—unless it’s an immediate decision by the judges, but I somewhat doubt that.   I am a little surprised that the prosecutor went public with this request to the judges. That’s somewhat unprecedented at the ICC. Typically, the prosecutor keeps this in house, gets the judicial decision, and then there’s the public announcement of the arrest warrant. In part because you don’t want the targeted individuals to flee prematurely before the arrest warrant is actually confirmed by the judges. So I think maybe an interesting question for the media with the court would be perhaps to try to ask that of the prosecutor’s office. Why is there a public announcement before the judges have actually decided?  In terms—and, by the way, nonetheless, this does not surprise me as an intensive watcher of the court. We know that this has been under investigation since late October, early November. Obviously, at some point there are going to be arrest warrants issued, given the scale of the alleged criminal conduct in the Israel-Hamas war—whether it be on the Hamas side or the Israeli side. I mean, it’s not going to be indefinitely no arrest warrants. Of course there are going to be warrants at some point. I was a little surprised at how quickly this came, but so be it.   In terms of the crimes that are actually in the arrest warrants, the arrest warrants against the Hamas individuals focus very, very much on sort of the raw crimes of war crimes and crimes against humanity—extermination, murder, sexual violence, rape, torture, holding of hostages, et cetera, cruel treatment. These are all signatures of what we’ve been reading about in terms of the Hamas actions.   When it comes to the Israeli—the arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant on the Israeli side, interestingly the warrants focus pretty exclusively on the crime of starvation and the consequences of starvation with the civilian population. The prosecutor pointedly did not put any charges in that arrest warrant dealing with the bombing campaign in Gaza. And he actually says towards the end of his explanation, that remains under investigation. But this arrest warrant against Netanyahu and the other one against Gallant do not have the bombing campaign.   Now, I would also say that there are no genocide charges whatsoever in these arrest warrants. Both sides, you know, are—I mean, certainly, we know from the South Africa case in front of the world court that the charge of genocide is very central to that particular case, at the world court. And, of course, Israel could quite legitimately argue that the actions on October 7 were very genocidal in character, and that Hamas is demonstrating that genocidal intent. None of that is in these particular charges. Genocide is off the table, at least for the moment, in terms of these announcements.   And then, finally, I would just say that, from what I’ve seen this morning coming out of both Israel, Washington here, I would not have suggested that what has happened today is, quote/unquote, “outrageous.” I mean, it’s entirely predictable. No one should be surprised by this. But I would say that—you know, obviously, it would be fair to say that it’s very distressing to see these arrest warrants being applied for with respect to whatever side you want to express your distress on, particularly the Israeli side. But “outrageous” is sort of, if I may coin a term, you know, a bit over the top in terms of how one might describe this.   And then may I just finally say, Carla, very, very quickly, I think we should keep in mind how this could all play out in a negotiated settlement to the end of the war. There are lots of options that are now on the table because of what’s happened this morning that could play very critical roles in any negotiation to actually end this conflict. And there’s leverage put on the table now. And I can get into that if someone wants to question me about it.  ROBBINS: I’m sorry, can you just answer that really quickly? Which is, doesn’t this—if the court agrees with the indictments, I mean, the court doesn’t get to sit around the table and say we’re going to take the indictment off the table if you agree to a two-state solution.  SCHEFFER: No. No. No, no, of course, not.  ROBBINS: Doesn’t it mean that there’s less leverage there? Because he can’t go to 124 countries then, if he’s indicted.  SCHEFFER: No. No, that’s not the way it could work.   ROBBINS: OK.  SCHEFFER: It could work as follows, that the negotiators at the table—let’s say it’s—it’ll have to be Israel, it’ll have to be the Palestinians. I mean, at some point they have to talk to each other. And they can actually reach a couple of agreements.   One would be that, upon recognizing the state of Palestine—in other words, the end of the process would have to be a two-state settlement, of course, or solution. That when that occurs, then Israel and Palestine would enter into what we call an Article 98(2) non-surrender agreement, under the Rome Statute, whereby they would each agree not to surrender any suspects to the ICC which are in their custody. OK, for Israel and Palestine. Now, that would be a tough deal, because, you know, obviously, many would want to see the Hamas targets prosecuted someday. And then, of course, many on the other side would want to see the Israeli officials prosecuted. But that could be a deal cut in order to get to a two-state solution.   The other possibility—and I’ll stop with this—is that there could be an agreement among the permanent five of the Security Council as part of a two-state settlement or solution deal that the Security Council would vote under Article 16 of the Rome Statute to suspend all ICC investigations and prosecutions relating to the Israel-Hamas war for one year. And that would just then block the ICC from taking any further action. And then they—of course, they’d have to renew that each year, if it were to be perpetuated. I’m not advocating any of that. I’m just saying those are objective options that could be put on the table.  ROBBINS: Huh. That’s—thanks. Thank you, David, for that.   So, Steven, even before what happened with the ICC, it wasn’t—it was a pretty horrible, terrible, no-good week for Bibi Netanyahu. His War Cabinet was seen to be publicly unraveling. There was a resumption of street protests, which had been very quiet. Can you talk a little bit about what was going on before, and how this changes it or doesn’t?  COOK: Yeah. It has been not a very good period for Prime Minister Netanyahu. It obviously hasn’t been a good period for him since October 7. But, nevertheless, last week was particularly bad. And the trigger for this was the fact that the IDF was back engaged in pretty intensive fighting in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, a place that Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared “pacified” in November.   And Gallant went public with his criticism of Netanyahu and his resistance to hammering out a day-after plan. And, also, he called upon the prime minister to say and declare that Israel has no intention of establishing settlements in the Gaza Strip. This came on the heels of a rather large protest of the settler right, which is seeking to resettle the Gaza Strip. Not an insignificant number of people and not an insignificant percentage of the Israeli public actually support the resettlement of the Gaza Strip. And Gallant, I think echoing the IDF high command which does not want to be the military administration in the Gaza Strip, was calling for, one, that declaration, as well as a day-after plan.  A couple of days later, Benny Gantz—the other member of the War Cabinet, in addition to Netanyahu—came out and said, basically, he needs a day-after plan. And he needs it by June 8, otherwise he’s going to leave the government. Netanyahu, obviously, responded and said: Our first goal is the destruction of Hamas. If Gantz leaves the government—the War Cabinet, it doesn’t really matter in terms—and the government—it doesn’t really matter, because Netanyahu’s coalition would still command sixty-four seats in the Knesset.   And the reason why Netanyahu is unwilling to comply with the demands from his defense minister, as well as his—other members of the War Cabinet, as well as the United States, is that if he spells out day-after plan that does not include settlement in the Gaza Strip, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who together control fourteen seats in the Knesset, will bolt from the government, thereby bringing the government down. And then the question of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s legal jeopardy once again emerges.   So that is where things stood before this statement from the ICC prosecutor. I’ll leave it to David and others to figure out why he went outside the norm to declare that he was seeking these warrants. I’m not an expert in that area. But the Israeli response has been to criticize, obviously, the ICC for putting the prime minister of Israel and the defense minister of Israel—a country that still has a functioning judiciary—on the same plane as the terrorists of Hamas.   And in despite the fact that Netanyahu has been at loggerheads with Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid, both Lapid and Gantz have come out with scathing criticism of the ICC decision. So it may actually end up helping Netanyahu, this closing of the ranks, the perception—you know, David is quite right. You know, nothing has actually been decided here. But in Israeli political discourse, as well as American political discourse, a lot has been decided. And we know that we live in an era where narrative is the most important thing.   And so it may help Netanyahu with the Israeli public, who already feels besieged and isolated. The world is against them. Antisemitism is rife everywhere. And in may encourage the Israelis to ignore those kinds of warnings from the Biden administration, despite the president’s criticism of the ICC thing, to really go forward in a very big way in Gaza. Which I think they’re planning anyway, but then I think the outlook will be, well, we have nothing to lose anyway. No matter what we do we’ll be criticized or indicted or warrants will be sought for our arrest. And so we might as well, as Netanyahu said before the country on Israel’s independence day, if we have to go it alone, we will go it alone. We’re the only ones who know how to secure our country.  ROBBINS: With that, happy thought, I’d turn it over to our many participants.  Will, can you explain—remind people how to ask a question?  OPERATOR: (Gives queuing instructions.)  ROBBINS: Waiting for people to raise their hands. So as we do that, this could be, of course—we have an explanation in the chat about how to do this. So waiting for people to ask questions. We have reporters. Come on, you guys, ask questions. I’m a reporter. I’ll ask a question. So, Steven, just a little bit more on the—we seem to have—ah. Can you—is it Pouya Lavian? Can you identify yourself and ask your question?  Q: Hi. Good afternoon. This is Pouya Lavian from Wells Fargo. Thank you all for taking the time.   Question for Ray. Do you see any sort of change in attitude for support of proxies by the Iranian regime while they’re dealing with internal issues relate to succession? Or do you feel it’s going to be full speed ahead for what they’ve been doing, you know, to date?  TAKEYH: The proxy war strategy, the notion of axis of resistance, that is a consensus position within the state. Within the regime it’s a consensus position because it’s been so spectacularly successful. They have managed to have a multinational force that they can deploy with limited cost and has been very effective in various fronts. So I don’t see disruptions in that particular realm.   Now, in terms of their approach overall to the Israeli-Gaza conflict that is taking place, well, they have to kind of figure out what their next steps are, because their entire strategy was that they would inflame the Israeli boundaries, and they would inflame international opinion, and they would inflame the American opinion, and that would impose some restrictions on Israeli conduct of war. And that has happened. Israel has become a very isolated country internationally, as was indicated with these particular measures by the international court. It’s been increasingly division—a divisive issue within the American political system. But all of that has not led to restraints on Israel, per se. So where they go from here in terms of that strategy remains to be seen.  This is the first time that the axis of resistance strategy hasn’t worked as was intended to. And it even led to a confrontation between Iran and Israel that hadn’t happened in forty-five years and could have potentially seriously gotten out of hand. So that aspect of it has to be rethought and reconsidered, and maybe be more aggressive in terms of the rings of fire around Israel, or hopefully that somehow the international community will once again seek to impose some kind of a restraint on Israeli public. And maybe that is—that is going to happen. But it hasn’t happened thus far. But overall, in terms of using these proxies to achieve your strategic objectives, that is a position of consensus—at least within the governing elite.  ROBBINS: Steven, can you talk a little bit about the sort of regional reaction to this level of potential instability inside of inside of Iran?   COOK: Well, you know, clearly the Saudis are, you know, interested in maintaining that level of dialogue that they established with the March 2023 resumption of diplomatic relations. They’re very plain in saying that they believe that the Iranians have violated every aspect of their agreement, but that they do not—but they value the continued dialogue because they see it as a source of stability. The Emiratis view in a similar fashion and are seeking to gain some leverage with the Iranians by dint of investment in joint projects, as we’ve seen over the last couple of years or so. So there is obviously concern about instability and power struggles across the Gulf, because it would potentially impact them.   There’s obviously no love lost between the Iranian regime and these—and the leaders. Particularly unhappy about the axis of evil and the way in which Iran’s proxies have essentially been given license to spread instability around the region. And this could be yet another source of it. But there’s really—I don’t think, unlike the discourse in the United States about Iran in which there is an endless debate about moderates versus hardliners and so on and so forth, the Gulfies really don’t make those distinctions whatsoever. And I think it’s a more realistic view of Iran.   So whoever comes after Raisi will be, as Ray pointed, another affirmative voice in what the Gulf states believed to be is an aggressive foreign policy. The reason why they pulled back from a confrontation from it, is because they just don’t trust the United States would be with them. So they will continue to maintain the kind of dialogue they had to keep the Iranians away from at least undermining their stability and security.  ROBBINS: David, why do you think that there was an announcement about this request from the prosecutor? There are two ways of looking at it, as someone who is not an expert on the court at all. One was they’re trying to jam the judges. And the other one is that they see this as potentially so urgent and that they’re making a political statement, and that perhaps they can save some lives by pressuring the Israelis right now, or pressuring Hamas right now. And they want to get their political message, their deterrent message, out there as fast as possible.  SCHEFFER: Carla, those are precisely the two reasons that are in the back of my mind.   ROBBINS: Darn, I’m good.  SCHEFFER: (Laughs.) Yeah. You’re very good.   First, it’s to literally sort of put the judges on the spot. Which is unusual, because they don’t like being put on the spot like this. They’re going to be under pressure from both the Israeli and the Palestinian side before they reach a decision. There’ll be an enormous amount of lobbying—obviously, through the media, et cetera, and, you know, op-eds and whatever—to try to influence their decision. That’s why you don’t go public like this.  The other thing, of course, is the prosecutor deciding that the imperative of ending these alleged crimes is so important that he’s not going to wait for that multi-week, multi-month process before he—you know, he’s made many statements, or at least several of them, including all the way back to late October, warning parties, both sides—and in particular Israel—don’t overplay your hand. There’s still international humanitarian law that has to be complied with. No one’s questioning the right of self-defense or the just war theory. It’s the question of how you wage just war that is at issue here. And I noticed some of the Israeli comment this morning seems to think that there’s this big criticism of a just war, that somehow it’s not a just war. That is not the argument. It’s how you wage the just war that’s the argument.   Could I just pick up on one thing that Steven said, which I think is very important from the Israeli point of view? The prosecutor made it a point in his statement this morning to say, complementarity is the—is the supreme rule of the International Criminal Court. Namely, if it can be demonstrated that these issues are being dealt with at the domestic court level, then the ICC essentially backs off. That’s a central theme of the entire Rome Statute structure. What Israel could do at this point, given that it has a superb, you know, legal system, is, frankly, before these judges reach a decision, they could demonstrate that there are legitimate inquiries before the courts of some character—I mean, they’d have to figure that out—as to the compliance of their top leaders with international humanitarian law, particularly of the character identified in the arrest warrant which focuses on starvation. And that Israeli courts will take this on affirmatively, and with determination they will—they will investigate this.   Now, I know that’s tough politically. But I’m just saying that’s one way to actually—the judges could just say, well, we’re going to back off and wait until complementarity takes its course. This is exactly what happened for years between the court and the country of Colombia about the whole civil war between FARC and the Colombian forces, Colombia kept saying, back off ICC, we’re dealing with this domestically, we’re going to handle it. And ultimately, they did and the ICC definitively backed off. So it’s a tactic, but it has to be done very, very smartly in order to demonstrate that complementarity.  ROBBINS: Given the fact that—of, what, the Netanyahu government’s desire to basically dismantle the autonomy of the Supreme Court, you could imagine the relationship between the judiciary. I can’t imagine that happening. But, Steven, you know more about Israeli politics than I do. Can you imagine them doing that?   COOK: Well, they have not yet actually undermined the independence of the—of the judiciary. What was happening in Israel prior to October 7, was an effort to do that. But that has not yet been accomplished. And there was significant response from the Supreme Court itself on this issue. I think, though, in the current political environment, it seems unlikely that the Israeli courts will take it upon themselves to investigate charges by the prosecutor that, I think, the vast majority of Israelis believe to be illegitimate and politically motivated. And so I think that that’s probably unlikely. They’re unlikely to find a way to solution that way.   And I suspect—and, again, after listening to David—I suspect that the prosecutor understands that none of these people will ever really be brought to justice. And that may be a reason why, in fact, he went public so quickly with this. There will be—and I think it was a miscalculation on his part. And there’ll be consequences as a result. I don’t think it’s going to save any Palestinian lives. I think there’s going to be consequences in terms of American action, particularly congressional action targeting the ICC. So it is unlikely to do much good on the battlefield and it’s unlikely to do very good in terms of international law.  ROBBINS: Luis Oganes, can you identify yourself, please?  Q: Hi. Luis Oganes, JPMorgan.   My question is for Ray. You mentioned that, you know, the—what’s just happened in Iran won’t change, you know, the hardline position vis-à-vis foreign policy, because that is—there is consensus about, you know, the position of Iran. However, domestically, you know, President Raisi was very unpopular. I understand that only 30 percent of Iranians participated in the last election. And there is a process of, you know, trying to block any reformers from participating in elections. Do you think the conditions are there for a bit more of a wider opening for the next round of candidates, that actually a reformer could emerge this time around? Thanks.  TAKEYH: Well, that’s got to be the very controversial debate within the country, because there will be reform candidates signing up for participating in the election and being vetted by the Guardian Council—the Council of Guardians, which all of this has to take place in the compressed period of time of fifty days. The reform faction has long been exorcized from the body politic. I mean, even before the previous round of elections, the reform candidates were not allowed to participate. And, really, they were not allowed to participate since 2009, with the contested presidential election between former prime minister and, currently in house arrest for all these years, Mir Hossein Mousavi. So that faction is no longer relevant in terms of participation in politics at a formal level, although I think their views and pronouncements remained quite popular within the public at large.   What has happened in the previous elections that was—happened in the mid—for Assembly of Experts and the parliament, that had happened a couple of months ago, is that you have people like former President Hassan Rouhani being disqualified. The longest speaker in the history of the Iranian parliament, Ali Larijani, being disqualified, former minister of interior, and quite a killer in its own right, Mostafa Pourmohammadi being. So right now the disqualifications are no longer centered on reformists that have kind of different political ideas, but only the most reliable and ideological members of the political establishment, which increasingly are younger people in their forties and so forth that have come to political fruition, that dominant faction in the parliament today. And they’re rebelling against the old faction. And those rebellions are being successful, because they tend to be supported by Ali Khamenei.  So in this particular election, you’re going to have, my guess is, a limited number of choices, and limited number of candidates moving forward, simply because you need to fill that spot with alacrity. And you need to essentially fill it with people that are already vested in the system as it’s currently constituted and is currently—the belief structure that they all have. So I don’t see this as an opening for the reform movement, irrespective of the lack of popularity of President Raisi, as, I think, you suggested. I think in the last round—which was, to be fair, for parliament, Assembly Expert, it wasn’t 30 percent. In some of the major cities, like Tehran, it was probably 5 to 10 percent participation rate.  I don’t think the regime cares that much about that at this point. They sort of have bigger fish to fry. They’re going to suggest a greater degree of popular acclaim anyway. I think they suggested 47 percent of popular views. So I don’t see that as a new opportunity for opening the political system. The problem they’re going to have, as they’re dealing with this particular succession, is if somehow Ali Khamenei becomes incapacitated. Then I think the regime will be seriously in danger of the wheels falling off.  ROBBINS: You mean, because they’ll have a dual crisis?  TAKEYH: They’ll have a dual crisis, yeah.   Q: Thank you.  ROBBINS: Andrzej, you’ll have to identify yourself, including your last name.  OPERATOR: Andrzej, please accept the unmute now prompt.  Q: My name is Andrzej Dobrowolski. And I’m the New York correspondent for the Polish Press Agency .   I have two questions. First of all, what impact President Raisi’s death might have of Iran’s relations with Israel, Russia, other regional players, and the United States? And the second one is, how will his death affect Iran’s support for militias in the Middle East and its involvement in the Ukraine war?  TAKEYH: Those are fair questions. As I said, Ebrahim Raisi was not what you would call a foreign policy president. He wasn’t much of a domestic one, either. But at least he did—he kind of spoke about domestic affairs more so in his speeches. He talked a lot about economy and so forth, and mismanaged it rather dramatically. So he didn’t actually venture that much into providing a perspective on foreign relations, and all the issues that you spoke about, that differed from the established orthodoxy and establish pronouncement of the system. Those are not—those were not his thing. And, to be fair, his principal qualification for the job was that he was a member of the repressive state for a long time, in the judiciary and others, where he had very little problem executing people on as flimsy charges as possible.   So that was kind of his forte. That was his calling card. Now, he could comment on that if you asked him. But, you know, the intricacies of foreign relations, that was beyond him. And that was sort of beyond his foreign minister, actually. His foreign minister, who also perished in this particular accident, was also relatively lackluster in his approach. There is—what is happening in Islamic Republic, that’s been so thoroughly purged Ali Khamenei at all levels, is that you have people who are coming into the system that on a good day aspire to be mediocrities. And they don’t quite get out there, but at least aspire to that. So they don’t have a Zarif kind of a person that could charm the Westerners. They don’t have a Rouhani, who actually thought about issues differently—wrongly, it turned out.  But now you have people who kind of have their talking points, they seem to believe it, they’re authentic in terms of the revolutionary convictions. They believe, in terms of the larger international relations, that Iran has a place in the global configuration of powers, it has these global alliances with Russia and China, and all these three powers are in the same conflict with the United States and the West. And the West in this particular case is identified as Israel, as well as an adjunct of the American power and the Western imperialism in the Middle East. And they seem to think of Iran is a sort of a vanguard state within this great-power alignment. The other great power allies don’t think so. But, you know, as the 1970s song says, you should care if you’re feeling good. So, you know, they’re sort of going along with this.   That particular alignment, between Iran, Russia, and China, will change. And Iran will become more of a player, more of an equal player, when and if it gets nuclear weapons. It no longer will be satisfied with a junior partner status. As far as intervention in Ukraine, that makes no sense. It makes no national sense. It makes no ideological sense. There are no Islamist claims at stake in Ukraine. But that is the price you pay for great-power patronage. With great-power patronage also comes great-power responsibilities. And one of those is for Iran to be, at least for now, almost in an implicit war against NATO—an indirect war against NATO. That’s not in the national interest, or it doesn’t redeem any sort of ideological mission, but that is the price you pay for your great-power allies.  ROBBINS: We have—thank you for that. We have—and I’m going to remember that the great-power responsibilities for proxies as well.  So, Jessica Yellin, if you can really ask your question very quickly, identify yourself, and I’m going to let Steven, and David, and Ray have—jump in with one sentence, whether or not it answers your question. So, Jessica.  Q: Great. Hi. It’s Jessica Yellin. I’m with News Not Noise.   I’m wondering if you’d talk a little bit about the supreme leader’s son. I think is pronounced Mojtaba Khamenei.   TAKEYH: Yeah.  Q: If he were to—(inaudible)—Raisi, would you expect him to prioritize with the leadership change in any meaningful way?  TAKEYH: The Islamic Republic traditionally and historically does not do dynastic successions. That is what happens in—the Persian monarchs did that. The Arab presidents do that. That’s not what they do. Now, that doesn’t mean that the system up and down is not filled with nepo babies. Ali Bagheri is a nepo baby. His uncle was a great member of the clerical aristocracy. And he has all the smugness of arrogance of a nepo baby, if you ever met him. This system has all these nepo babies in it. You know, there’s a marriage to this, to that. But you can’t really formally have your supreme leader as a son of the former one. That’s not the way the system works.  The Islamic Republic, since its founding, has dispensed with some very essential criteria for the position of the supreme leader. You no longer have to have charismatic authority. You no longer have to have theological erudition. But you can’t be a kind of—the guy’s son and come to that post. Now, you can play a big role in the background, and so forth. And I think in that sense, Raisi may have been the right figure because he might have been a fairly passive supreme leader outside, you know, need for executions here and there. But I don’t see them doing dynastic succession.   If a dynastic succession does take place, that tells you how far the Islamic Republic has veered away from its original founding mission and its original creed and original way of doing things. As a matter of fact, most of the president’s songs, whether it’s Ahmadinejad, Rouhani, Rafsanjani, actually don’t do well in that system. Some being prosecutors, some are giving lucrative positions here and there. But in terms of ascension to the ultimate authority in the country, that would be hard to swallow, hard to justify. If they do it, that means they really have moved away and essentially abandoned the original mission of the Islamic Republic, which was some measure of egalitarianism in terms of the selection process.  ROBBINS: Thank you, Ray. It’s 2:45. Steven, twenty seconds. You got one last thought?  COOK: We could use a lot more news than noise. And I think that the that—what’s happening at the ICC is—as I said before—is backing the Israelis into a corner. And that’s not a place where I think it makes for productive negotiations or thinking about how to end this conflict.  ROBBINS: And, David, last thought to you.  SCHEFFER: Well, my last thought is just be cautious about these false equivalence arguments that we are seeing emerge now, that the Hamas side of the equation says, how dare you indict Hamas? The Israeli side says, how dare you indict the Israeli side? The court really doesn’t work that way. But I would suggest that it would have been rather remarkable if he had only issued arrest warrants against Hamas leaders. You can imagine the uproar that would have created. If he only indicted the Israelis, there would have been an uproar on that side as well. So he’s sort of trapped. And I don’t think it’s really a false equivalence. It’s just what do the facts show and where does that take you in terms of framing an actual arrest warrant?  ROBBINS: I want to thank you. Thank you for that. I want to thank David Scheffer. I want to thank Ray Takeyh. I want to thank Steven Cook. Transcript for this will be—can be found on CFR.org, additional resources on CFR.org and ForeignAffairs.com. I think Ray is going to have a piece up in a few hours, if not already up there. And thank you all for joining us.  COOK: Thank you all.  SCHEFFER: Thank you.  (END)  Virtual Event by Steven A. Cook , David J. Scheffer , Ray Takeyh and Carla Anne Robbins May 20, 2024 Middle East Program
