In the digital age, “commercial sharenting” refers to parents excessively sharing their children’s images and data on social media for profit. Initially motivated by parental pride, this practice is now driven by child-to-child marketing, where young influencers shape their peers’ consumption habits. While regulations protect child influencers’ privacy, a significant gap remains regarding the rights of child viewers. We argue that commercial sharenting threatens children’s right to health under Article 24(1) of the UNCRC, potentially leading to harmful consumer behaviors and identity confusion. In response, China has adopted a fragmented regulatory approach to platform liability. This article advocates for a comprehensive legal framework incorporating content filtering, moderation, and reviewal to regulate commercial sharenting and safeguard children’s rights and interests in China.

This article discusses European copyright law as applied to the development and training of generative AI and natural language processing in public interest research institutions and libraries. The article focuses on the scope of the new exceptions from copyright law for text and data mining (TDM) for research purposes and discusses them from the perspective of research ethics and principles of open science in publicly financed research. The public interest mission of research institutions and libraries includes the open dissemination of research results but the exceptions from copyright are focused only on the training phase in AI development. Regulation on data transparency is fragmented. The article finds that while new exceptions open for developing language models under research institutions and libraries’ public interest mission to preserve national languages, the regulation is not adapted to principles of research ethics and open science, and legal uncertainty remains.

This paper provides some personal reflections on my experiences as a project leader in four cooperative projects with colleagues from the Global South involving higher education institutions (HEIs) in seven countries—namely, Benin, Uganda, Ethiopia, Colombia, Palestine, Bulgaria, and Kosovo. The aim is to try to assess advantages and shortcomings of some of these funding programs in terms of their framing, structuring, and (limited) funding, and to provide some suggestions for ensuring better coordination of what constitutes an institutionally fragmented field. The focus of my reflections is on three related broad themes—that is, how to enhance international academic cooperation, improve academic mobility, and ensure better access to teaching and research materials for Global South HEIs. The paper first analyzes the issue of funding for North-South cooperation, then moves on to the enhancement of international academic cooperation, international mobility, and finally, the provision of better access to teaching and research materials.

Witchcraft beliefs are a major cause of violence against vulnerable groups in many African countries. People accused of being witches are often ostracised/banished, physically assaulted, tortured, and/or murdered. However, there are rare instances when persons accused of being witches sue their accusers for defamation. In such cases, the courts are often invited to address whether witchcraft imputations amount to defamation and, if so, under what circumstances. The present study explores the Anglophone African courts’ attitudes towards witchcraft-related defamation claims, examining how various judicial bodies in five countries—Botswana, Ghana, Namibia, South Africa, and Tanzania—have navigated the convoluted and sometimes confusing system of legal pluralism since the 1970s. The study shows that courts in various African countries apply several principles when resolving witchcraft-related defamation claims. However, they generally concur that recklessly imputing witchcraft to a person necessarily impairs that person's dignity and is actionable per se.

International investment law, particularly the global backlash against investment treaties, has evolved recently. This article aims to clarify how international investment law evolved over history, from the early Arab traders in the 7th century to the Ottoman Empire, to understand its hidden aims. It investigates the practice of signing investment treaties, which appear first during the Fatimid Caliphate2 and Mamluk Sultanate3 periods. It then explains when control over foreign investment started to diminish during the Ottoman Empire period.4 Further, it explains the links between the USA Friendship, Commerce and Navigation treaties (FCNs), and current investment treaties, explaining the impact of colonization and imperialism on drafting treaty provisions. Within this historical context, this article illustrates the need to understand the roots of international investment law in order to urge Arab countries to terminate or renegotiate current bilateral investment treaties (BITs) as a number of developing and developed countries have done.