Objective
The project aims at studying alternative ways of enforcing international law against illegal territorial occupants. Despite the lack of comprehensive academic analysis on the role of international law in regulating unlawful territorial occupations, the soc ial phenomenon of occupations established and maintained in defiance of international law is one of the enduring problems of the international society and one with respect to which the EU has had and still has to deal with in its external relations (e.g. W estern Sahara, Middle East) and may have soon to deal with in its internal dimension (accession of Cyprus in 2004 and Turkish occupation of the northern part of the country). Rather than analysing the role of international law in regulating and channeling the solution of the territorial and political disputes underlying unlawful occupations - a task that the researcher has already undertaken during his doctoral studies - the present project seeks to evaluate the means and strategies provided by internationa l law in channeling the claims of individuals and other non-state actors, in order to challenge the presence and conduct of the unlawful occupant. The project will achieve that main objective by considering different areas of international law - such as hu man rights law, international humanitarian law, the law of natural resources, international trade law and EU law, and by situating existing case law and legal practice with respect to those different areas within the specific context of unlawful territori al situations. The research will represent a necessary complement to the legal-political analysis of the diplomatic disputes surrounding the phenomenon of illegal territorial occupations, as it is based on a and apos;bottom-up and apos; approach to those disputes. It aims to show the potentials of international and EU law as a tool to address the needs and the claims of the civil society at large and new creative ways of responding to those claims at the institutional level.
Fields of science
Keywords
Call for proposal
FP6-2002-MOBILITY-5
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