• Genocide and Mass Atrocities Remembering the Rwandan Genocide Podcast Thirty years ago, Rwanda’s government began a campaign to eradicate the country’s largest minority group. In just one hundred days in 1994, roving militias killed around eight hundred thousand people. Would-be killers were incited to violence by the radio, which encouraged extremists to take to the streets with machetes. The United Nations stood by amid the bloodshed, and many foreign governments, including the United States, declined to intervene before it was too late. What got in the way of humanitarian intervention? And as violent conflict now rages at a clip unseen since then, can the international community learn from the mistakes of its past? Podcast with Gabrielle Sierra , David J. Scheffer and Claude Gatebuke April 10, 2024 Why It Matters
• Climate Change A Conversation With Amy Pope Play Amy Pope discusses her work as director general of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and the UN role in addressing climate mobility, legal frameworks for migration, and the present humanitarian crisis.The Silberstein Family Annual Lecture on Refugee and Migration Policy was established in 2019 through a generous gift from Alan M. Silberstein and the Silberstein family. The lecture provides CFR with an annual forum to explore emerging challenges in refugee and migration policy in the United States and around the world.  Virtual Event by Amy Pope and Jeremy Robbins March 11, 2024
• International Law Academic Webinar: Complex Humanitarian Emergencies Play David J. Scheffer, senior fellow at CFR, leads the conversation on complex humanitarian emergencies. CASA: Welcome to today’s session of the Winter/Spring 2024 CFR Academic Webinar Series. I’m Maria Casa, director of the National Program and Outreach department at CFR. Thank you all for joining us. Today’s discussion is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/academic, if you would like to share them with your colleagues or classmates. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We are delighted to have David Scheffer with us to discuss complex humanitarian emergencies. David Scheffer is a senior fellow at CFR, where he focuses on international law and international criminal justice. He is professor of practice at Arizona State University, working out of Washington DC, and was previously a professor of law at Northwestern University, where he is director emeritus of the Center for International Human Rights at the Pritzker School of Law. Ambassador Scheffer served in both terms of the Clinton administration. During the second term, he was appointed the first-ever U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues. And he led the U.S. delegation to the UN talks establishing the International Criminal Court. Of particular interest to this group is his book, All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunals , published by Princeton University Press in 2013. Welcome, David. Thank you very much for speaking with us today. SCHEFFER: Thank you, Maria. CASA: If you could begin by giving us a little bit of context, defining complex humanitarian emergencies, and maybe giving us a few examples. SCHEFFER: I will certainly do so. And it’s a great pleasure to be with everyone here today. This is a large audience and a very distinguished one, of students, of professors, of deans, and others in this space in our life, which is an interest in humanitarian needs and causes and emergencies around the world. What we’re going to talk about today is complex humanitarian emergencies. And it’s not too complex a definition. By using the word complex, we really mean that these are humanitarian needs—which usually look to issues of food security, to habitat, to safety, and security, and one’s livelihood—that enables one to live and thrive where one permanently lives and thrives. But then we have humanitarian emergencies. And they get complex when people are being displaced from where they normally live and nominally thrive as normal human beings. They get displaced by armed conflict, or by economic disparities, extreme poverty, or by climate change, or by political upheavals and rivalries within their countries, particularly targeting particular ethnic groups. That creates a complex situation because in order to solve it, you have to think not only of the basic necessities of life to solve it, but you have to think about war, how to solve that, or the climate crisis, how to solve that, or extreme poverty, how to solve that. And that makes it an extremely complex problem. What I want to do is speak for about maybe eight, nine minutes or so, and then open this up for a fulsome discussion among our many participants. And that means not necessarily asking me a question, but perhaps delivering a comment of your own—brief, of course, because we have a lot of people on this—so that you can contribute to this and add to the educational value of this for students now, and in the future. I want to point out the very latest list of humanitarian emergencies that have been identified by the International Rescue Committee. And their latest report, I think is—you know, in 2024 is a very, very enlightening one. And I encourage everyone to link on to it at some point after this discussion to look at it. The top ten are as follows: Sudan, the occupied Palestinian territory—which, of course, many countries would regard as the state of Palestine. More than 130 countries recognize that territory as the state of Palestine. But nonetheless, it’s now in the number two position, which is probably obvious to everyone on this webinar, given the news since October 7. South Sudan is number three. Burkina Faso, number four. Myanmar, number five. Mali, number six. Somalia, number seven. Niger, number eight. Ethiopia, number nine. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, number ten. And then, without ranking, but in the eleven through twenty slots are Afghanistan, Central African Republic, Chad, Ecuador—for the first time—Haiti, Lebanon, Nigeria, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen. So, among those twenty countries, you can see that there’s a tremendous challenge. Now, interestingly, the total number of people who are regarded as being caught up and trapped in humanitarian emergencies actually declined slightly or somewhat, from 2023 to 2024. In 2023, that number was about 363 million people in the world were trapped in humanitarian emergencies. In 2024, it’s estimated to be about 300 million. But that’s an incredible number. And I think in our recent understanding of humanitarian emergencies, remember that in Gaza two million people live. And they were not really on that list prominently until this year. I want to emphasize that the three major components that we typically see in humanitarian emergencies of this character, the engines of them, are: armed conflict, climate change, and economic shocks. And sometimes there’s a combination of them, where you will see a country and it’ll be identified—for example, Syria, Somalia, and Ethiopia, are described as humanitarian crises or emergencies driven by both conflict and climate change, coming together as sort of a double power punch at the people to forcibly displace them from their homes. I think in the readings—one of the most interesting readings that we offered to you on the list is the one regarding Sudan, which is kind of a sleeper now because it’s overtaken by the situation in Gaza and in Ukraine in the last couple of years. But Sudan is getting worse and worse and worse. And it is now at the top of the list. You’ll recall that in 2003 we were struggling with genocide in Darfur in Sudan. And that has actually resurrected itself in the last year or so in terms of continued genocide in Darfur. But that’s just part of the entire conflict in Sudan, which is an armed conflict. And it is driving tens and tens of millions of Sudanese across the borders into Chad, into South Sudan, forcibly displacing them within Sudan itself. So that is a true emergency. I want to point out a couple of sort of larger cosmic issues for you all to think about. One, you know, since after—well, in the early 2000s there was a tremendous amount of focus—and I was part of this—put on creating this principle called “responsibility to protect” (R2P). And it was memorialized in an outcome summit statement of the UN General Assembly in 2005, you know, in two paragraphs—I think it was paragraphs 136-137. But it was focused on the responsibility to protect populations who are victimized by atrocity crimes. Not by climate change, not by economic shocks, not by armed conflicts, per se. But rather by atrocity crimes—genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and they also listed ethnic cleansing specifically, even though that is part of crimes against humanity. But the point is that the world’s focus was on a duty to prevent—or a responsibility to protect—exposed populations to those crimes, a responsibility both domestically and then, if it’s not done domestically, the international community has to put that focus on it and ultimately work through the Security Council to address the problem. I would suggest that we’ve reached a stage now where, first of all, the responsibility to protect principle has come under great strain, particularly given the fractured character of the Security Council, to the extent that it’s not achieving the promise that it originally held. But we need to start thinking about what I would call a responsibility to survive, R2S. I’m just throwing this out at you. Because the humanitarian emergencies of our time are enormous. And they require very, very rapid action. And they require a focus on the responsibility of governments to address these humanitarian emergencies, both governments that have to address them domestically because they’re happening inside those countries but, of course, also the world community to try to staunch the egregious sort of assault on the humanity of various populations. And I just think we’ve reached that stage now where we have to have a responsibility to survive principle out there that holds governments accountable. And that takes me sort of to the next cosmic point I want to point out, which is I have—because my career has been in international criminal justice for decades now, and I’m always looking at, you know, who’s the next war criminal. And we just got that announcement yesterday out of The Hague with respect to indictments on two Russian military officials with respect to war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Ukrainian people during the winter season in that conflict. So that’s good. That’s good. Accountability for atrocity crimes is definitely part of our system now. It doesn’t work perfectly, obviously, but it’s there. What we are missing is holding accountable what I would call burden shifters. These are leaders who just dump burdens on the rest of us. They’re just dumping. A humanitarian emergency is a burden on the rest of the international community. That’s not a critical step. I mean, I’m just—obviously, we have to react to that and deal with it. But I always marvel at how certain leaders think that they can just act in a manner that shifts an enormous burden for taking care of just the basic necessities of life of tens of millions of people—they can just sort of dump it on to the international community. And so, we don’t have a system politically where we call out the leaders who—they might not be doing anything illegal, per se, but they sure as heck are shifting an enormous burden off of their shelf of responsibility and governance onto the rest of the world. And I think we should more clearly identify those individuals. We should figure out a way to identify burden shifters among leaders, strongmen or otherwise, around the world. And finally, I want to just make a final comment about Gaza, which of course has seized our attention so much particularly since October 7. What I have found disconcerting in analyzing this from an international law perspective is that I found myself in October-early November, rather easily stating principles of law pertaining to the right of self-defense, how one engages on a daily basis in combat in terms of recognizing principles of law that focus on proportionality, distinction, necessity, humanity, in how one wages combat between two combating forces. And to keep the fate of the civilian population, you know, front and center in how you engage on a day-by-day basis in combat. International lawyers, military lawyers, we can all talk about this. And there are lots of principles. It’s sort of a microscopic aspect of international law. We’ve got the Geneva Conventions of 1949. We’ve got the 1977 protocols to them. We have the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. We’ve got the statutes of the other tribunals of the last thirty years, all focusing on how, particularly judges, would determine, have war crimes been committed? Has a crime against humanity been committed? Has genocide been committed? That can all be determined on a sort of classic, day-by-day basis. It’s very granular. It can get very, very granular, in the courtroom particularly. But what international does not have—international law has not done yet is what we see in—what we haven’t accomplished a structure for yet is what we see really unfold in Gaza, whereby even if one can justify a daily use of military force, there has to be some structure in international law that defines the totality of what is occurring, and whether that is justifiable under law. Namely, how long does a military assault take place in Gaza, against what collection of targets, with what impact on the civilian population? At what point would international law step in and say: There is a red line here that you cannot cross any further. We don’t have that kind of structure in international law. It’s not there. That has to be a political decision. And you see that being played out now in the news, with the United States becoming more concerned, obviously, about the humanitarian situation there. Sort of coming late to the party. And the rest of the world being somewhat outraged by it. And yet in law, we don’t really have that structure for that totality analysis. And whether or not, when you start a conflict if you want to comply with international law—and, of course, you know, one could argue Hamas has no intention of complying with any law at all, so it’ll just proceed as it sees fit. But if you’re a law-abiding force, then you might sit down and say, well, over the next two to three months if we use military force in the following way in order to defeat Hamas, what does that mean in terms of the totality of the destruction, the totality of deaths, the totality of injuries? And where does it leave the population at the end? Are they in a state of starvation? You know, what do we anticipate? Does law give us any guidance here? And so, I just want to put that position down on the table, that I have found it somewhat frustrating that in analyzing the humanitarian emergency of Gaza, international law helps to some extent it just doesn’t go far enough in giving us guidance beyond that. It really becomes very much a political dynamic, as opposed to a strictly legal one. So let me leave it at that for my little introduction and let’s dive into it. People are free to share a comment or two. I strongly encourage students to participate. This is for you, the students, primarily. And so we want you to participate. Do not be shy. And obviously, we’ve got many other distinguished faculty members, deans, et cetera, on. And I welcome all of you for comment, for questions, but everyone should keep it short so that we can get as many people as possible. So I turn it over to Maria. CASA: Thank you, David. (Gives queuing instructions.) We will start out with a question from Jonathan Cristol, adjunct assistant professor of political science at Yeshiva University. Jonathan. You have the unmute prompt to accept. Oh, we can come back to you later, Jonathan. Let’s go to Stephen Kass, adjunct professor at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University. Q: Thank you, Maria. David, thank you so much for this very modest, self-effacing series of comments, and for all the great work you have done for the world. My question is not about the second subject, Gaza, but about the first. You raised the R2S suggestion. The problems of conflict, and climate change, and economics that are driving the migration and the humanitarian crises you focused on are hard to pin on particular leaders. In fact, it’s the international community that, to a very considerable degree, has flooded the world with arms, and certainly has led to the extraordinary climate impacts that are driving people off their land. I agree that corruption is an issue, but it seems to me hard to pin responsibility for the first two significant causes of these crises on individual leaders, particularly in the developing world. SCHEFFER: Stephen, I accept the premise of your question. I would simply add that really what I’m focusing on are those leaders that self-initiate, in particular, armed conflicts that drive—that are sort of power-seizing conflicts internally that drives so much of this. I mean, I could—you know, the Myanmar military would be, you know, sort of candidate number one. But even on climate change, et cetera, I mean, I would look back at the presidency of Mr. Bolsonaro in Brazil, and ask during—you know, during his term what did he do with respect to climate change challenges in Brazil that either exacerbated the situation there or, you know, diminished them? Not necessarily for purposes of legal culpability, but I think to call them out, to essentially almost shame them under old human rights principles of shaming. That they were part of the problem and not part of the solution. So it’s—I accept exactly what you’re saying. I’m just saying that I still think there should be some focus on the responsibility of leaders to get it as right as possible while they’re in governance, and not to sort of cross what I would call as red lines that clearly exacerbate situations that that can lead to humanitarian emergencies. That’s my basic point. CASA: Thank you. Your comments on burden shifting has interested our audience. We have two written questions that I’ll put together for you. One is from Fodei Batty, professor of political science at Quinnipiac University, who says: Dr. Scheffer points out leaders who dump their problems, burdens, responsibilities on the rest of U.S./international community. But don’t such bad leaders do so because the rest of the international community is complicit in their actions? Every bad leader has a powerful friend somewhere in the international community who offers them some level of protection because of their own national interests. How do you go around the problem? Should great powers be more responsible in who they regard as friends and who others consider bad leaders? And second to that is a written question from Elke Zuern, professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College, who writes: My class is interested in a bit more detail on your interesting point regarding burden shifters. SCHEFFER: Right. Well, let me—let me answer both of them. I think what you’re identifying is a clearly acknowledged point, which is the double standards involved. And I’m extremely conscious of that. The Global South in particular I think today looks at the actions of the major powers—whether it be China, Russia, the United States, the European Union—and their responsibility for climate change over the decades, and also for economic issues that they perhaps could have had much greater influence in solving rather than exacerbating, whether it be almost, you know, punitive tariff regimes, et cetera, that put a great burden on developing economies. So I get it. I’m not trying to exclude the great powers from burden shifting. And I know it’s probably controversial to sort of place the United States in yet another position of responsibility in the world, but I think we always are recognizing the contribution the United States made, unfortunately, to climate change, and also to economic situations in various parts of the world that we try to solve, but that we also have to recognize sometimes we’re the cause of, at least partially, in the beginning. So yeah, it’s not—I mean, I’m not trying to establish legal accountability. I’m just trying to say that there must be a recognition in governance. What is governance of a society? What does it comprise of? Does it comprise, regardless of double standards or whatever, dumping these problems on other countries? Is that good governance, or is that bad governance? How does one define governance today? It might sound a little simplistic, but I see it every day in the news. And so, I think that gets to the second question that I just want to emphasize. I find that in almost everything that I approach these days with international parties—whether they be in academia, in government, in journalism—that the double standards argument is constantly being made. For example, I have tried for two years just on my narrow beat of the world—international criminal law—to work with others to construct a special tribunal on the crime of aggression against Ukraine. And yet, it has proven so difficult to do that because of the allegation of double standards, particularly by the Global South. That we’re paying attention to what has happened in Ukraine as opposed to paying attention to what has happened elsewhere in the world, even with respect to the crime of aggression. And in particular for the United States, you know, the first utterance is, well, what about the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003? Please explain. So that comes up again, and again, and again. And it’s a very, very difficult hurdle to jump. CASA: Thank you. We will take the next question from Clemente Abrokwaa, associate teaching professor at the African Studies Program at Pennsylvania State University. Clemente. Q: Thank you so much for your insightful talk. I have two short questions. And the first one is, the numbers that you mentioned, regarding the humanitarian crisis and so on, I could tell that—we could all tell that a greater number of it is from Africa. And I wanted to know why that is so. And second—my second question also is—echoes the first speaker, that mentioned about by the flooding of the—of guns or weapons at the international level that goes into Africa, and elsewhere. I know that Africa is—you know, they don’t really manufacture these guns. They buy them. So how can that be checked? Yeah, so basically those are my two questions. Thanks. SCHEFFER: Well, thank you so much, Clemente. I will do my best to answer these. In terms of their first question, what we have seen in the last year in particular in Africa is the tumult and somewhat the collapse of democratic governance and stability in the Sahel region of Africa, the middle part of Africa. One country after another. And those countries are all popping up on the Humanitarian Emergency Register now. And it is driven by internal power struggles, internal armed conflicts. I don’t think I would—I mean, I could be proven wrong on this—but I don’t think we’re looking in the Sahel necessarily at cross-border armed conflicts. I think almost everything there right now is internal. I could be proven wrong on that. But, of course, you have the outside influence, particularly of the Wagner Group from Russia, and other nonstate actors, are ginning things up in the Sahel. And I think that shows the increased focus on Africa in the humanitarian emergency space. As far as the weapons are concerned, I have found it rather ironic—and sort of understandably ironic, but still ironic—that when it comes to the flow of weapons, on the one hand we have an intense need—at least many of us would argue—for there to be arms manufacturing and arms transfers to Ukraine to defend itself from Russian aggression. That has—you know, in the human rights community we normally and naturally argue for regulation of arms transfers, for limitation of arms transfers. All of this is bad. However, in the last couple of years, I’ve seen a very clear shift in attitudes, whereby, frankly, the task of saving humanity actually requires manufacturing arms and delivering them to countries in need who are acting in self-defense. And we didn’t really—you know, we didn’t have an adequate capacity to do that when the Ukraine war of 2022 broke out. And we’ve been catching up ever since. I mean, the stories out of Europe with trying to regalvanize their arms manufacturing plants, building new ones in order to meet this need—not only for Ukraine, but also in the future for the defense of Europe under NATO—is all an arms manufacturing, arms transfer issue. And of course, here in the United States it’s a huge issue now of gearing up the arms industry and paying them with public funds to actually provide all of these arms. So then you come to Africa. And unfortunately, the spillover is a lack of focus on regulating arms transfers. There’s a treaty out there on arms transfers that is more or less been—you know, has laid fallow now. But it just means the focus has turned away from actually regulating arms transfers to ramping up arms manufacturing, and presumably legitimate transfers. But I think the blowback is, in Africa, you’re going to see a lot of that just gin up more availability of arms for conflicts, particularly non-international armed conflicts, which are not helpful to peace, security, stability, and good governance in Africa. So I’ll leave it there for that answer. CASA: Our next question is a written one. It comes from Zoe Hughes, a graduate student at Stanford University: What value do legal frameworks of war hold in the now, if the global audience cannot confidently assess in the now proportionality and necessity? How do you recommend the global audience factors the laws of war into their response to wars? SCHEFFER: That’s a very, very good question, because it makes even my job very difficult too. In other words, on a day-by-day basis how am I supposed to assess, sitting here in Washington, DC, the extent to which the Israeli Defense Forces have complied with the law of war and international humanitarian law yesterday in the conflict? How do I understand what Hamas has or hasn’t done in that respect? It’s very, very difficult for the public to know what, ultimately in a courtroom, would be the evidence of whether or not a military force has complied with the standard principles—which we do have in customary international law; we have it in rules of engagement, et cetera—of, proportionality, namely you don’t kill more civilians than is absolutely necessary to get at the military advantage of hitting that combat force you’re trying to hit at, and necessity, that the object here is to go after Hamas and no one else. And distinction, between trying to identify between civilians, and, in this case, Hamas. If they’re in a residential building, do you know who’s the civilians and who are the Hamas fighters? How do you calculate that? And if they’re firing back at you out of one window, what’s the story with the window on top? Is that fair game? Who knows? Those are determinations of distinction. And then just basic humanity, which sometimes the military describes as fighting with honor. Namely, yeah, there’s an enemy. There’s combat. But there’s also the honor of doing it in a way that complies with law and, of course, preserves the civilian population to the greatest extent possible. I think my point is, when I say, “the civilian population to the greatest extent possible,” yes, on any given day, with any given strike. But the question is, are you asking the larger—I mean, does one ask the larger question of, at what point is the civilian population, frankly, perhaps of more significance than totally defeating the enemy? Literally, at what point does that red line get crossed? And so that would be my response. CASA: Next question comes from Otávio Cunha, an undergraduate student at Lewis University, who writes: With respect to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, what role, if any, is the United Nations Security Council playing in addressing the situation and promoting a peaceful resolution to the conflict? SCHEFFER: Well, they have—they have been convening and holding sessions, and resolutions have been introduced calling—particularly those introduced by almost everyone other than the United States—call for a full ceasefire. And I think in the minds of many of those who introduced those resolutions, a permanent ceasefire. Now, the United States, as you probably know from reading the news of the last few weeks, has been shifting its position now to this term “ceasefire.” I think has been somewhat confusing for the general public because I think most of the public sees ceasefire as a permanent thing. Whereas you can have a temporary ceasefire for humanitarian purposes as well, and it’s still a ceasefire, but for a temporary period of time. And that’s really what the United States has been supportive of. And I know that Vice President Kamala Harris recently emphasized in Selma on Sunday that the United States supports a temporary ceasefire of six weeks to get this humanitarian situation under control and to get the hostages returned. Those are the two big, you know, priorities. But it’s that dispute within the Security Council over are you permanently ending the war or are you just temporarily. The United States has not been prepared yet to say under Chapter Seven authority of the UN Charter under the Security Council, Israel must completely, permanently cease all combat actions in Gaza. Why? Because of the threat of Hamas. But that is not how the rest of the Council sees it. And since the United States has a veto, there remains somewhat of a gridlock. But it is possible, ultimately, to work our way out of that gridlock in the Security Council if we sort of do two things, from the United States perspective. One, just to almost ignore what the Russian ambassador is saying. He’s there to score points, as hypocritical as it is. And, you know, he’s just going to say whatever he wants to say. And let’s not get too worked up about it. But I think the other point is that we can actually start to use our leverage within the Security Council I think to get, if I may put it this way, Israel to the right place on all of this. And to make it clear that, you know, we’re not simply going to follow directions from Tel Aviv in terms of how—or, Jerusalem—in terms of how to conduct ourselves in the Security Council, because we need to meet the priorities that are in the best national security interests of the United States. At this time, I would describe them as, obviously, the security of Israel, but also the humanitarian survival in good order of the Palestinian population in Gaza. And the two of them are going to have to come together as twin objectives and to be achieved as twin objectives. It’s not binary. It’s not one or the other. It has to be both. And that’s what the U.S. has to keep pressing for and persuading other Security Council members to buy into to that formula. And, of course, part of that formula, if I may say, is the end game, which is moving towards a negotiated outcome to all of this that resolves, in large part, this situation that is triggering so many humanitarian emergencies. And to solve it, shall we say, quote/unquote, “once and for all.” CASA: Thank you. We have a lot of written questions. We would love to hear your voices. So please, don’t be shy about raising your hand and asking them verbally. In the meantime, we’ll go to Evan Maher, undergraduate student at Buffalo State University, who writes in, asking: We have heard a lot about Palestine and Ukraine in the media lately. Why do you think that these receive so much attention while others, such as the conflict in Sudan, are also popping up? Would you say that it is due to these issues being in nations which the U.S. and the rest of the