On June 21, 2019, the International Law Organization (ILO) adopted the groundbreaking Convention No. 190 concerning the Elimination of Violence and Harassment in the World of Work (C190) and the accompanying Recommendation on the same topic (R206). ILO conventions are legally binding instruments, once ratified by states, while recommendations provide advice and guidance. The result of two years of negotiations by ILO members—governments, workers’ representatives, and employers’ organizations—is an international treaty setting out standards that are aimed at ending violence and harassment in the world of work. In its “Women, Business and the Law 2018” study, the World Bank reports that there is a lack of legal protection against harassment at work in 70 percent of the countries in the Middle East and North Africa, half of the economies in East Asia and the Pacific, and one-third of those in Latin America and the Caribbean, affecting an estimated 500 million working-age women.

Over the course of the period from the end of 2022 to early 2023, requests for advisory opinions on climate change were, for the first time, made to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR).

On August 9, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided United States v. Assa Co. The decision is significant for its holding that a civil forfeiture action in rem concerning property of a foreign state or its instrumentality is not an action against the foreign state or instrumentality for purposes of the jurisdictional and immunity provisions of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA).