Matthias Vanhullebusch

Shanghai Jiao Tong University | SJTU · KoGuan School of Law

The humanitarian crisis in Syria has triggered diverse questions on the role of the international community and regional actors - in particular the Arab League - to assume their responsibility in matters of peace and security. Military interventions in past conflicts show proof that the Arab League has the military and doctrinal capacity to justify...

China's stance on its Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence is diametrically opposed to its evolving attitude within the Security Council in a number of dossiers where it has lent its support either tacitly or affirmatively to resolutions adopted that endorsed, facilitated, reversed and prevented regime change since the end of the Cold War. Rathe...

The international community failed to convince the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to end their armed conflict peacefully. The agenda has now shifted towards investigating international crimes committed in the last phase of the civil war instead. The former and current governments of Sri Lanka have responded am...

Armed conflict, today, has diverged from war as it was known in generations past, and from this, has tested the means by which conflicts and violence are regulated. Written with an eye to a region plagued by such conflicts, War and Law in the Islamic World examines the origins and roles that two distinct systems of governance – Islamic law and inte...

Governing contemporary warfare is deeply rooted in the shift since the end of the Cold War towards humanitarianism, whose practice has been accompanied by the parallel evolution of international laws that regulate the use of force (jus ad bellum), the conduct of hostilities (jus in bello), and post-conflict justice (jus post bellum). Yet, new unequ...

This handbook provides a comprehensive road map to China's engagement with international law and an upgraded bridge between Chinese and Western approaches in times of turmoil. Written by a leading group of Chinese and Western specialists, it examines how China is assimilating into, and putting its stamp on, the global legal order. It offers updated...

The criminalisation of starvation in non-international armed conflicts in the Rome Statute in December 2019 finally addressed the plight of civilian populations at the brink of starvation. All parties to the conflict – state and non-state alike – shall be held accountable inter alia for arbitrarily denying offers of international humanitarian relie...

Circular Confucian time, grounded in the traditional Chinese epistemological framework of relational thought, plays a central role in China’s international legal behavior. Western scholars have often characterized China’s international legal positions and normative claims as contradictory. However, China’s international legal behavior and internati...

This book comprehensively covers the entire scope of conflicting rights and duties of the fighting parties and international humanitarian relief actors in non-international armed conflicts, namely from the moment of the initiation of international humanitarian relief actions till their authorisation and throughout the consecutive stages of the deli...

Traditionally, institutional constraints informed the International Court of Justice's as-certainment of the (non-) existence of customary norms in its decisions as it signals impartiality to uphold its legitimacy. Its reliance on (non-)legal elements underpinning the sources of the normativity of existing and future customary norms upon which it r...

The edited volume under discussion aims to shed light on China’s international investment strategy along the bilateral, regional and global prong. In doing so, the contributors have sought to answer whether China is a rule-shaper or rule-breaker of international investment norms and whether it will be further liberalizing its domestic market for fo...

During non-international armed conflicts, fighting parties have repeatedly denied international humanitarian relief to the civilian population under their territorial control leaving them at the brink of starvation. Debates on criminal accountability for violating the prohibition of the use of starvation against the civilian population as a method...

Humanitarian actors have more than ever been preoccupied with the respect for the law of war by (non-)Islamic warring parties within Asia’s battlefield, ranging from Syria in the West to the Philippines in the East. Their moral disengagement with international humanitarian law (IHL) is responsible for its violations. Islamic parties to the conflict...

This human rights report presents a collection of cases where human rights conditions have worsened and improved according to international commentators. It covers three different topics where both domestic and international human rights advocacy is at play when denouncing and advancing human rights protection on an individual and collective basis....

Traditionally, the territorial regimes of the Islamic Law of War distinguish between armed conflicts which take place within the Islamic territory and those which are waged against non-Muslim enemies. The regimes have respectively been legalized into the abode of Islam, i.e. the dar al-Islam, and the abode of war, i.e. the dar al-harb. Yet, the bif...

This human rights report on Asia focuses on three case studies that have trans-boundary consequences for the respect and development of human rights and international humanitarian law on the continent. It examines the ongoing conflict and refugee crisis in Myanmar and neighbouring Bangladesh. It looks at the current nuclear crisis on the Korean Pen...