Western world interact with more? SCHEFFER: Well, I would say that answers—or, the answer you provided more or less explains it. But I would take you back to, you know, there was a time in 2003, when the situation in Darfur was at the top of the list of attention by even the United States government. And that was in Africa. It was in Sudan. It was a genocidal situation in Darfur. So, it’s not as if just because something is in Africa it will not accord attention. I do think that it’s being out-competed by the urgency and, you know, the attention by everyone on what’s going on in Gaza, and before that, in Ukraine. I mean, even the media exposure of what is occurring in both locations—in both regions is swamping us, particularly with Ukraine. And then once journalists could get closer and closer to see what’s going on in Gaza, it just—you know, there’s a shock value to that every single day. And politicians and government officials have to react to that. That’ll be issue number one at the morning meeting, you know. And you just—there’s no way of avoiding it. And that means that it’s going to be prioritized for action. But it also explains why you see someone like Secretary of State Blinken, even though there’s the continuing war in Ukraine, the conflagration in Gaza and Israel, you still see that he has to do his job dealing with other issues in the world, whether it be traveling through Africa, or traveling through South America. He does that, even in the midst of all of this, in order to address those issues. But I have to acknowledge the point of the question, which is right now, the worst humanitarian disaster, emergency in the world is in Sudan. That’s where it’s happening. It’s also in Gaza. It’s also in Ukraine. But just in terms of sheer numbers, it’s in Sudan. And the modest proposal I’ve made, because I work the law beat on these things, is I do not understand why the United States is not taking a clear initiative in the Security Council to address charges of genocide in Darfur under the authority of the original referral by the Security Council of Darfur in 2005, I think, to address the issue of accountability for that crime. Well, that’s still on the books. It’s still alive and active. It can be reenergized, reactivated for the current situation that is hitting Darfur. And so that’s a way for the United States to say, yeah, we recognize everything else going on, but we need to get back to a problem that has reignited. And that is genocide in Darfur. And it needs to be dealt with by this Security Council, in part to support the work of the International Criminal Court, which has been investigating the 2003 genocide and issued indictments with respect to it. But the United States can bring that to the forefront again and seek action in the Security Council. CASA: We will now take a question from JY Zhou, who is executive director of the Center for Global Engagement at James Madison University. JY. Q: Hi, can you hear me? CASA: Yes. Q: Hi. My name is Chris Nelms. I’m a student here at James Madison University. And my question is, you mentioned the list of the twenty countries that are facing the humanitarian crisis. I wanted you to know if there were nations on that list—or that are there were countries that have left that list, and how they succeeded in getting off that list, and how other countries can learn from that. Thank you. SCHEFFER: Yeah. Well, one of them, although it’s in the second ranking now, is Yemen. Three or four years ago, we put Yemen at the very top of the humanitarian emergency list. But there has been a truce in the armed conflict in Yemen. And, of course, this is where, as you know, the Houthis are operating in order to cripple the commercial shipping through the Red Sea in protest of what’s going on in Gaza. But nonetheless, despite the Houthi, frankly, attention to those kinds of issues, the humanitarian emergency in Yemen, while it’s still there, has greatly receded, and is not even in the top ten anymore. It’s in the top twenty. So, I think I’ll leave it at that example. I don’t think, for example—well, I was going to say one that I see is now there. I think the interesting thing is what has newly arrived on the list in the top twenty, and that’s Ecuador. Who would have thought, you know? But the situation there is quite dire now, politically, and also with armed gangs and stuff. So that’s a very difficult one. And, by the way, I would also just make an editorial comment about Haiti, which is in the top twenty. Not the top ten, but the top twenty of the IRC list. It is—it’s not as if millions or thousands of people are being displaced in Haiti. They honestly don’t have very much territory to go to, even if they were. But rather, it’s the state of life in Haiti as controlled by the gangs as opposed to a government in Haiti. And there’s—just to go back to the last question on the Security Council—the Security Council has been laboring for a long time now, to try to get some kind of law enforcement capacity into Haiti. Kenya offered peacekeepers for that purpose. And then there’s been some backtracking. Everything is now under discussion again. But I have always thought, you know, because I dealt with Haiti during the Clinton administration and saw it upfront. I’ve always thought Haiti really is a special responsibility of the United States. It’s in our neighborhood. It was the first real surge of democracy in the western hemisphere. And we have a lot of immigrants from Haiti. And I just think if this country were to have some special responsibility for any particular nation in the world—in other words, responsibility to respond, to deal with the problems, to address the problems of Haiti, it’s the United States. And I’ve always been a little distressed that we don’t have a greater push domestically to address this terrible emergency that’s taking place quite close to our shores. CASA: Ambassador Susan Page’s class at the University of Michigan is joining us, and they’ve written in: What do you think a new international law defining totality would look like? More specifically, would it be another atrocity crime or under a different designation? SCHEFFER: Right. I don’t know if I would list it as an atrocity crime, per se. I think you might be able to get there eventually. But I would like to see something a little more towards the state responsibility construct to begin with, as opposed to just trying to pinpoint this on individual criminal responsibility. I would like to see more of a state responsibility treaty of some sort, whereby nations agree—it’s sort of like an extension of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, but primarily on a state responsibility platform. So that governments are on notice that once they go down this path of armed conflict, there needs to be a greater sense of the totality of the conflict and what their responsibilities are to acknowledge the realities of that totality, and not try—to put it quite bluntly, you don’t want to slaughter humanity in order to save humanity. There’s got to be a better balance. And I think it’s an excellent question. And don’t assume I’ve thought this all through. (Laughs.) This has really occurred to me, frankly, from the Gaza experience of the last several months, that we have this great gap in international law. And I do think it could be filled with a better attention to what do we need more than just the Geneva Conventions in terms of a focus on the entirety of the conflict? CASA: We have a raised hand now from Charlotte Langeveld, college lecturer at Ocean County College. Charlotte. Q: Yes. Hi. Thank you for taking my question. And thank you for hosting this session. It’s very informative and important. I worked as a humanitarian aid worker in the Sudan from about 1998 to 2001, and I saw the brewings of the genocide. And, you know, I didn’t see it happen. And I left and I saw it happen. And I’m like, oh, makes sense because, of course, there’s a lack of resources that people begin to fight over. In this case, I believe it’s water. And then—it was water, and then you had, you know, different ethnic groups from the north, and the animist Africans’ land being trashed, villages, et cetera. I just wonder, do we need to look at the political economy, the global political economy, and figure out how to stop gold as being the interest, then conflict minerals in the Congo? And, I don’t know, because as long as governments and corporations are connected, how is the United Nations going to make a difference in trying to address these things? I’m sorry, I’m a little passionate, but there you go. SCHEFFER: Thanks, Charlotte. Very, very, very good question. And, you know, one of the readings that we assigned is by my friend John Prendergast, “Dirty Money is Destroying Sudan,” from February 27, only a few days ago in Foreign Affairs . And that article points to the very point that you’re making, which is that the source of a lot of the trouble in Sudan is, frankly, a race for gold. And those who are trying to influence that, and money laundering, and, you know, countries like the United Arab Emirates that are just knee-deep in—obsessed with the gold of Sudan. So that’s all very, very important. But it actually gives me an opportunity to make a larger point, which is I’ve spent, oh, gosh, thirty years on not only accountability for atrocity crimes, but also the huge challenge of prevention of atrocities. And so there’s a lot of focus on that. You know, how do you prevent atrocities from occurring? Is it an armed conflict, where you can prevent war crimes from, you know, being the sine qua non of every day of fighting, et cetera? So that’s—we’ve got a lot of history with prevention of atrocities. But we don’t have that same kind of sharp focus on atrocity—on prevention of a humanitarian emergencies. We respond to humanitarian emergencies. And there’s a huge school of thought and practice on how do you most effectively respond to humanitarian emergencies, whether it be the provision of food, dealing with refugees, employment issues, you know, political settlements that return refugees to their homes and their countries, et cetera. All of that is part of dealing with humanitarian emergencies. But I’m not aware of a kind of a school of thought out there where we place a lot of focus on, well, wait a minute, how can we prevent this humanitarian emergency from occurring? We see it coming. And, yes, there will—there are—even the IRC report, if you were to look at it, will say, yes, we need to have, you know, better educational issues dealt with, we need to have better economic relations established, you know, better farming techniques—I mean, all sorts of things to address what could be a humanitarian emergency. And, of course, we need to deal with climate change. But I don’t see it as a coherent sort of school of thought, or there’s no academy of prevention of humanitarian emergencies that I’m aware of. I could be proven wrong. It certainly has not come to my attention. Because I’ve been so immersed with prevention of atrocities that it occurs to me that one could also address prevention of humanitarian emergencies. CASA: Thank you. I think we can squeeze in one more question. Sebastian Kandakudy is an undergraduate student at Lewis University. Sebastian. Q: Hi. My question is, how should global actors navigate a delicate balance between the living essentials, humanitarian aid to vulnerable populations, and avoiding unintentional bolstering of oppressive regimes or prolonging conflicts in negotiations over aid access? SCHEFFER: Yeah. Let me take one prong of your question, if I might. Which is, unfortunately, the reality of responding to humanitarian emergencies so often rests upon, you know, negotiating and getting relief to the oppressed, to the population that is in dire need of it. But in doing so, one can be bolstering the very regime that is causing the problem, because—that’s part of my burden shifting argument. That, yeah, I know, we got to—we got to accept the burden now, and deal with this, and basically save your people because it’s our responsibility as decent international actors to do so and through our allegiance to, you know, the United Nations principles, our participation in the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, et cetera. But at the end of the day, it can actually be a facilitator for the survival of the very regime that’s causing the problem, because it doesn’t have to deal with the problem anymore. So I think I probably should leave it at that, Maria. A very rich subject to talk about. CASA: Thank you. I’m sorry we can’t go to the rest of the questions. But, David, thank you so much for speaking with us today, and to all of you for your questions and comments. The next Academic Webinar will take place on Wednesday, March 27, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Moisés Naím, distinguished fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace will lead a conversation on authoritarianism. In the meantime, I encourage you to learn about CFR paid internships for students and fellowships for professors at CFR.org/careers; follow @CFR_Academic on X; and visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. Thank you again for joining us today. We look forward to tuning in for our next webinar on March 27. (END) Webinar by David J. Scheffer and Maria Casa March 6, 2024
• International Law Three Challenging Policy Issues for the Prosecutor in the Israel-Hamas Situation The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC),[1] Karim A. A. Khan,[2] faces several challenging policy issues in the months ahead regarding the Israel-Hamas situation.[3] In this comment I examine three of those issues. I. Role of the Prosecutor Prosecutor Khan made two particularly important public statements about the Israel-Hamas situation following October 7, 2023. The first was an address he delivered in Cairo on October 29, 2023, the text of which was published in The Guardian on November 10, 2023.[4] Khan’s address in Cairo immediately followed his visit to the Rafah crossing at the border between Gaza and Egypt. Khan was quite expansive in Cairo about the obligations of the contentious parties and how they can be held responsible under the Rome Statute . His remarks were aimed at both Israel and the State of Palestine (Palestine), including Hamas. Khan’s second statement occurred on November 17, 2023, in The Hague when he announced the referral by five ICC States Parties of the Israel-Hamas situation to the ICC.[5] These are the same countries (South Africa, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Comoros and Djibouti) that filed a case[6] under the Genocide Convention[7] before the International Court of Justice on December 29, 2023, seeking to hold Israel accountable under that Convention and requesting provisional measures against Israel. In his statement, Khan confirmed that he was extending his investigation (initially commenced on March 3, 2021 concerning “acts committed since June 13, 2014 in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which would constitute crimes under the Rome Statute.”) “to the escalation of hostilities and violence since the attacks of October 7, 2023. In accordance with the Rome Statute, my Office has jurisdiction over crimes committed on the territory of a State Party and by nationals of such a State.” He called “on all States Parties to the Rome Statute to provide us with the resources we need to enable us to effectively fulfill our mandate for all situations we examine.” In my view, Khan need not and should not say more publicly other than cryptic confirmations that his investigations continue. He needs to build trust among a wide range of governments, many of which are non-party States of the Rome Statute, such as Israel, the United States, Turkey, most Arab countries, and influential nations like China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, and Indonesia. These countries need to understand that his office is investigating objectively, with no political agenda, and that those investigations will proceed under the auspices of a Court that they have not joined. That trust will be attained with communications in private and diplomatic channels. There will be more than enough to say publicly in the event the ICC issues arrest warrants in this situation. Further, Khan likely is reaching out to several non-party States, particularly the United States and Israel, for cooperation in the collection of evidence, including from intelligence sources. In his statement of November 17, 2023, he missed the opportunity to highlight the importance of cooperation from non-party States, particularly those with unique capabilities. He nonetheless should explore those opportunities quietly and diplomatically with such countries. Since the United States is cooperating with Khan on the provision of intelligence relating to the Russia-Ukraine war (fought between two non-party States of the Rome Statute), there will be protests of double standards unless Washington acts in a similar fashion regarding the Israel-Hamas war (fought between Hamas, part of one State Party, the State of Palestine, and one non-party State, Israel).[8] The best way for Khan to address that politically sensitive issue with the United States will be to do so discreetly and tactfully in the months ahead. II. Article 18 Notification Khan may have acted already in this respect, but just to check the box: Pursuant to Article 18 of the Rome Statute, the Prosecutor presumably has notified Israel, in particular, of the investigation now underway regarding the Israel-Hamas situation.[9] That is an important notification as it should incentivize Israel to demonstrate that it is investigating, for example, claims of war crimes allegedly committed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Israeli political leadership as well as public statements by government and military officials allegedly inciting genocide. Khan should privately encourage Israeli officials to undertake a comprehensive domestic investigation of Israeli actions. Granted, this will be a difficult step for Israel whose population is traumatized by the October 7 intervention and atrocities by Hamas militants.[10] Most Israelis at this point will have little tolerance for self-reflection about the conduct of the IDF.[11] But everyone will need to recognize the important role for the rule of law being followed by all actors. While under Article 18(3) of the Rome Statute the Israeli investigation would be “open to review by the Prosecutor six months after the date of deferral,” if the Israeli investigation is being undertaken in good faith and diligently, then Khan should use his discretion under his own “review” to extend the period of time that Israel would continue to conduct its domestic investigation prior to continuing his own full-scale investigation. This would conform with principles of complementarity under the Rome Statute. Khan also presumably has delivered an Article 18 notification to the State of Palestine, whether that means to officials of the Palestinian Authority or the Palestine Liberation Organization. Such notification might prove pro forma as the judicial system in Palestine likely would struggle with any widescale investigation.[12] However implausible the procedure, nothing prevents officials of Palestine seeking foreign assistance, including even from Israel, to investigate the actions by Hamas on Israeli territory on October 7 and in the use of human shields during the combat in Gaza, the taking and holding of hostages in Gaza following the October 7 assault, and the commission of any other war crimes under the Rome Statute. All of these acts presumably will be under investigation by Khan, so Palestine has the choice whether or not to weigh in with its own investigations of Hamas’s conduct. Palestine should be as mindful of complementarity, and the risks of ignoring it, as any other State Party of the Rome Statute. III. Negotiated Settlement Khan and his staff should be strategizing how he will navigate any evolving diplomacy for a negotiated settlement among Israel and Palestinian representatives (however composed among the Palestinian Authority, Palestine Liberation Organization, and/or Hamas) and major foreign players such as the United States, key Arab states, the European Union, and the United Nations. Every party to those talks, other than probably Israel as long as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains in power,[13] will insist on the two-state solution[14] as a major objective. What will be the fate of international criminal justice in such talks? There might be strong pressures to keep justice issues completely separate from the diplomatic talks. Given the allegations and disinformation swirling around October 7 and the aftermath, it might prove very problematic how justice would even be discussed among the negotiators.[15] Isolating accountability for atrocity crimes from peace objectives would leave Khan free to pursue his investigation and uphold the prospect of ICC arrest warrants. Such segregation of justice from peace, however, may prove implausible, as the two goals of peace and justice seem destined to become intertwined given the way atrocity crimes presently dominate the situation both on the ground and in international courts, namely the ICC and the ICJ. But if the segregation of peace from justice is the chosen path, then Khan simply could plod his way through investigations and ultimately persuade the Pre-Trial Chamber of the ICC to approve arrest warrants, and then let the chips fall where they may. The more likely prospect is that justice will be factored into negotiations that center on permanently ending hostilities and forging a two-state solution. The victim populations of atrocity crimes will expect justice to be addressed in the talks and doubtless will protest strongly the absence of accountability in the settlement. But the negotiations will compel tough decisions on modifying perfect justice with imperfect justice (or none at all) in order to reach the two-state solution. Khan may choose to engage with the negotiators in order to preserve the ICC’s equities. It would not be surprising if one or more of the following options arise during the talks: First, Israel and Palestine could agree, upon normalization of relations, to enter into a non-surrender agreement described by Article 98(2) of the Rome Statute whereby neither country would surrender an individual under an ICC arrest warrant to the ICC without gaining the consent of the “sending State” of that individual.[16] Such an agreement would not be so different from probable realities. As a non-party State, Israel would not want to surrender anyone, and particularly not an Israeli citizen, to the ICC. Palestine would want to avoid the surrender of any individual (most likely from Hamas) within Palestine to the control of the ICC. While such an agreement would impair the ICC’s power to prosecute alleged perpetrators of atrocity crimes in the Israel-Hamas situation, the Article 98(2) non-surrender agreement could become a compelling means in the negotiations to essentially take the ICC off the table and focus on the two-state solution. Nothing would prevent ultimately bringing Hamas leaders to justice in Israel if captured and brought to Israel to stand trial in Israeli courts. Israel, almost certainly, would never immunize them from possible prosecution, particularly for the atrocity crimes perpetrated by Hamas on October 7. In a conditional reciprocal fashion, future Palestinian courts might try to prosecute Israeli citizens for actions taken prior to the peace agreement unless explicitly deprived of that power in the peace agreement as a pre-condition to Israeli recognition of the State of Palestine. These would be difficult trade-offs to negotiate, but they need not necessarily implicate Khan and the ICC as these issues focus on justice rendered by national courts (Israel or Palestine) and not the ICC. But Khan should factor in any such developments in his review of complementarity efforts, if any, by prosecutors and courts in Israel and Palestine. Finally, the negotiations for the end of hostilities and implementation of the two-state solution could raise the prospect of the UN Security Council acting in a manner consistent with the objective set forth in Article 16 of the Statute, namely that: No investigation or prosecution may be commenced or proceeded with under this Statute for a period of twelve months after the Security Council, in a resolution adopted under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, has requested the Court to that effect; that request may be renewed by the Council under the same conditions.[17] Israel and Palestine may find this option attractive during the negotiations so as to shelve the ICC for at least one year, perhaps more, if that would mean achieving a permanent end to hostilities and the co-existence of two nations—Israel and Palestine—engaged in normalized diplomatic relations. The prospect of constructive negotiations leading to promises of international financing to rebuild Gaza and to strengthen the economy of Palestine could be a tempting objective that negotiators would be willing to prioritize over speedily achieving criminal justice of leading individual perpetrators of atrocity crimes. In order to reach a final peace settlement enshrining the two-state solution, the five permanent members of the Security Council might find common cause in adopting a Chapter VII resolution (with sufficient non-permanent member votes) that prevents the ICC from continuing its investigation or prosecution of atrocity crimes in the Israel-Hamas situation under the terms of Article 16 of the Rome Statute. Russia and China might see political value in shielding Hamas officials from ICC scrutiny, and the United States, United Kingdom, and France might see equal political value in shielding Israeli officials from ICC investigation. Khan will need to keep a very keen eye on negotiations that may unfold in the coming months and weigh to what extent he should personally intervene at any point during those negotiations to respond to proposals pertaining to Article 16 or Article 98(2) or other provisions of the Rome Statute. This publication is part of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Project on the Future of Democracy. Endnotes ^ “International Criminal Court,”  International Criminal Court , accessed February 7, 2024, https://www.icc-cpi.int/.  ^ “Karim A. A. Khan KC,”  International Criminal Court , accessed February 7, 2024, https://www.icc-cpi.int/about/otp/who-s-who/karim-khan.  ^ Vusi Madonsela, letter to International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim A. A. Khan KC, November 17, 2023, https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/2023-11/ICC-Referral-Palestine-Final-17-November-2023.pdf.  ^ Karim A. A. Khan, “We Are Witnessing a Pandemic of Inhumanity: To Halt the Spread, We Must Cling To the Law,”  The Guardian , November 10, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/10/law-israel-hamas-international-criminal-court-icc.  ^ “Statement of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim A. A. Khan KC, on the Situation in the State of Palestine: Receipt of a Referral From Five States Parties,”  International Criminal Court , November 17, 2023, https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-prosecutor-international-criminal-court-karim-aa-khan-kc-situation-state-palestine.  ^ “The Republic of South Africa Institutes Proceedings Against the State of Israel and Requests the Court to Indicate Provisional Measures,”  International Court of Justice , December 29, 2023, https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231229-pre-01-00-en.pdf. ^ “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” conclusion date: December 9, 1948,  United Nations Treaty Series , registration no. I-1021, https://iccforum.com/genocide-convention.  ^ “The Republic of South Africa Institutes Proceedings,”  International Court of Justice . ^ “Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,” opened for signature July 17, 1998, UN Doc. A/CONF.183/9, Art. 18, https://iccforum.com/rome-statute. ^ Noa Limone, “‘A Multilayered Trauma Is Affecting Israelis in the Wake of October 7,’”  Haaretz , December 2, 2023, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-02/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/there-is-a-multilayered-trauma-taking-place-in-the-wake-of-october-7-its-infectious/0000018c-2774-d04a-af9f-f7f6ddf30000.  ^ “Widening Mideast Crisis: Blast That Killed About Twenty Soldiers Linked to Israeli Effort to Create Gaza Buffer Zone,”  The New York Times , last updated January 24, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/01/23/world/israel-hamas-gaza-news.  ^ “Judicial Systems in Member States - Palestine,”  Euro-Arab Judicial Training Network , accessed February 7, 2024, https://www.eajtn.com/judicial-systems/palestine/. ^ “Widening Mideast Crisis: U.S. Official Heads to Middle East for Talks on Hostages,”  The New York Times , last updated February 6, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/01/21/world/israel-hamas-gaza-news-iraq#netanyahu-rebuffs-biden-again-on-the-idea-of-creating-a-palestinian-state. ^ “Israel-Palestinian Conflict: What Is the Two-State Solution and What Are the Obstacles?”  Reuters , January 26, 2024, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/what-is-two-state-solution-israel-palestinian-conflict-2024-01-25/.  ^ Elizabeth Dwoskin, “Growing Oct. 7 ‘Truther’ Groups Say Hamas Massacre Was a False Flag,”  The Washington Post , January 21, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/01/21/hamas-attack-october-7-conspiracy-israel/.  ^ “Rome Statute,” Art. 98. ^ “Rome Statute,” Art. 16. Article by David J. Scheffer February 27, 2024 International Institutions and Global Governance Program
• Ukraine Russia Must Be Held Accountable for Alleged Criminal Aggression in Ukraine: Two Paths to Justice The authors, including a former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, UN Undersecretary-General for Legal Affairs, Founding Chief Prosecutor of the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone, and the inaugural U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues, urge the imperative of prosecuting alleged Russian crimes of aggression in Ukraine, and present two practical options for doing so. Article by David J. Scheffer , Irwin Cotler, Hans Corell and David Crane November 28, 2023 International Institutions and Global Governance Program
• Human Rights Virtual Media Briefing: International Law and the Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza Play The Council on Foreign Relations hosts experts to discuss recent developments on the humanitarian crisis and to analyze the laws of war and human rights in Gaza.  Virtual Event by Steven A. Cook , David J. Scheffer , Sarah Yager and Michael Froman November 13, 2023 Media Briefings
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict The Laws of War, With Matthew Waxman Podcast Matthew Waxman, adjunct senior fellow for law and foreign policy at CFR and the Liviu Librescu Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, sits down with James M. Lindsay to discuss the laws of warfare and how they apply to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. Podcast with James M. Lindsay and Matthew C. Waxman October 31, 2023 The President’s Inbox
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict What International Law Has to Say About the Israel-Hamas War Hamas’s attack on Israel and the ensuing war in the Gaza Strip raise a host of questions about the combatants’ legal obligations. Article by David J. Scheffer October 19, 2023 International Institutions and Global Governance Program
• Human Trafficking The Nexus of Human Trafficking, Democracy, and Corruption The fight against human trafficking in the Northern Triangle and Mexico requires a comprehensive approach that acknowledges the profound impact of corruption and weak or non-existent democratic institutions. Blog Post by Ann Norris October 12, 2023 Women Around the World

