Inaugural talk in our new Research Conversations series by Professor Caroline Foster

On the invitation of JustN0W team member, Associate Professor Katalin Sulyok, we had the privilege of welcoming the inaugural speaker of the series, Professor Caroline Foster from Auckland University, Director at the New Zealand Centre for Environmental Law.

Caroline Foster is a world-leading expert in international environmental law and a foremost expert in compliance mechanisms in international law. 

In the talk, entitled Facilitative Compliance Mechanisms in Multilateral Treaties, we deep dived into the history and different types of non-compliance mechanisms in international law.  We have leanrt that the institutional machinery for attempting to help ensure the effectiveness of multilateral treaties has come with a range of problems, including compliance mechanisms’ overlap with state responsibility and international dispute settlement. However, we appear to be entering a new period with an adjusted equilibrium in the design both of multilateral treaties themselves and of their compliance mechanisms and their mandates. A central feature appears to be a turn to more purely facilitative compliance mechanisms, omitting the enforcement elements seen in earlier regimes. Taking into account that we are asking international law to play a role in various matters where countries’ interests are interdependent, e.g. climate, high seas biodiversity and exposure to pandemics, it is interesting that the overall result is a more institutionalised interconnection between international and domestic law while fully respecting treaty parties’ autonomy.

For more information the full lecture series, please contact Dr Katalin Sulyok directly: katalin.sulyok@durham.ac.uk