With the establishment of China’s new multilateral development banks in Asia, concerns on behalf of developed nations have been raised regarding the future protection of human rights and environmental standards in the financing of development projects in Asia by China’s new financial vehicles. However, according to the operational and financial pri...

Global Governance, Conflict and China sheds a unique perspective on China’s normative behaviour in the realm of collective security, peacekeeping, arms control, the war on terror and post-conflict justice. This analysis engages with an Asian epistemological framework whose relational thought borrows from the context – space and time alike – that in...

Peoples have been fighting for self-determination and equality ever since the time of colonisation. The principles that inform the legitimacy of those struggles from the period of decolonisation until the present day, namely the principle of equality of peoples and of belligerents have variably received legal recognition under international and hum...

Finance has become an indispensable vehicle for economic development in emerging economies. Such economic progress involves a number of human rights implications which affect financial products, the entitlements of the banking sector itself as well as broad matters of socio-political and -economic justice. Such asymmetries and inequalities find the...

This volume offers a comparative study of Hong Kong, Singapore and Mainland China's financial models conducted by leading experts in the field and advances a sophisticated and common understanding on the development of financial centres in Asia based on the rule of law.

China’s establishment of its Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) is yet another manifestation on the strenuous development of regional security in East Asia. China by virtue of its so-called lawfare has instrumentalized international air law, the law of the sea, and law on the use force to reinforce its comprehensive security doctrine both on th...

Today's non-international armed conflicts where the right of selfdetermination is disputed of those peoples who have been dominated, occupied and racially discriminated against by their governments through so-called "internal colonisation" increasingly receive more attention of the international community of States. As a result, the laws of armed c...

Traditionally, historical and positivists readings of the development of the law on the right of self-determination have too often ignored the personal role and impact of the Judges 'opinions in the JCJ s advisory jurisdiction. Their analyses of the advisory opinions on South West Africa/Namibia, Western Sahara, the Occupied Palestinian Territories...

The issue of compliance with the laws of war across the Islamic world in the past (and more than ever in the present) has often been disregarded and misunderstood. Therefore, a contextual reading of International Humanitarian Law and the Islamic Law of War towards their natural law interpretation might reveal that the principle of (non-)reciprocity...

The establishment of the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone immediately hit international and domestic headlines. On face value, the free trade zone is a variation to the long-established special economic zones set up by the Chinese government more than three decades ago in order to attract foreign direct investment and promote economic development in...

This volume showcases the most recent research on the future of the legal and judicial landscape in East Asia and its renewed respect for the rule of law in the 21st century. The book features research on emerging judicial stratifications in the legal profession; war crimes and their legacies in the post-colonial era; citizens' participation in the...

The free trade agreements and activities have been centred around China, this book therefore focuses on the following areas: China's Role within Regional Trade (Part 1), China and the Transpacific Partnership (Part 2), Free Trade between China, Japan and Korea (Part 3), and Future Perspectives on Asian Regional Trade (Part 4). These issues, althoug...

The emerging economic power of Asia has accelerated since the conclusion of free trade agreements amongst Asia nations. At the same time, the development of such regional cooperation in trade affairs has been accompanied by human rights concerns regarding labour standards and environmental protection. A predominant Western critique on the absence o...

The aim of this article is to examine the influence of Islamic law and in particular Islamic law of war upon the doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect as currently supported by the internationalc ommunity ofs tates to intervene upon humanitarian grounds into the domestic affairs of states. This article will firstly address the parameters and co...

Legal and political issues raised from the relationship between the International Criminal Court and the United Nations Security Council reflecting both good understandings and deep divisions will be examined. Communitarian and sovereignty values might be conflicting within a new world order where both institutions could be used for specific intere...

From a positivist perspective this paper aims at analyzing the Islamic Law of War (ILW) during armed hostilities. Extensive work has already been delivered by many scholars in the field with respect to the evolution of the ILW. This study will, in particular, address the principles of distinction and proportionality (which are also found in the tra...