Diplomacy and International Law in Globalized Relations

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Table of contents (14 chapters)

Front matter, introduction: practitioner’s perspective of diplomacy, essentials of modern diplomacy, diplomacy between statecraft and social science, internalization of diplomacy or internationalization of domestic policy, from national to european foreign service, symbolism and ritual in multilateral diplomacy, flexibility and pragmatism as response to global challenges, reciprocity versus communitarianism, transformation of globalized relations and its impact on diplomacy, new participants and corporate diplomacy: symbiosis of diplomacy and transnational companies, citizen diplomats and public relations diplomacy: popularization of diplomacy, towards a diplomatic corporate identity, the importance of an international diplomatic culture, the relevance of language, globalized relations and the law, private authority in transnational relations, transnational regime as soft law, judicial review of governmental diplomacy, back matter, authors and affiliations.

Wilfried Bolewski

Bibliographic Information

Book Title : Diplomacy and International Law in Globalized Relations

Authors : Wilfried Bolewski

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-71101-8

Publisher : Springer Berlin, Heidelberg

eBook Packages : Humanities, Social Sciences and Law , History (R0)

Copyright Information : Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007

Hardcover ISBN : 978-3-540-71100-1 Published: 17 April 2007

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-642-09018-9 Published: 15 October 2010

eBook ISBN : 978-3-540-71101-8 Published: 01 May 2007

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : VI, 147

Topics : Science, Humanities and Social Sciences, multidisciplinary , Public International Law , International Relations , Emerging Markets/Globalization

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M.A. in International Law and Diplomacy (hybrid)

Archived Course

Blended learning

28 August 2023

University for Peace

United Nations Institute for Training and Research ( UN Partner )

Course details

Learn from highly experienced UN experts, take part in a field trip to the birthplace of the international system, and benefit from an interdisciplinary approach.

The Master of Arts in International Law and Diplomacy (online and hybrid formats) is a graduate programme permitting students to specialize in the interface between international law and diplomacy. It will not only broaden students' knowledge in the field of international law and its various foundational dimensions but will also equip them with knowledge and skills to work in the field of diplomacy and related international careers.

During this programme, students will analyse the different dimensions of international law including those related to law-making, armed conflicts, human rights, economic relations, territorial and maritime disputes, environmental disputes as well as those related to the theory and practice of diplomacy in the 21st century including dispute settlement and conflict resolution. Students will also attend skills development sessions that are designed to support their professional career and employability. This master’s degree offered by two UN entities (University for Peace and United Nations Institute for Training and Research) combines the best of academic and executive-style education. Students will also gain first-hand experience of the work of the United Nations (UN), as they will have the opportunity to participate in a field trip to Geneva and The Hague, where the UN maintains a significant presence.

The following documentation is required to complete the application process. Please have them ready and on hand before beginning your online application process, as they will need to be uploaded into the system. Required supporting documents to be uploaded:

• English Proficiency Test Scores Report (TOEFL, IELTS)
• Statement of Purpose
• Letters of Recommendation
• Official Undergraduate (Bachelor's Degree) Transcripts and Degree Certificate
• Curriculum Vitae or Resume
• Copy of Passport (front page with photo only)
• Passport-size photo

Students can obtain the MA in International Law and Diplomacy (online) upon successful completion of 42 credits, including 36 credits for course work and 6 credits for a final independent research project.

Kindly note the following deadlines for application:

• Start date:   3 July 2023
• Start date: 28 August 2023
• Start date: 26 June 2023
• Start date: 3 July 2023

Target Audience

The programme is designed for graduate students, diplomats, government officers, NGO representatives, international civil servants or private law practitioners willing to strengthen their knowledge in international law, dispute settlement, international affairs management and diplomacy.

Learning Objectives

At the end of the programme, students will:

• Have a deep understanding of the theory and practice of international law;
• Be able to participate in different processes of law making, implementing and enforcement in promoting the rule of law at different levels, especially regional and international;
• Have a deep understanding of the theory and practice of diplomacy;
• Be able to appraise the nexus between international law, diplomacy, the UN System and current contemporary challenges;
• Be able to apply key soft skills in an international working environment.

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Diplomacy Dissertation Topics Ideas

Published by Owen Ingram at January 5th, 2023 , Revised On March 24, 2023

Diplomacy dissertation is an interesting and important academic pursuit, especially given the current global climate. The ability to navigate potentially challenging international relationships is an invaluable skill for anyone in public service or those looking to work in international relations. This research requires students to identify a specific area of diplomacy and then build their understanding of relevant concepts and theories through rigorous analysis.

The topics for a diplomacy dissertation can vary widely, depending on the interests and abilities of the student. For example, those interested in global politics may want to explore themes such as military interventions, humanitarian aid, or foreign policy decisions.

For those more focused on economics, topics such as trade agreements or economic sanctions could be explored. There are also interesting questions related to law that could be addressed by delving into diplomatic immunity or international criminal law.

When Should a Student Choose a Diplomacy Dissertation Topic?

When it comes to choosing a dissertation topic for a diplomacy major, the possibilities are nearly endless. So, of course, it can be overwhelming to make such an important decision. It is essential to consider what type of research you want to conduct and what kind of project you want to work on to help narrow down your choices and make the process easier.

Some students prefer a more theoretical approach, focusing on international relations theory or how different countries interact diplomatically with one another. Others may be more interested in researching specific historical events that shaped global events or policies implemented due to diplomatic efforts. Answering these questions will help you identify the topics best suited for your dissertation project.

Once you have identified potential dissertation topics that fit your interests, doing primary research on each option is essential.

List of Diplomacy Dissertation Topics

• Conceptualising equidistant diplomacy in international relations: the case of Singapore
• The role of public diplomacy in international relations in the full process of globalisation
• Introduction: Commercial diplomacy and international business: merging international business and international relations
• Democracy and diplomacy: The impact of domestic politics in US foreign policy, 1789-1994
• Diplomacy, domestic politics, and the US-India nuclear agreement
• Diplomatic practices, domestic fields, and the international system: Explaining France’s France’s shift on nuclear nonproliferation
• Germany at Maastricht: diplomacy and domestic politics
• Japanese foreign policy on climate change: Diplomacy and domestic politics
• Streaming diplomacy: Netflix’s domestic politics and foreign policy
• Domestic politics, international bargaining and China’s territorial disputes
• Revisiting pipeline politics and diplomacy: from energy security to domestic politics explanations
• China’s diplomacy: Theory and practice
• Who “won” Libya? The force-diplomacy debate and its implications for theory and policy
• Diplomacy theory and practice in Islam
• International security in practice: the politics of NATO-Russia diplomacy
• Conspiracy theories as a Russian public diplomacy Tool: The case of Russia Today (RT)
• Teaching diplomacy by other means: Using an outside-of-class simulation to teach international relations theory
• Naval diplomacy—a theoretical approach
• China’s strategic partnership diplomacy
• Rising star: China’s new security diplomacy
• China diplomacy, 1914-1918
• China’s oil diplomacy in Africa
• Beyond diplomacy? UK relations with China since 1997
• The concept of ”community of common destiny in China’s diplomacy: Meaning, motives and implications
• Social media and public diplomacy: A comparative analysis of the digital diplomatic strategies of the EU, US and Japan in China
• Diplomacy and War at NATO: The secretary general and military action after the cold war
• The gulf conflict, 1990-1991: Diplomacy and war in the new world order.

What is the Importance of Choosing the Right Diplomacy Dissertation Topic?

Choosing the right topic for your diplomacy dissertation can be difficult. However, selecting an appropriate research question is essential for producing meaningful and engaging work. When choosing the most suitable topic, you need to consider several factors: its relevance in today’s world, how much data and literature are available as support, and whether or not it is something that interests you.

A good diplomacy dissertation topic should tick all these boxes; it should allow you to explore a relevant issue from multiple angles and express your opinion within the context of current affairs.

This will ensure that your research has value beyond the academic setting by providing important insights into real-world challenges and helping inform future policymaking decisions. Moreover, if your chosen subject matter genuinely excites you, this enthusiasm will shine through in your finished product – improving its overall impact even further.

