It is an understatement to note that international law has been more honoured in the breach than the observance in the last few years. This has generated various reactions in the general public ranging from disappointment with international law to outright loss of faith in its capacity to constrain power. Meanwhile, international lawyers tend to find solace in the past: even though breaches of international law have never been news, international law has been resilient enough to survive the Cold War as well as many instances of egregiously unlawful behavior subsequent to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The objective of this Lunch Briefing is not to find out which camp is right. Instead, it aims to highlight how our exclusive focus on instances of breaches of international law tends to overlook the importance of background norms that make the operation of international law possible. Arguing that one of those background norms is shame as a social control mechanism, the Lunch Briefing invites participants to reflect on the novelist JM Coetzee’s thought that “the old powers of shame have been abolished” and see what operating in a shameless world means for international law.

Fuad Zarbiyev holds a PhD in International Law from the Geneva Graduate Institute. He is the recipient of the Diploma of the Hague Academy of International Law, the James Crawford Prize in International Dispute Settlement and the Prize for Best Article in International Dispute Resolution of the American Society of International Law. He has served as Director of Studies at The Hague Academy of International Law and has held visiting appointments at the Sciences Po Law School in Paris and at Paris-Panthéon-Assas University.