Results of the twelfth Competition for the International Law in the XXI Century Award

We are happy to announce the winner of the 12th Competition for the International Law in the XXI Century Award, Roman Abrashin, a graduate of HSE University with his paper International Human Rights Bodies’ Efforts to Address Climate Change: Are There Limits to the “Green” Interpretation of International Human Rights Treaties?

The Award Council also gave special recognition to the following papers:

• Immunity of Central Bank Assets and Unilateral Restrictive Measures by Alexander Osokin, a graduate of the Master’s program at Moscow State University
  
  
• From Interpretation to Standard-Setting: Subsidiary Means for the Determination of Rules of International Law in the Field of Biomedicine by Nayana Gazina, PhD in Law, Kutafin Moscow State Law University (MSAL)
  
  
• The Evolution of the Functional Legal Personality of Multilateral Development Banks: From Financial Institutions to Global Agents of Norm-Making by Kirill Serebryakov, RANEPA bachelor’s graduate

Roman Abrashin examines the growing role of international human rights bodies in addressing climate change. The work focuses on their systemic and evolutionary interpretation of human rights treaties, enabling climate-related considerations to be addressed in individual complaints and inter-State cases. It also highlights the risk of some bodies exceeding their competence by directly applying climate treaties. Analyzing current practice, the author contrasts the dominant anthropocentric “greening” of civil rights with ecocentric and communitarian approaches, and argues that human rights bodies may help close the climate accountability gap.

Alexander Osokin considers the immunity of central bank assets in the context of unilateral restrictive measures imposed by unfriendly States. The author focuses on the scope of this immunity and the permissibility of exceptions to it, proposing that central bank asset immunity be treated as a form of sovereign immunity. He concludes that mechanisms for enforcing claims against such assets proposed in foreign legal scholarship are contrary to international law, as they disregard the assets’ connection with the performance of public-law functions by the State.

Nayana Gazina explores how subsidiary means for the determination of rules of international law are gaining a standard-setting role in international biolaw. Focusing on judicial and quasi-judicial practice, acts of international organizations and doctrine, the paper shows how these instruments respond to rapid developments in genomic and neurotechnologies. Drawing on the practice of human rights bodies, WHO and UNESCO instruments, NGO documents and ILC materials, the author identifies a cycle of norm formation linking doctrine, soft-law standards, judicial practice and national legislation.

Kirill Serebryakov examines the transformation of the international legal status of Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) – institutions originally conceived as financial intermediaries that have evolved into independent actors in global law-making. The author substantiates the thesis that MDBs shape lex specialis in the field of sustainable development through program-based financing and policy conditionality, which blur the line between economic assistance and interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states. The paper introduces and substantiates the concept of MDBs as agents of international Government Relations (GR), through which standards of good public governance are transmitted via loan agreements. Special attention is paid to quasi-judicial accountability mechanisms (inspection panels) and their role in providing feedback loops between global financial institutions and local communities

The winner is awarded a cash prize of 500,000 rubles. The authors of the highly commended papers receive certificates for the purchase of legal literature from the organizer of the Competition — the International and Comparative Law Research Center.

Our congratulations to Roman, Alexander, Nayana, and Kirill, and thanks to all the participants!

The thirteenth Competition will be announced very soon. Follow the information on the ICLRC’s website and social networks!