How Can ResearchProspect Help?

ResearchProspect writers can send several custom topic ideas to your email address. Once you have chosen a topic that suits your needs and interests, you can order for our dissertation outline service which will include a brief introduction to the topic, research questions , literature review , methodology , expected results , and conclusion . The dissertation outline will enable you to review the quality of our work before placing the order for our full dissertation writing service!

FAQ’s About Diplomacy Dissertation Ideas

Can i use these topics for my dissertation.

Yes, you can use these topics for your dissertation. Though, other students might have used these topics.

Does ResearchProspect provide customised and unique diplomacy dissertation topics?

Yes, we do provide customised and unique dissertation topics. To place an order , visit our website.

Can you make a research proposal on my selected topic?

Yes, we can make a research proposal on your selected topic. You can check out our website for more information about our proposal writing services or order a research proposal topic.

When to choose the diplomacy dissertation topic?

It is important to choose diplomacy dissertation topics at the outset of the dissertation whenever it is assigned. It takes a great deal of time to research a dissertation, so you will save a lot of hassle if you choose a topic ahead of time.

You May Also Like

Pick from our top 50 taxation dissertation topic ideas varying from laws in taxation to the effects of tax evasion to help you in your taxation dissertation

The talent management field is advancing rapidly when it becomes easier to find talent around the world. The management of talent is a subcategory of human resources that is not specific to any particular industry.

There are a wide range of topics in sports management that can be researched at the national and international levels. International sports are extremely popular worldwide, making sports management research issues very prominent as well.

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Diplomacy and International Law (Distance Learning)

• Entry year 2024 or 2025
• Duration Full time 1 year, Part time 2 years

Top reasons to study with us

Discover the latest specialist knowledge from our experts

Study with experts in British, Russian, and Middle Eastern politics

Your gateway to a wide range of rewarding careers

Why Lancaster?

• Study at one of the first universities to offer a Master’s in International Law and Diplomacy
• Engage with a range of external organisations via Lancaster’s Richardson Institute, the oldest peace and conflict research centre in the UK
• Develop your negotiation and diplomacy skills with academics who are researching the latest developments in international law and humanitarian rights
• Prepare for future roles in foreign affairs through extensive and complex mock negotiation exercises
• Collaborate with the leaders of tomorrow in the Lancaster Security Institute, a centre exploring the intersection of technology, society and behaviour

Coming to an agreement isn’t always easy, especially when dealing with cultural and economic differences surrounding international disputes. This dynamic degree allows you to explore the complexities of foreign diplomacy in the context of international law.

Understanding strategic negotiations

On this engaging programme you’ll gain a deep understanding of diplomacy, foreign policy and international law. You’ll learn to pick apart the strategic and institutional constraints that affect negotiations, and prepare for a future working on the international stage.

You’ll also spend time looking at how diplomatic theory weighs up against the pragmatic issues involved with making decisions. Our mock negotiations will give you the opportunity to put your theory into practice.

Global rules, laws and customs

Balanced with international law, this course delivers tremendous strength in understanding international norms and law. You’ll uncover immunities and jurisdiction, and look into the nuances of state responsibility and dispute settlement.

Through a combination of theoretical and practical exercises, lectures and visits by guest speakers, you’ll explore topics such as nuclear weapons and foreign policy, arms control and diplomacy, international climate negotiations, and terrorism and citizen protection.

A focus on international law

On our LLM course, you’ll explore the relationship between international law and diplomacy, and you’ll take a module on International Human Rights. You’ll have a keen focus on legal aspects of the topic and you’ll apply everything you’ve learnt to your dissertation.

Want more emphasis on diplomacy? Take a look at our MA Diplomacy and International Law .

Distance learning

Distance learning makes it easier to fit your studies around your other commitments as much of the course can be done at a time and place to suit you. We have provided courses via online learning for many years and have a good understanding of the kinds of support our students need.

Your course will combine recorded material, live and interactive lectures, elements to be worked through autonomously, online collaboration and discussion, and group work.

Before the course begins we’ll invite you to an online introductory session. This is a great chance to meet your tutors and other students and to start to form your own support network. We’ll also tell you about our digital services and software, as well as our extensive e-library resources. After this you should be all set to start the course and get the most from your studies.

Your department

• Politics, Philosophy and Religion Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

LLM Programmes at Lancaster University

Discover the key features of studying LLM Programmes at Lancaster University. Our LLM Programmes will develop your legal expertise – whether you’re new to the field or want to take your career to the next level.

Master's Programmes in Politics and International Relations

Discover the key features of a master's degree in Politics and International Relations at Lancaster University. Learn from a teaching team who have extensive experience in the world of research and policymaking.

The Richardson Institute

Formed in 1959, and based in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion, the Richardson Institute is the oldest peace and conflict research centre in the UK. Since 2012 it has provided an internship programme that gives students the opportunity to work with different organisations on issues of peace and conflict.

By the time you finish this degree in diplomacy and international law, you will have developed an abundance of transferable skills in negotiation. As well as roles within government and diplomatic service, graduates can go on to work in think tanks and the private sector.

Graduates of this programme are able to kickstart careers in:

• Risk analysis
• Advisory roles in foreign affairs
• International business consultancy
• Lobbying organisations and NGOs
• Project management

Alternatively, students who complete this degree are well placed to further their academic studies at PhD level, deepening their understanding and furthering their research.

Entry requirements

Academic requirements.

2:1 degree in a related subject is normally required. We will also consider applications where you have a degree in other subjects, have a 2:2 or equivalent result and/or extensive relevant experience. In these cases, you should clearly demonstrate how your experience and skills have prepared you for postgraduate study.

If you have studied outside of the UK, we would advise you to check our list of international qualifications before submitting your application.

English Language Requirements

We may ask you to provide a recognised English language qualification, dependent upon your nationality and where you have studied previously.

We normally require an IELTS (Academic) Test with an overall score of at least 6.5, and a minimum of 5.5 in each element of the test. We also consider other English language qualifications .

If your score is below our requirements, you may be eligible for one of our pre-sessional English language programmes .

Contact: Admissions Team +44 (0) 1524 592032 or email [email protected]

Course structure

You will study a range of modules as part of your course, some examples of which are listed below.

Information contained on the website with respect to modules is correct at the time of publication, but changes may be necessary, for example as a result of student feedback, Professional Statutory and Regulatory Bodies' (PSRB) requirements, staff changes, and new research. Not all optional modules are available every year.

core modules accordion

Assessment Coursework: 20,000 words

The dissertation involves supervised research on a topic of your choice, this topic must be approved by the Director of your Degree Programme and be in keeping with the registered LLM degree. Please note that topics can only be approved if the University has sufficient sources for the research and the necessary staff expertise for supervision.

The dissertation is a compulsory component for the LLM degrees and comprises of 80 credits (45%) of the degree weighting.

This module is an introduction to the field of international human rights law. The module will provide an overview of the various rights that are protected through international instruments, as well as giving a general introduction to the regional and universal systems for human rights promotion. A special emphasis to the UN human rights system and an introduction to the regional human rights protection systems will be given. The module aims to achieve both substantive and procedural knowledge of human rights protection through international systems. Contemporary issues such as human rights and development and the role of NGOs and other non-state actors will form an integral part of the module. We aim to address the issues in a manner that will be accessible for students with a law or social science background. It is understood, however, that you will have some knowledge of general international law. Topics typically include:

· Foundations of human rights and international human rights law

· Civil and political human rights

· Economic, social and cultural rights

· State obligations - rights justiciability

· The UN human rights system: The Charter based protection & the Convention based protection

· The Regional Human Rights Systems

· The role of non-state actors in human rights violations and protection

· Human Rights and Development

The rules, laws and customs that govern inter-state relationships come into sharp focus in this module. It provides you with a base from which you can further your study of specific areas of international law.

As we explore the essential elements of international law, and the way that they are used to shape the world in which we live, you will have the chance to gain an in-depth understanding of both theory and practice. You will be given ‘real’ examples of international law to critically assess, allowing you to identify its shortcomings and challenges.

We will cover fundamental principles and concepts of international law and some topical issues such as:

• the nature and sources of international law
• the relationship between international and national law
• statehood and self-determination
• jurisdiction
• state responsibility
• dispute settlement
• use of force

Our Law School is home to research-active lecturers, you will have the chance to benefit from some of their expertise as many teach on areas closely aligned with their own research interests.

Diplomacy and Foreign Policy are central to the understanding of international politics. The structure of the international system induces a constant need for political dialogue and negotiations. Besides war, diplomacy is the common language states are using to interact on the world stage.

Complementing the first core module (Theory and Concepts in Diplomacy and Foreign Policy), this module aims to apply your theoretical understanding of diplomacy and foreign policy to contemporary diplomatic and negotiation issues and great power politics. Our teaching and learning strategy seeks to give you both theoretical and practical understanding of contemporary issues in diplomacy and foreign policy. Where possible, academic teaching will be complemented by guest lectures (e.g. by a practitioner) and in-class activities such as mock negotiation exercises.

Topics covered vary each year but we often explore issues relating to the following areas: Nuclear weapons and foreign policy, Arms control and diplomacy, International climate negotiations, South-North relations and development, Diplomacy and terrorism, and Citizen protection.

This course covers different aspects of international institutions in international law. The course first looks comparatively at common features of international organisations, including the theories behind them, their structure, powers, financing, accountability and their law-making and judicial roles. The second part of the course examines specific international organisations. Topics covered include:

• Introduction to International Organisations and International Law
• The Nature of International Organisations
• Structure and Membership
• Personality and Immunities
• Finance and Accountability
• Dispute Resolution and Judicial Organs, in particular the International Court of Justice
• Group Exercise
• UN Specialised Agencies, including the IMF and World Bank
• Negotiation Exercise

This module introduces students to ways of conceptualizing diplomacy and foreign policy in the 21st century:

• Why do states rely on diplomacy?
• What are the current forms and features of diplomacy and foreign policy?
• Is diplomacy the only form of international dialogue besides war?
• How do states (and statesmen) negotiate?
• How has diplomacy evolved throughout history?
• Does 'global governance' exist?

The teaching and learning strategy of this distance learning Diplomacy and Foreign Policy module is designed to give students both theoretical and practical understanding of contemporary issues in diplomacy and foreign policy. Lectures podcasting and online discussion activities will be complemented by live online talks offered by practitioners through video conferencing facility. Distance learning students will have a lot of opportunities of online interaction with peers and tutors.

R. Barston, Modern Diplomacy, Longman, 2006.

G. R. Berridge, Diplomacy: Theory and Practice, Palgrave, 2002.

S. Smith et al., Foreign Policy: Theories, Actors, Cases, OUP, 2012.

J. P. Muldoon et al., The New Dynamics of Multilateralism Diplomacy, International Organizations, and Global Governance, Westview Press, 2005.

A. Heywood, Global Politics, Palgrave, 2011.

Fees and funding

General fees and funding information

Additional fees and funding information accordion

There may be extra costs related to your course for items such as books, stationery, printing, photocopying, binding and general subsistence on trips and visits. Following graduation, you may need to pay a subscription to a professional body for some chosen careers.

Specific additional costs for studying at Lancaster are listed below.

College fees

Lancaster is proud to be one of only a handful of UK universities to have a collegiate system. Every student belongs to a college, and all students pay a small College Membership Fee which supports the running of college events and activities. Students on some distance-learning courses are not liable to pay a college fee.

For students starting in 2024, the fee is £40 for undergraduates and research students and £15 for students on one-year courses. Fees for students starting in 2025 have not yet been set.

Computer equipment and internet access

To support your studies, you will also require access to a computer, along with reliable internet access. You will be able to access a range of software and services from a Windows, Mac, Chromebook or Linux device. For certain degree programmes, you may need a specific device, or we may provide you with a laptop and appropriate software - details of which will be available on relevant programme pages. A dedicated IT support helpdesk is available in the event of any problems.

The University provides limited financial support to assist students who do not have the required IT equipment or broadband support in place.

For most taught postgraduate applications there is a non-refundable application fee of £40. We cannot consider applications until this fee has been paid, as advised on our online secure payment system. There is no application fee for postgraduate research applications.

For some of our courses you will need to pay a deposit to accept your offer and secure your place. We will let you know in your offer letter if a deposit is required and you will be given a deadline date when this is due to be paid.

The fee that you pay will depend on whether you are considered to be a home or international student. Read more about how we assign your fee status .

If you are studying on a programme of more than one year’s duration, tuition fees are reviewed annually and are not fixed for the duration of your studies. Read more about fees in subsequent years .

Scholarships and bursaries

You may be eligible for the following funding opportunities, depending on your fee status and course. You will be automatically considered for our main scholarships and bursaries when you apply, so there's nothing extra that you need to do.

Unfortunately no scholarships and bursaries match your selection, but there are more listed on scholarships and bursaries page.

If you're considering postgraduate research you should look at our funded PhD opportunities .

We also have other, more specialised scholarships and bursaries - such as those for students from specific countries.

Browse Lancaster University's scholarships and bursaries .

Similar courses

• Diplomacy and International Law LLM
• Diplomacy and International Law MA
• Diplomacy and International Law (Distance Learning) MA
• Environment and Law LLM
• International Business and Corporate Law LLM
• International Human Rights Law LLM
• International Law LLM
• International Law and International Relations LLM
• International Law and International Relations MA
• Law LLM by Research
• Law MPhil/PhD

Politics and International Relations

• Conflict Resolution and Peace Studies MA
• Diplomacy and Foreign Policy MA
• Diplomacy and International Relations (by Distance Learning) MA
• Diplomacy and Religion MA
• International Relations MA
• International Relations PhD
• International Security MA
• Philosophy and Religion MA
• Politics MA
• Politics PhD
• Politics and International Relations PgCert
• Politics and Philosophy MA
• Politics, Philosophy and Management MSc
• Public Policy MSc

Important Information

The information on this site relates primarily to 2025/2026 entry to the University and every effort has been taken to ensure the information is correct at the time of publication.

The University will use all reasonable effort to deliver the courses as described, but the University reserves the right to make changes to advertised courses. In exceptional circumstances that are beyond the University’s reasonable control (Force Majeure Events), we may need to amend the programmes and provision advertised. In this event, the University will take reasonable steps to minimise the disruption to your studies. If a course is withdrawn or if there are any fundamental changes to your course, we will give you reasonable notice and you will be entitled to request that you are considered for an alternative course or withdraw your application. You are advised to revisit our website for up-to-date course information before you submit your application.

More information on limits to the University’s liability can be found in our legal information .

Our Students’ Charter

We believe in the importance of a strong and productive partnership between our students and staff. In order to ensure your time at Lancaster is a positive experience we have worked with the Students’ Union to articulate this relationship and the standards to which the University and its students aspire. View our Charter and other policies .

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200+ International Relations Research Topics: Finding Your Niche

International relations, as a field of study, is dynamic, complex, and ever-evolving. It encompasses the intricate web of relationships, both cooperative and contentious, between nations and the multifaceted issues that shape our global landscape. 

The research conducted in this field is crucial for understanding the world we live in, as it sheds light on the forces that influence diplomacy, trade, security, and human rights on an international scale.

If you’re embarking on a journey into the world of international relations research, you’ve made an exciting choice. Choosing the right research topic is the critical first step in this endeavor. Your topic sets the direction for your research, influences the questions you seek to answer, and determines the potential impact of your work. 

In this blog, we’ll explore the art of selecting international relations research topics, providing guidance and inspiration to help you find your niche in this fascinating field.

How to Select International Relations Research Topics?

Table of Contents

• Identifying Your Interests and Passion

One of the most crucial factors in selecting a research topic is your personal interest and passion. Your enthusiasm for a particular subject will drive your research forward and keep you motivated throughout the process. Do you have a keen interest in global security, international organizations, diplomacy, economic issues, or human rights? 

Reflect on your own experiences, background, and the topics that resonate with you. Your passion will make your research more meaningful and engaging.

• Relevance and Timeliness of the Topic

Relevance and timeliness are essential considerations when choosing an international relations research topic. The world is constantly changing, and certain issues gain prominence while others recede. 

Researching a timely topic ensures that your work remains current and contributes to the ongoing discourse. Pay attention to recent global events, emerging challenges, and evolving policies to identify topics that are both relevant and in demand.

• Scope and Feasibility of Research

The scope and feasibility of your research topic are practical aspects to consider. Your topic should be manageable within the resources and time frame available to you. 

Evaluate the availability of data, access to experts or primary sources, and the potential for conducting fieldwork if necessary. An overly ambitious or overly narrow topic can pose challenges, so strike a balance that aligns with your research capabilities.

200+ International Relations Research Topics: Category-Wise

International relations encompass a wide array of subjects. To help you get started, let’s explore some broad categories with examples of specific research topics within each:

Security and Conflict

• Nuclear proliferation’s effects on international security
• The role of intelligence agencies in international security
• Cybersecurity threats and state responses
• Arms control agreements and their effectiveness
• The implications of military interventions in Syria
• The dynamics of terrorism and its evolving nature
• Nuclear disarmament efforts in the 21st century
• The influence of non-state actors in international conflicts
• The rise of hybrid warfare and its impact on global stability
• Regional security dynamics in East Asia
•  The impact of emerging technologies (AI, drones) on military strategies
• Proxy wars and their implications for global security
• The role of international organizations in peacekeeping missions
• The evolution of counter-terrorism strategies post-9/11
• The relationship between arms sales and international conflict
• Religious and ethnic tensions in the aftermath of the Cold War
• The influence of climate change on security and resource conflicts
• Space militarization and its impact on international relations
• The role of private military companies in modern conflicts
• The politics of nuclear non-proliferation agreements
• Artificial intelligence’s place in combat in the future
• The South China Sea presents issues for maritime security
• The impact of proxy warfare in the Middle East
• Emerging security threats in the Arctic region
• The role of intelligence sharing in counter-terrorism efforts
• The use of military drones and their legal and ethical implications
• Disarmament and arms control in space
• The militarization of the internet and its consequences
• The psychology of conflict and the role of perception in international relations
• The implications of bioterrorism in the 21st century

Global Governance and International Organizations

• The effectiveness of the United Nations in promoting peace
• The European Union’s place in world politics
• Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and their influence on international policy
• The impact of regional organizations on international relations
• The World Commerce Organization’s (WTO) function in international commerce
• Interventions for humanitarian causes and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle
• The relevance of international law in a changing world order
• Climate agreements and their influence on international cooperation
• Global governance challenges in the 21st century
• The role of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in addressing war crimes
• The effectiveness of the African Union in addressing regional conflicts
• The impact of the G20 on global economic governance
• The role of BRICS in reshaping international power dynamics
• The United Nations Security Council reform and its challenges
• The influence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on economic policies
• Multilateral trade negotiations and their implications for developing nations
• The World Health Organization (WHO) and global health governance
• International cooperation in space exploration and resource management
• The role of global think tanks in shaping international policies
• The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their progress
• The African Union’s role in addressing conflicts in Africa
• The effectiveness of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)
• The influence of regional organizations on global governance
• The impact of the Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation
• The role of the International Labor Organization (ILO) in workers’ rights
• International responses to global health crises like pandemics
• The influence of non-state actors in shaping international policies
• The United Nations’ approach to peacebuilding and state-building
• The role of informal summits in diplomatic negotiations
• Global governance challenges in the era of AI and automation

Diplomacy and Foreign Policy

• Public diplomacy and soft power in the digital age
• Economic Diplomacy and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
• The role of diplomacy in resolving the North Korea crisis
• Diplomatic efforts in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• Cultural diplomacy and its impact on international relations
• Track II diplomacy and its role in conflict resolution
• The influence of diplomacy on international trade agreements
• The role of diplomats in shaping foreign policy
• Diplomatic relations between the United States and Russia
• The art of diplomatic negotiation and its strategies
• Track I diplomacy and official government-to-government negotiations
• The impact of diplomacy on the Iran nuclear deal
• The role of cultural diplomacy in enhancing international relations
• The diplomacy of humanitarian aid distribution in conflict zones
• Bilateral vs. multilateral diplomacy in addressing global issues
• The role of diaspora communities in shaping a nation’s foreign policy
• The impact of social media on modern diplomatic efforts
• Diplomatic tensions between the United States and China
• The influence of political ideology on foreign policy decisions
• Diplomatic relations and the recognition of states and governments
• Public diplomacy and cultural exchange programs in international relations
• Diplomatic negotiations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• Diplomatic efforts in resolving territorial disputes in the South China Sea
• The role of diplomacy in addressing humanitarian crises
• Environmental diplomacy and international climate agreements
• The impact of economic diplomacy on trade negotiations
• Track III diplomacy and its contribution to conflict resolution
• The diplomacy of arms control agreements
• Mediation and conflict resolution in the Balkans
• The role of secret diplomacy in shaping international events

International Political Economy

• The impact of trade wars on global economic stability
• The role of multinational corporations in shaping international economic policy
• Sustainable development goals and their impact on international economic relations
• Economic sanctions and their effectiveness as a foreign policy tool
• Currency manipulation and its effects on international trade
• The role of global financial institutions in economic governance
• The economic consequences of Brexit for the UK and the EU
• The globalization of supply chains and its implications for international trade
• The economics of energy security in international relations
• The role of international aid in promoting economic development
• The economics of international migration and its impact on host countries
• The Belt and Road Initiative’s influence on global trade routes
• Trade disputes and the role of the World Trade Organization (WTO)
• The economic implications of Brexit on the European Union and the UK
• The role of sovereign wealth funds in international investment
• Currency exchange rate policies and their effects on trade balances
• The global impact of commodity price fluctuations
• Economic sanctions and their consequences for target nations
• The role of corporate social responsibility in international business
• The digital economy and international taxation challenges
• The economic consequences of trade disputes between the U.S. and China
• The role of trade agreements in promoting sustainable development
• Currency manipulation and its impact on exchange rates
• The geopolitics of energy resources and energy security
• The role of the World Bank in global economic development
• Economic dimensions of transnational crime and organized crime networks
• The influence of economic inequality on international relations
• The economic implications of Brexit on the European Union
• Economic cooperation and conflict in the Arctic region
• The economic aspects of humanitarian aid and development assistance

Human Rights and Humanitarian Issues

• The responsibility to protect (R2P) and intervene in cases of mass atrocities
• Human rights violations in conflict zones and international responses
• Refugee crises and their impact on international relations
• Humanitarian interventions and the ethics of foreign aid
• Gender-based violence in conflict and post-conflict settings
• The role of international organizations in advancing human rights
• The impact of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on accountability
• The plight of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in international relations
• Child soldiers and their rehabilitation in post-conflict societies
• Access to healthcare as a human rights issue in global politics
• The effectiveness of international human rights tribunals
• LGBTQ+ rights as a human rights issue in international politics
• Cultural relativism and its challenges in human rights discourse
• Human rights implications of mass surveillance and privacy violations
• Environmental rights and the impact of climate change on vulnerable communities
• The role of social media in human rights advocacy and reporting
• The responsibility of states to prevent and addressing human trafficking
• Indigenous rights and the struggle for self-determination
• The ethics of humanitarian aid distribution in conflict zones
• Child protection in armed conflicts and the impact on child soldiers
• The impact of human rights education on global awareness
• Human rights violations in conflict zones and the responsibility to protect
• The role of international criminal tribunals in achieving justice
• Minority rights and ethnic conflicts in international relations
• The protection of cultural heritage during armed conflicts
• Environmental rights and environmental justice in international law
• The challenges of upholding human rights during counterterrorism efforts
• The role of international organizations in addressing gender-based violence
• Refugee Protection and the Global Compact on Refugees
• The ethics of drone warfare and targeted killings in international law

Miscellaneous Topics

• The role of religion in international conflicts and diplomacy
• Soft power and its impact on international relations
• International perspectives on immigration and border security
• The influence of social media on global political movements
• Diaspora communities and their role in shaping foreign policy
• Environmental security and the nexus between climate change and conflict
• The role of historical memory and collective trauma in international relations
• Trade-offs between national security and civil liberties
• The relationship between education and global citizenship
• Ethical considerations in humanitarian interventions and disaster relief efforts

International Law

• The role of customary international law in modern diplomacy
• State sovereignty and the responsibility to protect (R2P) doctrine
• The impact of international law on territorial disputes
• The legal dimensions of cyber warfare and cybersecurity
• The development of international environmental law and conservation efforts
• The role of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in dispute resolution
• International law and the protection of cultural heritage during conflict
• The challenges of enforcing international law in the face of non-compliance
• The impact of international treaties on environmental protection
• The role of regional human rights courts in international law

Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding

• Track I and Track II diplomacy in peace negotiations
• The role of truth and reconciliation commissions in post-conflict societies
• Conflict resolution in the context of ethnic and religious conflicts
• The impact of third-party mediation in international conflicts
• The effectiveness of economic incentives in peace negotiations
• The role of civil society in conflict resolution and peacebuilding
• The challenges of post-conflict justice and reconciliation
• The influence of transitional justice mechanisms in post-conflict societies
• The contribution of peacekeeping missions to conflict prevention
• Reconciliation and post-conflict healing processes in divided societies

International Security and Defense

• The impact of emerging technologies on military strategies
• The role of intelligence agencies in shaping national security policies
• The ethics of autonomous weapons systems in modern warfare
• Nuclear deterrence and its relevance in contemporary international relations
• Civil-military relations in democratic and authoritarian regimes
• The effectiveness of arms control agreements in preventing conflict
• Defense policy and military spending in international politics
• The role of military alliances and collective defense agreements
• Asymmetric warfare and strategies for countering non-state actors
• The ethics of military interventions in humanitarian crises

Humanitarian Interventions and Disaster Relief

• The challenges of humanitarian access in conflict zones
• The ethics of humanitarian intervention in sovereign states
• Disaster risk reduction and international cooperation in disaster response
• The role of humanitarian organizations in refugee crises
• The use of technology in disaster response and early warning systems
• Humanitarian financing and funding mechanisms for crisis response
• The protection of civilians in armed conflicts and humanitarian law
• The impact of climate change on disaster risk and response
• The role of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
• The humanitarian impact of landmines and explosive remnants of war

Research Methodology: International Relations Research Topics

• Once you’ve chosen your research topic, you’ll need to consider the methodology you’ll employ to investigate it. 
• Your methodology includes the research methods you’ll use, data collection techniques, and ethical considerations. 
• Ensure that your chosen methods align with the nature of your research topic and the questions you seek to answer.

Selecting the right international relations research topics is a crucial step in your academic or professional journey. Your chosen topic will shape your research, drive your passion, and contribute to the ever-expanding field of international relations. 

As you explore the vast landscape of potential topics, remember to consider your interests, the relevance of your topic, and the feasibility of your research. In doing so, you’ll embark on a rewarding journey of discovery and contribute to our collective understanding of the complex world of international relations.

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Dissertation Library

Diplo Academy ‘s dissertation library is a repository of dissertations by our Master in Contemporary Diplomacy graduates. Topics range from international relations, geopolitics, and small-state diplomacy to digital policy, cybersecurity and internet governance.

Diplo Master’s students complete a dissertation in fulfilment of their Master in Contemporary Diplomacy degree. The  Master’s programme  is in collaboration with the  University of Malta .

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Global governance of digital technologies: A contemporary diplomacy challenge 

This dissertation addresses the challenge of global governance of digital technologies, advocating for the reform of international institutions to include non-state actors and non-western governments. It explores the growing demand for involvement of non-state actors a... Read more...

International cyber security diplomatic negotiations: Role of Africa in inter-regional cooperation for a global approach on the security and stability of cyberspace

This research paper examines African countries cybersecurity readiness and how Africa can play a role in shaping international negotiations and discussions on global cybersecurity governance.... Read more...

Humanitarian public diplomacy: International calls to action in the digital era

This dissertation examines IOs (IOs) as emerging stars in the constellation of diplomatic actors, as extra-state and supra-state entities that do not replace, but rather complement, align with and encourage states. Specifically focusing on humanitarian - those attentiv... Read more...

Digital Diplomacy as a foreign policy statecraft to achieving regional cooperation and integration in the Polynesian Leaders Group

Established in 2011, the Polynesian Leaders Groups serves to fulfill a vision of cooperation, strengthening integration on issues pertinent to the region and to the future of the PLG. Its nine – American Samoa, French Polynesia, Niue, Cook Islands, Tokelau, Tuvalu, T... Read more...

European Union external action structure: Beyond state and intergovernmental organisations diplomacy

This dissertation analyses the organisation of the external action structures of the European Union. As an international actor which is beyond a state, but also different to traditional international organisations, the EU has created a “diplomatic constellation” ... Read more...

Nation branding and the role of public diplomacy in assisting small island states in developing strong nation brands

The concept of applying branding principles and strategies to nation states has been around for decades. However, in recent years, the concept has occupied prime attention in academia and the business sector.... Read more...

Assessing feasibility for a binding international legal instrument on cyberweapons: A maturity model approach

Cyberwarfare has emerged from the expeditious expansion of the Internet as a new mode of conflict that can anonymously and remotely disrupt the core functions of a state.... Read more...

A clash of grand strategies between Russia, United States of America and Turkey for greater power and influence in the Middle East

The thesis explores the changing dynamics in the Middle East where the region is witnessing a metamorphosis in its power structure as major regional powers actively pursue their grand strategies to unseat U.S. hegemony. The analysis focuses in particular on the foreign... Read more...

The birth and the existence of Lesotho: A diplomatic lesson

The dissertation will focus on the birth and present state of existence of Lesotho, as a nation state, a state inside another state, looking at how diplomacy is at the centre of all this. The research will examine the history of South Africa and the events that led to ... Read more...

Diplomatic language and translation. Case study: President Donald Trump’s rhetoric

This thesis explores the importance of diplomatic language, persuasive rhetoric and translation in international diplomacy. The hypothesis here is that diplomatic language is changing and that this change affects both our understanding and use of language and linguisti... Read more...

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Need a thesis topic?

Postgraduate research required on contemporary diplomacy.

The following list of topics includes old subjects crying out for new interpretations as well as seriously under-researched subjects of more recent vintage.

Embassy branch offices As far as I’m aware, there is no published research on this subject at all, so it’s a particularly good opportunity for a thesis. It’s true that there are probably only between 20 and 30 embassy branch offices or annexes* worldwide. But those that exist are usually important and very interesting; see for example my revised blog on US Embassy London’s Croughton annex in the English midlands and the secret deal signed by Russia and Israel reported in June 2023 for the opening of a Russian Embassy branch office in Jerusalem (possibly now on pause, I would have thought). Why were they established? How are they staffed? What, if any, special bilateral agreements between sending and receiving state govern their staffing? What are their advantages and disadvantages? The more modest project would focus on just one branch office, as I did in part in my blog just mentioned. A more ambitious one would cast the net wider with a view to identifying common patterns between them. Ideally, this would require choosing a sample, which would obviously require some thought and almost certainly be complicated by a great variation in the availability of source material between different branch offices. I would start by googling ‘embassy branch office’, make a list and take it from there.

* The usual term is ‘branch office’, although very occasionally ‘annex’ is used instead, as in the case of US Embassy London’s outlier by 74 miles at Croughton in the English Midlands: ‘London Annex Croughton’. But so-called embassy branch offices have to be examined carefully because this term is now sometimes used as a synonym for a purely consular post. The term ‘annex’ has the advantage of suggesting a more intimate connection with the embassy, which should reinforce its diplomatic privileges and immunities, and avoids any confusion with consular posts; but it is more commonly employed to describe a physically separate part of the embassy on its main site. The US State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual states that ‘Branch offices of an embassy are part of an embassy’s facility located and staffed in a city other than the capital of a country.’ I regret that we omitted to tackle this point in The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Diplomacy. My own working definition is as follows: ‘Branch offices of an embassy are part of its facility located and staffed at some distance remote from the main site but [less there should be any misunderstanding], by definition, still entitled to full diplomatic privileges and immunities.’

Israel’s ‘permanent delegation’ in Iran I learned recently from numerous secondary sources (easily found on the web, e.g. here and here ) that Israel had been allowed a ‘permanent delegation’ in Tehran prior to the overthrow of the Shah and the inauguration of the Islamic Republic in 1979; and that at this juncture this was closed down and its premises handed over to the PLO. I have also seen it claimed that at some point before this ‘ambassadors’ had actually been exchanged. It would be extremely interesting to know a great deal more about this: the exact timeline, the size and character of the staffing, chief roles and so on. It would be equally interesting to know by what means relations between the two states were conducted when they quickly improved again following the outbreak of the terrible Iran –Iraq War in 1980. (Israel and Iran shared an interest in the defeat of Iraq and this war lasted until 1988.)  After exhausting the secondary sources, anyone interested in choosing this topic should turn to the primary sources pages of this website, especially Official Publications . I am not familiar with American archives but have just searched ‘ Iran AND Israel ’ in the British National Archives at Kew in London and brought up some very interesting looking folders. The online archives of The New York Times might also be worth a search, although it has a (low) paywall. Check out, too, the Tehran diplomatic lists to see if they record the ‘permanent delegation’, which is unlikely, although it should record the staff of the embassy if and when it was actually upgraded to this status (see Boxes 83 and 84 here , requiring a visit to KCL); ditto the Israeli lists in the KCL collection. This should be enough to get you going.

Honorary consuls

In a series of freely available articles (see Further reading on this page ), ProPublica and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists have recently put the spotlight on the extent and seriousness of the abuse of this institution by some states. This has made me realize the need for more academic research on the subject in general, including its great value for smaller states in particular. How widespread is the use of such consuls? Do some states favour the appointment of persons in certain kinds of work rather than others? How much control – if any – do sending states have over the individuals they appoint? How do the privileges and immunities of honorary consuls compare with those of career consular officers, in law and in practice? These are the sort of questions that need to be answered.

I think it essential to begin by getting a handle on the legal position. Lee and Quigley’s Consular Law and Practice , 3rd ed (OUP 2008), is not a bad place to start but it has only 13 out of a total of 664 pages on honorary consuls and is in any case out of date. There is, therefore, really no substitute for making a start by grappling yourself with the papers produced by the ILC in the late 1950s and early 1960s that issued in the VCCR 1963. The ‘Comment’ that follows each draft article is particularly valuable in providing succinct insights into the thinking that went into them. The place to start is the Analytical Guide to the Work of the International Law Commission: Consular intercourse and immunities . It takes a bit of getting used to and the length of the documents to which the investigator is drawn look forbidding, but (a) only a small proportion of them deals with honorary as opposed to career consuls, and (b) they are searchable. Then start searching the web for articles on contemporary practice, e.g. by the Baltic states, before tightening your focus and digging deeper.

Secret hostages in Thai-PRC diplomacy, 1956- In 1956, Sang Phathanothai, a senior Thai official and close confidante of his prime minister, secretly sent two of his children, a daughter of eight and a son of twelve, to live as privileged guests of the leadership of Communist China. Secrecy was essential because Thailand was publicly closely aligned with the United States in the Cold War and host to a massive American embassy and CIA contingent. The son, Wai, was deported during the notorious Cultural Revolution a decade later but the daughter, Sirin, remained in China until 1970. Albeit on Thai rather than Chinese initiative, this was an extraordinary resurrection of a key device of the tributary system of the old ‘middle kingdom’, which was designed to signify recognition by a lesser power of the status of the greater regional power and, in this instance, provide a personal guarantee of good conduct – or as good as was possible in the circumstances. The Thai hostages case was drawn to my attention by my Diplo colleague, Kishan Rana , who tells me that the same practice was employed on the subcontinent in relations between the Rajput maharajas and the Mughal court.

There were evidently other contacts between the PRC and Thailand, which had a very large Chinese community, so this would make an absorbing case study in diplomacy without diplomatic relations. Did the CIA know about Sirin and Wai? What role did they actually play in Chinese-Thai relations relative to other channels? Because it is the key primary source on Sirin and Wai, and also because it is readily accessible, the place to begin is Sirin’s fluent and absorbing memoir of the episode, The Dragon’s Pearl: Growing up among China’s elite (Simon & Schuster, 1994) , written with the assistance of American historian James Peck .  What secondary sources there are on the subject I have no idea but online American primary sources which provide good contextual material and at the least clues to the questions I have posed, are abundant. See, for example:

ADST’s Thailand Country Reader. Among the few of the many interview transcripts here that I have read, I found the lengthy interview with Economic Officer Kempton B. Jenkins, Bangkok 1954-6, particularly useful. NB these oral history transcripts follow the long list of names of interviewees, which isn’t immediately obvious. They are also easily searchable using your own computer’s ‘Find on page’ function since the ‘reader’ is one huge page.

CIA docs on Thailand.

Foreign Service List 1956 . Shows great size of US Embassy Bangkok, and the names give clues to further research. Many lists for later years can also be found online.

Contact groups A t the end of May 2020 seven former British foreign secretaries suggested a contact group as the way forward in the crisis provoked by China’s threatening attitude to Hong Kong; see The Guardian 1 June 2020 . However, in the 5th edition of my textbook, Diplomacy: Theory and Practice , I argued (pp. 262-3) that this diplomatic device had a fatal disadvantage. Was I wrong? [May 2020]

Health attachés Among other questions: Why they are important, especially in a pandemic, and – despite this – why few embassies have them. This is a topical and seriously under-researched subject. See my blog of 20 May 2020 on this subject ( ‘Where have all the health attachés gone?’ ), which has links that should get you started. Hard work on online diplomatic lists will also pay dividends, as will the open files of some governments’ foreign and health ministries. [May 2020]

Diplomatic security: Security at British diplomatic posts Diplomatic security is the term now usually preferred to ‘diplomatic protection’ for the steps taken by states to safeguard the fabric of their diplomatic and consular missions, the lives of their diplomatic and consular officers, and the integrity of their communications. It is an important subject but was largely neglected until this year, when Diplomatic Security: A Comparative Analysis , edited by Eugenio Cusumano and Christopher Kinsey, was published by Stanford University Press. However, while a useful first step, this volume of essays has marked limitations, as I argue in a review for H-Net . The upside of this is that it offers multiple launching points for further research. A case in point is British practice in providing mission security because the chapter on this by Kinsey is heavier on general reflexes, bureaucratic support at home, and the types of security personnel involved than on exactly how it is delivered in practice. It is true, as he says, that – for good reasons – all governments are tight-lipped on current security measures but some documents are availabIe at the National Archives in London up to the late 1980s which are sure to give some insight into the British tradition – and thus to likely echoes in current practice. With the exception of three documents, Kinsey has not done this research, as far as I can tell from his endnotes, so I opened the ‘Discovery’ page filtered for 1950+ and keyed the following terms into the Search box:

‘embassy defence’, ‘embassy compounds’, ‘diplomatic security’, and ‘diplomatic protection’. Excluding those on communications, which I ignored, the following are the likely looking files these searches turned up:

• FCO 58/4941: ‘Security and protection of diplomatic missions and representation’ (1988)

• FCO 58/3704: United Nations: protection of diplomats (1984)

• FCO 58/698: United Nations discussions on protection of diplomats (1972)

• FCO 98/682: European cooperation on protection of diplomats (1979)

• FCO 33/3848: ‘Security of UK diplomatic missions following assassination of Sir Richard Sykes, HM Ambassador, The Hague, March 1979 (1979)

• FO 1043/91: Potential break of diplomatic relations: defence of British Embassy (Addis Ababa) (1966)

• FCO 31/3527: New building: British Embassy compound, Addis Ababa (1982)

• FCO 7/3783: Embassy security in Bogota (1980)

• FO 371/180599: HM Embassy security (Vietnam) (1965)

• WORK/10/270: Embassy Security Measures (Baghdad) (1942-52)

• FO 366/3439: New embassy compound projected for Jedda (1965)

• FCO 8/3521: British Embassy in Abu Dhabi: development of compound (1980)

• FCO 17/1435: Safety of foreign embassies in Amman: grenade explosion in chancery compound of British Embassy, 18 June (1971)

• FCO 7/6520: Diplomatic representation of the UK in Argentina: security of British Interests Section, Buenos Aires (BISBA) (1986)

• FCO 79/546: Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS) review of overseas representation: paper on security constraints (1976-7)

• FCO 8/1358: Reports on security inspections of political residences and agencies in Persian Gulf (1970)

• FCO 79/125: Report of the Review Committee on Overseas Representation under the Chairmanship of Sir Val Duncan, ‘Duncan Report’: Interdepartmental Steering Committee; Sub-Committee on security problems (1969)

• FCO 37/3323: Protection of diplomatic staff and property in Nepal (1983)

• FCO 58/2005: Terrorism, diplomatic hostage-taking and Nordic item on the protection of diplomats (1980)

• FCO 41/869: Consultations in WEU on protection of diplomats from kidnapping and terrorism (1971)

• FO 371/100324: Protection of non-diplomatic British staff at Iron Curtain posts; comment and suggestions on position of non-diplomatic staff at Moscow; US State Department attitude to the problem (1952)

If you are interested and are able to visit the archive, you could do worse than to check them out, bearing in mind that some will prove to be useless.

The following files were helpfully located and used by Kinsey, although the numbers are, of course, National Archives’ catalogue numbers used for ordering, not FCO file numbers, as suggested at his endnote 20:

• FCO 93/2447: British Embassy in Lebanon, including security of HM Ambassador (1980)

• FCO 31/2942: Inspection of British High Commission, Kampala, Uganda (1980)

• FCO 7/2760: Bomb explosion outside the British Ambassador’s house, Buenos Aires, 25 April 1975 (1975)

NB. When citing a document from one of these files, it should be preceded by ‘TNA’, the preferred acronym for The National Archives at Kew in London. For fuller, authoritative guidance on citing sources from this archives, see here .

Another freely available online resource on this subject, which Kinsey rightly uses, is this: House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Foreign and Commonwealth Office Annual Report 2003– 2004 ,  Eighth Report of Session 2003–04, Report, together with formal minutes, oral and written evidence, HC 745,  23 September 2004, pp. 29-33, Ev 78-80, and search ‘security’ in this document:

Representative offices: de facto embassies, quasi-embassies, or lobby groups? I have posted here a lengthy Research Note (Project 2) under this heading which I hope will give ideas for both MA and PhD theses. I have placed it on my ‘Current Research’ page because it was the quickest way to get it up but I do not propose to do any further research in the area myself. A thesis could concentrate on just one representative office, a class of offices (e.g. those with no diplomatic status at all), a receiving state’s policy towards representative offices, the invention of the ‘mission’, and so on. There’s plenty of scope here, and it’s important because the separatist tendencies that produce representative offices show no signs of weakening. Even in the so-called ‘United Kingdom’ they are being stimulated dangerously by the lunatic fringe behind the Conservative Party government. Scotland voted strongly to remain in the EU but is being dragged out by the English-dominated Parliament. [10 February 2019]

The problem of  ‘sham diplomats’ ‘Sham diplomats’ are individuals  (usually wealthy or influential in their own countries) who have no relevant qualifications whatever and secure diplomatic posts in order solely to obtain diplomatic immunity for personal reasons. They usually hold ranks below head of mission and are therefore not exposed to much scrutiny – or much, if any, work. (For these reasons, they are not identical to the ‘political appointees’ commonly made by US presidents to ambassadorships.) They present an important public policy question that became topical in the UK in 2016 with the Estrada v. Juffali case , and it is crying out for investigation. What is the size of the problem? Are some kinds of state more guilty of it than others? Is it usually easier to make ‘sham’ appointments to permanent missions to international organizations than to embassies to states and, if so, why? What can be done about the problem without breaking diplomatic law (see especially Articles 9 and 39.1 of the VCDR )? These seem to me to be the main questions to be tackled. The work of Professor Craig Barker is a good place to start. You would also need to study the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations (or ‘General Convention’) (1946) and the numerous more specialized conventions shaped so heavily by it: the various ‘headquarters agreements’ (plus later amendments) as well as the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the Specialized Agencies (1947) and national implementing legislation. An example of a headquarters agreement is that between the IMO and the UK (1968), see esp. Art. 7.

Interests sections in US-Cuba relations US-Cuban relations have been much under scrutiny since their dramatic improvement beginning in 2014. Nevertheless, as far as I am aware, there has been no serious study of the working of the large interests sections that have been such a marked feature of this relationship since the time of the Carter administration in the late 1970s. This is the more surprising because the American materials for such a study are abundant. For example: the US Interests Section in Havana (USINT) has been the subject of a number of OIG Reports available on the Internet, most recently that of May 2014 (just google ‘OIG USINT’); and numerous US diplomats posted to it (including five chiefs of mission – there is a complete list of them here – and one DCM) have provided revealing accounts of its activities in the course of interviews for ADST’s oral history programme, to which I draw attent ion on the ‘Resources for Study’ page (the easiest way to find the relevant passages is to go to the ‘Cuba Country Reader’ page and then search ‘interests section’, which will also pick out the observations of Department of State officers on the operations of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington). Anyone contemplating a PhD thesis on this subject would ideally need to get at any Cuban, Swiss and Czech materials available as well. Having just read the astonishing account by James Cason, chief of mission at USINT in 2002-2005, of what he was allowed to get up to, I would be particularly interested to know something about the attitude to him of his nominal boss, the Swiss Ambassador at Havana! USINT is certainly a very unusual interests section.

[3 May 2015]

Unionization of diplomats Under the twin pressures of foreign ministry budget cuts and increasing reliance on political appointees and paradiplomats, the unionization of diplomats is becoming a more important question: the form it is taking, the extent of its spread, and its consequences. Let us recall that French diplomats were summoned to a one-day strike in December 2003, and that a similar and more serious development occurred in Israel only last month (March 2015). To arms, researchers!

Video-conferencing: Zoom in In the 5th edition of my textbook, published in 2015, I headed the section on this subject ‘Video-conferencing stutters’. Is that still true? The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic has certainly given it a strong boost, as I noted in a blog on 14 March . Perhaps ‘Video-conferencing flexes its muscles’ would now be more accurate. The technology has advanced (eye contact, I gather, is now obtainable), it has become cheaper, and there is much more familiarity with it; not only in businesses and large organizations but also in families during Covid-19 lockdowns. A sweep of the internet on the subject I made in January 2015 produced little evidence of its constructive use in serious international negotiations, except in Ukraine prenegotiations stimulated by the OSCE in the second half of 2014. But in 2020 it became a key feature of UK-EU Brexit negotiations , and no doubt of others. [June 2020]

Diplomatic training In the course of conversations in 2014 at the Foreign Office in London and in the evening with a former student then working in the consular section of the Belgian Embassy, I learned that there were wider variations in the training arrangements made by foreign ministries for their novice diplomats  than I had suspected. This applies particularly to the length and content of the initial period of training spent at home prior to posting abroad. It occurs to me, therefore, that this is a good subject for comparative analysis. Alternatively, anyone interested only in the British tradition could do worse (he said modestly!) than make a start by looking at the essay on ‘Diplomatic Education and Training: The British tradition’ in my Counter-Revolution in Diplomacy and other essays . Among primary sources important to look at are: the Report of the Committee on Representational Services Overseas. 1962-63 (‘The Plowden Report’), Feb. 1964, Cmnd. 2276 (ch. 5 ‘Training’); and the seven files on the FCO’s ‘Training Department’ now held at The National Archives at Kew, ref. FCO97. (This incorrectly gives the date of establishment of this department as 1974; it appears in the Diplomatic Service List 1970 .) [13 May 2014]

Ambassador Biographies There is no general shortage here, it is true, but some ambassadors deserving of attention and who have also left behind a wealth of archival material have been badly neglected. A case in point recently drawn to my attention by Professor Young at Nottingham is Sir Andrew Buchanan (1807-82). I am assured that any student wishing to write on his career (or part of it) would find a warm welcome at the Manuscripts and Special Collections division of the University of Nottingham Library. Here is a list of the Buchanan Papers held by them and here is the list they provide of Buchanan papers held elsewhere . [14 Dec. 2013]

Consuls – The Other Missing Dimension Consuls have been neglected by scholars in the same way that spies were neglected until Christopher Andrew and David Dilks published The Missing Dimension back in 1984. Someone should contrive a similar kick-start to consular research with a monograph or collection of essays called The Other Missing Dimension . There is huge scope for research here, e.g. different kinds of consular officer, incl. honorary consuls, and (more historical) dragomans; biographies of notable consular officers (e.g. Harry Boyle, Adam Block and Andrew Ryan in the British Levant Service); and studies of the more elite, specialized consular services such as the Levant Service just mentioned. Plenty of consular officers have left papers or (now) oral histories. Ryan’s papers, which contain his own detailed views on the problems of the Levant Service, can be consulted at St Antony’s College Oxford. And important early memoirs are now freely available in the amazing Internet Archive, notably Satow’s A Diplomat in Japan (in the 1860s he was actually still in the consular service as a student interpreter). A good place to start among secondary sources is Platt’s Cinderella Service . [29 January 2015]

Locally engaged staff There has been a pronounced trend in recent years for foreign ministries to increase the proportion of their overseas staff recruited locally. It would be extremely useful to know (a) what the facts are about this and (b) what is the explanation. I have discovered some useful figures on the State Department and FCO websites but a serious study will have to go back some years and go well beyond the resources available on the web. [29 January 2015]

The International Sections of Government Departments The growth, value, and control (or lack of it) exercised over the international sections of ‘OGD’s (Other Government Departments) by foreign ministries. I am grateful to Mark McDowell, a Canadian FSO, for this valuable suggestion. A thesis on this subject might focus on one state, or it might compare the international sections of equivalent ministries in a number of different states, e.g. the international sections of transport ministries. [29 January 2015]

Consensus decision-making This is now the most important form of decision-making in multilateral bodies but, as far as I am aware, not a great deal of research has been done on the various procedural devices that are its hallmarks – straw votes, silence procedure, and so on, which I have discussed briefly on the Online Updating page for Chapter 9 of my textbook. An MA dissertation might look at the style and effectiveness of consensus decision-making in one body (e.g. ‘Silence Procedure in NATO’), while a PhD thesis might engage in a comparative study of several multilateral bodies.

Telephone diplomacy There is hardly anything on this at all, although it is clearly of great importance. The internet is a valuable source here, not least because transcripts of some of Kissinger’s calls can be found on it. It would be very interesting to discover, for example, what kind of training – if any – is given on the use of the telephone in different MFAs. Try asking them. There is also an increasing amount of relevant material in more recently released confidential government papers. As long ago as 2007 I searched ‘telephone’ and ‘Foreign Office’ in the online catalogue of the British National Archives, and brought up 359 files! Obviously most were not relevant but some looked very interesting indeed, and their number must have multiplied since. [29 January 2015]

Legal advisers Role and influence of in MFAs. The last book on this appears to have been written in 1962. Hans Corell, formerly the UN’s own legal adviser – there’s another topic – has a good reading list on this subject (tho’ not updated since his retirement in 2004), so there’s a start. [29 January 2015]

Planning departments in MFAs Opinion on the value of these has always been divided, not least because – as far as I am aware – there is no systematic published research on them. A recent Dutch report has emphasised their importance. [29 January 2015]

Comparative study of Commercial Diplomacy Should embassies be used to promote trade and inward investment or should it be left to the private sector? This is a public policy question of considerable importance, and leads to many others. Some diplomatic services give more weight to this than others. Which are they? Does it work?

Interests Sections . An old favourite of mine. John W. Young at Nottingham has recently done some work on this but he would be the first to admit that there is plenty more to be done: features, extent of use, advantages and disadvantages, and their origins – much earlier than I once thought. Their use in the First World War would be a good topic. American embassies seem to have housed quite a few (certainly the US Emb. in Turkey did), and FRUS  would be a good place to start. Key words: ‘protecting powers’ as well as ‘interests sections’.

Prenegotiations In view of the importance of this subject it is amazing that it has been so overlooked. As far as I am aware, there is not a full-length monograph on it. A useful approach for a thesis would be to compare the pre-negotiations in a number of negotiations of different kinds, e.g. between friendly and hostile states; on low and high stakes issues; bilateral and multilateral; and so on. An MA dissertation might focus on just one pair.

Summitry More detailed case studies are always needed. Plenty of scope for comparative studies here as well. Recent ‘funeral summits’ well worth a close look are those of Nelson Mandela and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (the last also attended by the Iranian foreign minister) .[29 January 2015]

Vienna Conference [not Convention] on Diplomatic Relations, 2 March-14 April 1961 We await a history of the conference that produced this enormously important convention, the legal bedrock of the world diplomatic system. Many official documents on this have been available for years. Lorna Loyd’s  Diplomacy with a Difference , has something on this and would be a good place to start, both for its insights and its references. [29 January 2015]

Switzerland and the world diplomatic system General theme: if Switerland did not exist would it have to be invented? Particular themes worth exploring: Switzerland’s role as a protecting power; Geneva as a diplomatic centre; Switzerland as provider of good offices rather than mediation; International Committee of the Red Cross (though quite a bit on this already, notably Caroline Moorhead’s Dunant’s Dream (1998); and bearing on all of this of permanent neutrality; etc.

Vatican diplomacy The account of this subject needs carrying forward from the end of the 1950s, when Robert Graham published his Vatican Diplomacy . More on the role of the Vatican in international mediation would be particularly helpful. I tried teaching this on my Mediation module but had to abandon it after a few years for want of decent books and articles to which to refer my students. There are a couple of articles on the Vatican role in the mediation of the Beagle Channel dispute between Argentina and Chile, but that appeared to be it. However, the subject has recently been revived by news that the Vatican played a key role in setting up the probable restoration of diplomatic relations between the United State and Cuba; see Guardian, 17 December 2014 . [29 January 2015]

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M.A. International Law and Diplomacy

Master of arts in international law and diplomacy, format: hybrid or online​, programme dates hybrid: 26 august 2024 programme dates online: 8 july 2024, application deadline hybrid: 31 may 2024 application deadline online: 30 june 2024, programme overview.

The Master of Arts in International Law and Diplomacy (hybrid and online formats) is a graduate programme permitting students to specialize in the interface between international law and diplomacy. It will not only broaden students’ knowledge in the field of international law and its various foundational dimensions but will also equip them with the knowledge and skills to work in the field of diplomacy and related international careers.

During this programme – offered both in a  Hybrid Format  (asynchronous classes online and face-to-face on the UPEACE campus in Costa Rica), and an  Online Format – students in this programme will analyze the different dimensions of development, including environmental, social, economic, and human dimensions, as well as the theory and practice of diplomacy in the 21st century.  These include dispute settlement and conflict resolution.

In addition, students will attend skills development and coaching sessions designed to support their professional careers and employability.

Students will have an opportunity to participate in an optional field visit to Geneva (Switzerland) and/or The Hague (Netherlands), immersing themselves in the heart of diplomacy and international law.

Click on the image below to see the full programme brochure.

Hybrid Programme Modules

The  HYBRID   Master of Arts in International Law and Diplomacy  will be implemented both face-to-face in San José, Costa Rica on UPEACE’s campus, and online on UPEACE’s Virtual Learning Environment.

Course List:

• Foundation Course (UPEACE)
• Public International Law (UPEACE)
• United Nations System (UPEACE)
• International Human Rights Law (UPEACE)
• Universal Human Rights System (UPEACE)
• Law Related to Armed Conflict I (Ius ad Bellum) (UPEACE)
• Law Related to Armed Conflict II (Ius in Bello) (UPEACE)
• International Criminal Law (UPEACE)
• Law of Treaties (UNITAR)
• International Environmental Law (UPEACE)
• Transitional Justice (UPEACE)
• International Law and Diplomacy (UPEACE)
• Regional Human Rights Systems (UPEACE)
• World Politics (UPEACE)
• International and Transnational Adjudication (UPEACE)
• Globalization and Human Rights (UPEACE)
• International Economic Law (UPEACE)
• Human Rights Reporting, Monitoring and Evaluation (UPEACE)
• Maritime and Territorial Dispute Settlement (UPEACE)
• Workshop on Negotiation and Mediation Skills (UPEACE)
• Law of International Organisations (UNITAR)
• Rule of Law (UNITAR)
• Independent Research Project (UPEACE)

* Optional Course

Hybrid M.A. in International Law and Diplomacy Calendar (2024-2026): click here . 

Online Programme Modules

The ONLINE Master of Arts in International Law and Diplomacy will be implemented online. All subjects will be hosted on UPEACE’s Virtual Learning Environment.

• UN System (UPEACE)
• Law of International Organisations (UNITAR )

Online M.A. in International Law and Diplomacy Calendar (2024-2026): click here . 

Field Visits

Students admitted to the programme are offered a unique opportunity to partake in an optional field visit to Geneva, Switzerland, and/or The Hague, Netherlands, immersing themselves in the heart of diplomacy and international law. 

The five-day field trip(s) cost USD 1,500 each and include exclusive experiences such as visiting various international organizations, the ICRC museum in Geneva, the ICJ in The Hague, and engaging in networking sessions with diplomats, personnel from permanent missions accredited to the UN, civil servants working in international organizations, and representatives from civil society.

Scheduled for the summer, the confirmed dates for these optional field visits will be shared with interested students by UPEACE and UNITAR well in advance. Students have the flexibility to enrol in either the Geneva or The Hague visit individually, or they can choose to participate in both field trips to maximize their learning experience.

(*) Please note that the fellowship programme does not include travel, accommodation, food, or visa expenses. Please note that students should have a valid health insurance plan in place during their stay in Switzerland and/or The Netherlands.

Required Documentation

The following documentation is required to complete your application process. Please have them ready and on hand before beginning your online application process, as they will need to be uploaded into the system.

• English Proficiency Test Scores Report: TOEFL (PBT, CBT or IBT), IELTS, Duolingo English Test, Pearson Test of English or Cambridge English Language Assessment
• Statement of Purpose
• Letters of Recommendation
• Official Undergraduate (Bachelor’s Degree) Transcripts and Degree Certificate
• Curriculum Vitae or Resume
• Copy of Passport (front page with photo only)
• One passport-size photos for ID purposes

The online application requires electronic (PDF) scans of required documents. Should admission be granted, the following documents will be eventually be required in official hard copy:

• English Proficiency Test Scores Report: TOEFL (PBT, CBT or IBT), IELTS, Duolingo English Test, Pearson Test of English or Cambridge English Language Assessment (if applicable)
• Official Undergraduate Transcripts and Degree Certificate (and English translations if applicable)
• Three (3) passport-size photos.

The cost for pursuing the Master of Arts in Development Studies in Hybrid Format is USD 13,000 *, while the Online Format is USD 11,000 . This includes tuition, administrative fees, and other associated costs. It is important to note that additional expenses, such as textbooks, accommodation, field visits, and living expenses, may not be covered in this figure.

The cost for pursuing a HYBRID M.A. in International Law and Diplomacy is USD 13,000 *.  This includes tuition, administrative fees, and other associated costs. It is important to note that additional expenses, such as textbooks, accommodation, field visits and living expenses, may not be covered by this figure.

*UN staff will be eligible for a 20% waiver (2,600 USD). Therefore, UN staff will pay 10,400 USD. Furthermore, Costa Rican nationals and residents will be eligible for a 30% waiver (3,900 USD). Therefore, Costa Rican nationals and residents will pay 9,100 USD.

The cost for pursuing an ONLINE M.A. in International Law and Diplomacy is USD 11,000 *.  This includes tuition, administrative fees, and other associated costs. It is important to note that additional expenses, such as textbooks and field visits may not be covered by this figure.

(*) UN staff will be eligible for a 20% waiver (2,200 USD). Therefore, UN staff will pay 8,800 USD. Furthermore, Costa Rican nationals and residents will be eligible for a 30% waiver (3,300 USD). Therefore, Costa Rican citizens and residents will pay 7,700 USD.

Pura Vida Fellowships

In 2023, the University for Peace (UPEACE) and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) collaborated on the “Art for Peace” NFT collection, featuring Costa Rican artist Gussa’s digital artwork under the title “Pura Vida.”

This initiative gave rise to the “Pura Vida” Fellowship Programme, offering fellowships for UPEACE-UNITAR joint Master’s and Certificate Programmes, as well as Field Visits to Geneva and The Hague. The fellowships aim to enhance inclusion, by empowering nationals from Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

Eligibility: To be considered for the Pura Vida Fellowship, applicants must be nationals from the LDCs or SIDS included on the official UN lists:

LDC List SIDS List

Selection Process UPEACE and UNITAR will consider academic background, professional experience, and the relevance of the applicant’s degree to the chosen programme in the selection process for the Pura Vida Fellowships.

Application Process Prospective Fellows are encouraged to apply and can seek further information by emailing [email protected] or click the image below.

Become a Pura Vida Fellow; click the image below for more information.

MSt in Diplomatic Studies

• Entry requirements
• Funding and Costs

College preference

• How to Apply

About the course

The Oxford University Diplomatic Studies Programme (DSP) is one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious diplomacy programmes. It comprises a one-year, full time Master’s degree of mixed academic and vocational study. Customised for professionals, it equips participants with the knowledge and skills they require to conduct diplomacy in a complex, interdependent world.

The Master of Studies (MSt) in Diplomatic Studies comprises four taught courses and requires the successful completion of a dissertation.

The taught courses are as follows:

• Diplomatic Practice focuses on both diplomatic skills (oral, written and strategic) and key manifestations of professional diplomacy, inter alia digital, economic and public diplomacy. The course is complemented by practical exercises, simulations and workshops in international negotiations, crisis management, media interview techniques and effective public speaking.
• International Politics treats key concepts in International Relations leading to central issues in world politics, with particular emphasis on current dynamics in the international system.
• Public International Law expounds the principles, processes and institutions of a key foundation of international society, namely international law. Legal reasoning is applied to the issues that populate the contemporary diplomatic agenda.
• International Trade and Finance covers the basics of international trade theory and macroeconomics, and focuses on such applied and political economy topics as trade liberalisation, globalisation, international resource transfers and development.

In addition to the four taught courses above, the MSt in Diplomatic Studies requires completion of a substantial individual research project. A supervised dissertation of up to 15,000 words is done on an approved course-related topic of personal interest. To help students plan, structure and conduct their research, the DSP includes a compulsory introductory course in research methods for the social sciences.

Optional, supplementary courses include English language classes (to help non-native speakers of English polish their oral and written proficiency in the language) and Academic Literacy, which assists students to develop advanced skills in preparing and presenting their academic work.

The programme is delivered through a variety of lectures, seminars, workshops and small group tutorials. While the number of contact hours is likely to vary each year, these typically amount to 180 lectures/seminars and 24 tutorials.

As part of the course in diplomatic practice, the DSP normally includes study visits to government departments, international organisations and business and media institutions in the United Kingdom and Europe. A study tour to Ireland or Scotland may also take place.

Diplomatic Studies Programme (DSP) participants are typically mid-career diplomats who resume their careers on successful completion of the course, but applications are also accepted from candidates with professional experience and academic qualifications in related fields. The annual intake has a global reach, and participants come from a wide range of countries. This creates a rich and immersive experience, where students learn as much from their peers as they do from the world-class scholars and practitioners who lecture on the programme. The resulting networking opportunities are a major attraction of the DSP.

Every DSP participant is encouraged to take advantage of the broad range of opportunities available to them as a member of the University and one of its colleges, such as attending lectures, engaging in debates and participating in Oxford’s numerous clubs and societies.

The course is full-time and requires attendance in Oxford. Full-time students are subject to the University's Residence requirements.

Resources to support your study

As a graduate student, you will have access to the University's wide range of world-class resources including libraries, museums, galleries, digital resources and IT services.

The Bodleian Libraries is the largest library system in the UK. It includes the main Bodleian Library and libraries across Oxford, including major research libraries and faculty, department and institute libraries. Together, the Libraries hold more than 13 million printed items, provide access to e-journals, and contain outstanding special collections including rare books and manuscripts, classical papyri, maps, music, art and printed ephemera.

The University's IT Services is available to all students to support with core university IT systems and tools, as well as many other services and facilities. IT Services also offers a range of IT learning courses for students, to support with learning and research.

The Rewley House Continuing Education Library , one of the Bodleian Libraries, is situated in Rewley House. The department aims to support the wide variety of subjects covered by departmental courses at many academic levels. The department also has a collection of around 73,000 books together with periodicals. PCs in the library give access to the internet and the full range of electronic resources subscribed to by the University of Oxford. The Jessop Reading Room adjoining the library is available for study. The department provides various IT facilities, including the Student Computing Facility which provides individual PCs for your use.

Supervision

The allocation of graduate supervision for this course is the responsibility of the Department for Continuing Education and this role will usually be performed by the Course Director.

It is not always possible to accommodate the preferences of incoming graduate students to work with a particular member of staff. A supervisor may be found outside the Department for Continuing Education.

Most students have the opportunity to meet with their supervisor up to 14 times (in hourly sessions). However, such sessions may be replaced with the equivalent time spent on the provision of written feedback.

In addition to the dissertation, the four taught courses are assessed by four year-end examinations. These include mainly essay questions, but they may also require answers in the form of a position paper, a report, a speech, a mini case study or in a specific professionally-structured format (such as a diplomatic telegram).

Graduate destinations

DSP alumni have progressed to senior positions in their respective diplomatic services, within ministries and in international organisations. Many have also forged successful careers in politics, industry, finance, the armed forces, and as political research and intelligence analysts.

Changes to this course and your supervision

The University will seek to deliver this course in accordance with the description set out in this course page. However, there may be situations in which it is desirable or necessary for the University to make changes in course provision, either before or after registration. The safety of students, staff and visitors is paramount and major changes to delivery or services may have to be made if a pandemic, epidemic or local health emergency occurs. In addition, in certain circumstances, for example due to visa difficulties or because the health needs of students cannot be met, it may be necessary to make adjustments to course requirements for international study.

Where possible your academic supervisor will not change for the duration of your course. However, it may be necessary to assign a new academic supervisor during the course of study or before registration for reasons which might include illness, sabbatical leave, parental leave or change in employment.

For further information please see our page on changes to courses and the provisions of the student contract regarding changes to courses.

Entry requirements for entry in 2025-26

Proven and potential academic excellence.

The requirements described below are specific to this course and apply only in the year of entry that is shown. You can use our interactive tool to help you  evaluate whether your application is likely to be competitive .

Please be aware that any studentships that are linked to this course may have different or additional requirements and you should read any studentship information carefully before applying. 

Degree-level qualifications

As a minimum, applicants should hold or be predicted to achieve the following UK qualifications or their equivalent:

• a first-class or strong upper second-class undergraduate degree with honours in any subject.

For applicants with a degree from the USA, the minimum GPA sought is 3.5 out of 4.0.

If your degree is not from the UK or another country specified above, visit our International Qualifications page for guidance on the qualifications and grades that would usually be considered to meet the University’s minimum entry requirements.

GRE General Test scores

No Graduate Record Examination (GRE) or GMAT scores are sought.

Other qualifications, evidence of excellence and relevant experience

• Applicants are normally expected to have professional experience in diplomacy or a related field, and priority will be given to candidates with such experience.
• Publications are not expected.

Further guidance

• In the case of students who require specific help to adjust to an academic programme or to a new range of skills, the supervisor will work with them to ensure that they have additional support. 

English language proficiency

This course requires proficiency in English at the University's  higher level . If your first language is not English, you may need to provide evidence that you meet this requirement. The minimum scores required to meet the University's higher level are detailed in the table below.

*Previously known as the Cambridge Certificate of Advanced English or Cambridge English: Advanced (CAE) † Previously known as the Cambridge Certificate of Proficiency in English or Cambridge English: Proficiency (CPE)

Your test must have been taken no more than two years before the start date of your course. Our Application Guide provides  further information about the English language test requirement .

Declaring extenuating circumstances

If your ability to meet the entry requirements has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic (eg you were awarded an unclassified/ungraded degree) or any other exceptional personal circumstance (eg other illness or bereavement), please refer to the guidance on extenuating circumstances in the Application Guide for information about how to declare this so that your application can be considered appropriately.

You will need to register three referees who can give an informed view of your academic ability and suitability for the course. The  How to apply  section of this page provides details of the types of reference that are required in support of your application for this course and how these will be assessed.

Supporting documents

You will be required to supply supporting documents with your application. The  How to apply  section of this page provides details of the supporting documents that are required as part of your application for this course and how these will be assessed.

Performance at interview

On the basis of your application, you may be invited for an interview. Interviews may take place face-to-face or via an online platform.

Offer conditions for successful applications

If you receive an offer of a place at Oxford, your offer will outline any conditions that you need to satisfy and any actions you need to take, together with any associated deadlines. These may include academic conditions, such as achieving a specific final grade in your current degree course. These conditions will usually depend on your individual academic circumstances and may vary between applicants. Our ' After you apply ' pages provide more information about offers and conditions . 

In addition to any academic conditions which are set, you will also be required to meet the following requirements:

Financial Declaration

If you are offered a place, you will be required to complete a  Financial Declaration  in order to meet your financial condition of admission.

Disclosure of criminal convictions

In accordance with the University’s obligations towards students and staff, we will ask you to declare any  relevant, unspent criminal convictions  before you can take up a place at Oxford.

Other factors governing whether places can be offered

The following factors will also govern whether candidates can be offered places:

• the ability of the University to provide the appropriate supervision for your studies, as outlined under the 'Supervision' heading in the About section of this page;
• the ability of the University to provide appropriate support for your studies (eg through the provision of facilities, resources, teaching and/or research opportunities); and
• minimum and maximum limits to the numbers of students who may be admitted to the University's taught and research programmes.

Department for Continuing Education

The need for new learning opportunities throughout life is recognised throughout society. An intensive, initial period of higher education is not always enough, or possible, in times of rapid social, economic and technological change. The Department for Continuing Education is known worldwide as a leading provider of extended learning for professional and personal development.

The department provides high-quality, flexible, part-time graduate education, tailored for adults. Students can undertake graduate-level certificates, diplomas and taught master’s degrees in a wide range of subjects. Increasing numbers of courses are delivered in mixed mode, combining intensive periods of residence in Oxford with tutored online study.

The department recruits adult students of all ages on a regional, national and international level. Many courses are offered jointly with other academic departments around the University. Courses are offered in the following areas:

• Mathematical, physical and life sciences
• Medical and health sciences
• Social sciences .

All postgraduate students on the department's courses are members of its Graduate School. The department's  Graduate School aims to provide a stimulating and enriching environment for learning and research. It also supports intellectual and social interaction between graduates of different disciplines and professions from the UK and around the globe. Interdisciplinary research seminars, training opportunities and other events are offered by the Graduate School in support of this goal.

The department's Graduate School will help you make the most of the wealth of resources and opportunities available, paying particular regard to the support and guidance needed if you are following a part-time graduate programme. The department’s graduate community comprises over 600 members following taught programmes and more than 70 undertaking doctoral research.

The department is located in a block of attractive Victorian houses in Wellington Square in central Oxford close to some of the University's major libraries and museums and to the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter. The city's historic sites, colleges, shops and restaurants are only a few minutes' walk away. The modernised and extended site has its own fully equipped seminar rooms, library, reading room, student computing facility, graduate school study/social room, dining-room, common- room, garden seating areas and short-term student accommodation. Depending on the programme you are taking with the department, you may require accommodation at some point in your student career. The department has 35 en-suite study bedrooms , all with high quality amenities, including internet access.

The Rewley House dining room has seating for up to 132 people. A full meal service is available daily. The department operates a Common Room with bar for students.

All masters' and DPhil applicants are considered for Clarendon Scholarships . The department is committed to seeking scholarship support for other students wherever possible.

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For entry in the 2025-26 academic year, the collegiate University expects to offer over 1,000 full or partial graduate scholarships across a wide range of graduate courses.

If you apply by the January deadline shown on this page and receive a course offer, your application will then be considered for Oxford scholarships. For the majority of Oxford scholarships, your application will automatically be assessed against the eligibility criteria, without needing to make a separate application. There are further Oxford scholarships available which have additional eligibility criteria and where you are required to submit a separate application. Most scholarships are awarded on the basis of academic merit and/or potential.

To ensure that you are considered for Oxford scholarships that require a separate application, for which you may be eligible,  use our fees, funding and scholarship search tool  to identify these opportunities and find out how to apply. Alongside Oxford scholarships, you should also consider other opportunities for which you may be eligible including  a range of external funding ,  loan schemes for postgraduate study  and any other scholarships which may also still be available after the January deadline as listed on  our fees, funding and scholarship search tool .

Details of college-specific funding opportunities can also be found on individual college websites:

Select from the list:

Please refer to the College preference section of this page to identify which of the colleges listed above accept students for this course.

For the majority of college scholarships, it doesn’t matter which college, if any, you state a preference for in your application. If another college is able to offer you a scholarship, your application can be moved to that college if you accept the scholarship. Some college scholarships may require you to state a preference for that college when you apply, so check the eligibility requirements carefully.

Further information about funding opportunities for this course can be found on the department's website.

Annual fees for entry in 2025-26

Information about course fees

Course fees are payable each year, for the duration of your fee liability (your fee liability is the length of time for which you are required to pay course fees). For courses lasting longer than one year, please be aware that fees will usually increase annually. For details, please see our guidance on changes to fees and charges .

Course fees cover your teaching as well as other academic services and facilities provided to support your studies. Unless specified in the additional information section below, course fees do not cover your accommodation, residential costs or other living costs. They also don’t cover any additional costs and charges that are outlined in the additional information below.

Where can I find further information about fees?

The Fees and Funding  section of this website provides further information about course fees , including information about fee status and eligibility  and your length of fee liability .

Additional information

Please note that this course requires that you attend in Oxford for teaching, and you may incur additional travel and accommodation expenses for this. Further, as part of your course requirements, you will need to choose a dissertation, a project or a thesis topic. Depending on your choice of topic and the research required to complete it, you may incur additional expenses, such as travel expenses, research expenses, and field trips. You will need to meet these additional costs, although you may be able to apply for small grants from your department and/or college to help you cover some of these expenses. During any study tours that take place as part of the course, accommodation will be provided however you will be expected to cover your meal costs.

Living costs

In addition to your course fees and any additional course-specific costs, you will need to ensure that you have adequate funds to support your living costs for the duration of your course.

Living costs for full-time study

For the 2025-26 academic year, the range of likely living costs for a single, full-time student is between £1,425 and £2,035 for each month spent in Oxford. We provide the cost per month so you can multiply up by the number of months you expect to live in Oxford. Depending on your circumstances, you may also need to budget for the  costs of a student visa and immigration health surcharge and/or living costs for family members or other dependants that you plan to bring with you to Oxford (assuming that dependant visa eligibility criteria are met).

Further information about living costs

The current economic climate and high national rate of inflation make it very hard to estimate potential changes to the cost of living over the next few years. For study in Oxford beyond the 2025-26 academic year, it is suggested that you budget for potential increases in living expenses of around 4% each year – although this rate may vary depending on the national economic situation. For further information, please consult our more detailed information about living costs , which includes a breakdown of likely living costs in Oxford for items such as food, accommodation and study costs.

Students enrolled on this course will belong to both a department/faculty and a college. Please note that ‘college’ and ‘colleges’ refers to all 43 of the University’s colleges, including those designated as societies and permanent private halls (PPHs). 

If you apply for a place on this course you will have the option to express a preference for one of the colleges listed below, or you can ask us to find a college for you. Before deciding, we suggest that you read our brief  introduction to the college system at Oxford  and our  advice about expressing a college preference . 

If you are a current Oxford student and you would like to remain at your current Oxford college, you should check whether it is listed below. If it is, you should indicate this preference when you apply. If not, you should contact your college office to ask whether they would be willing to make an exception. Further information about staying at your current college can be found in our Application Guide. 

The following colleges accept students on the MSt in Diplomatic Studies:

• Blackfriars
• Campion Hall
• Keble College
• Kellogg College
• Linacre College
• Lincoln College
• Magdalen College
• New College
• Regent's Park College
• St Anne's College
• St Antony's College
• St Catherine's College
• St Cross College
• St Edmund Hall
• Somerville College
• Wolfson College
• Wycliffe Hall

Before you apply

Our guide to getting started provides general advice on how to prepare for and start your application. You can use our interactive tool to help you evaluate whether your application is likely to be competitive .

If it is important for you to have your application considered under a particular deadline – eg under the January deadline in order to be considered for Oxford scholarships – we recommend that you aim to complete and submit your application at least two weeks in advance . Check the deadlines on this page and the information about deadlines and when to apply in our Application Guide.

Application fee waivers

An application fee of £75 is payable for each application to this course. Application fee waivers are available for the following applicants who meet the eligibility criteria:

• applicants from low-income countries;
• refugees and displaced persons; 
• UK applicants from low-income backgrounds; and 
• applicants who applied for our Graduate Access Programmes in the past two years and met the eligibility criteria.

You are encouraged to  check whether you're eligible for an application fee waiver  before you apply.

Do I need to contact anyone before I apply?

You do not need to make contact with the department before you apply but you are encouraged to visit the relevant departmental webpages to read any further information about your chosen course.

If you have any questions about the course, you are welcome to make contact with the DSP Office via the contact details provided on this page.

Completing your application

You should refer to the information below when completing the application form, paying attention to the specific requirements for the supporting documents .

For this course, the application form will include questions that collect information that would usually be included in a CV/résumé. You should not upload a separate document. If a separate CV/résumé is uploaded, it will be removed from your application .

If any document does not meet the specification, including the stipulated word count, your application may be considered incomplete and not assessed by the academic department. Expand each section to show further details.

Referees: Three overall, at least one of which must be academic and one professional

Whilst you must register three referees, the department may start the assessment of your application if two of the three references are submitted by the course deadline and your application is otherwise complete. Please note that you may still be required to ensure your third referee supplies a reference for consideration.

Your references will support intellectual ability, academic achievement, motivation, ability to work in a group and professional experience. You should submit at least one academic reference and one professional. 

Official transcript(s)

Your transcripts should give detailed information of the individual grades received in your university-level qualifications to date. You should only upload official documents issued by your institution and any transcript not in English should be accompanied by a certified translation.

More information about the transcript requirement is available in the Application Guide.

Statement of purpose and research proposal: Statement of purpose a maximum of 300 words and research abstract a maximum of 250 words

Your statement of purpose/personal statement and research proposal should be submitted as a single, combined document with clear subheadings. Please ensure that the word counts for each section are clearly visible in the document.

Statement of purpose (maximum 300 words)

Your statement of purpose/personal statement should explain your motivation for applying to the Diplomatic Studies course (as opposed to other available courses), your relevant professional experience, the value you propose to add to the course, and your long term career aspirations. This will be assessed for:

• how well your experience equips you to undertake the course
• evidence of your motivation to study diplomacy and related subjects, and to develop diplomatic skills
• your commitment to diplomacy (in its broadest sense), beyond the requirements of the degree course
• what you would contribute to the course
• your ability to present a reasoned and succinct case in English.

Research proposal (maximum of 250 words)

Your brief research proposal should pertain to the dissertation that you intend to do as part of the MSt in Diplomatic Studies. It should clarify the research topic, provide the main question the research would seek to address, and indicate the methods and data sources that would likely be drawn upon to do this. It is normal for ideas subsequently to change in some ways as a researcher investigates the evidence and develops the project. You should nevertheless make the best effort to articulate your intended research project here. This will be assessed for:

• the coherence of your proposal
• the fit of your research interest with those represented in the department
• the orginiality of your project

Supplementary information form: Uploaded to the application form as written work

Please download and complete the following form, then upload this to your application as written work:

docx MSt in Diplomatic Studies - Supplementary information 44.23 KB

This will be assessed for your professional experience and capacity to benefit from the  course.

Start or continue your application

You can start or return to an application using the relevant link below. As you complete the form, please  refer to the requirements above  and  consult our Application Guide for advice .

Apply Continue application

After you've submitted your application

Your application (including the supporting documents outlined above) will be assessed against the entry requirements detailed on this course page. Whether or not you have secured funding will  not  be taken into consideration when your application is assessed. You can  find out more about our shortlisting and selection process  in our detailed guide to what happens next.

Find out how to manage your application after submission , using our Applicant Self-Service tool.

ADMISSION STATUS

Open to applications for entry in 2025-26

12:00 midday UK time on:

Wednesday 29 January 2025

Latest deadline for most Oxford scholarships

Tuesday 4 March 2025

Final application deadline for entry in 2025-26

*Three-year average (applications for entry in 2022-23 to 2024-25)

Further information and enquiries

This course is offered by the Department for Continuing Education

• Course page on the department's website
• Funding information from the department
• Academic staff
• Departmental research
• Continuing Education Graduate School
• Residence requirements for full-time courses
• Postgraduate applicant privacy policy

Course-related enquiries

Advice about contacting the department can be found in the How to apply section of this page

✉ [email protected] ☎ +44 (0)1865 270455

Application-process enquiries

Application guide