I would like to thank Professor Dreyfuss for inviting me to participate in such an interesting panel and even more to applaud the family of late Professor Vagts for honoring his memory and keeping alive his scholarship through these annual events.

I would like to thank the Vagts family and Professor Rochelle Dreyfuss for organizing this panel and for the opportunity to contribute to the discussion. I am a long admirer of Professor Dreyfuss's work and I was honored to receive her invitation. I want to clarify that my comments in this panel do not represent any organization that I have worked with or for which I am currently working.

As the title of the session indicates, we will be exploring the future of multilateralism in Latin America, which will inevitably entail looking at its record. Criticisms of multilateralism in the region abound, from recurrent debates about the effectiveness of the Organization of American States (OAS) and other regional institutions in promoting democratic governance and human rights, to the alleged failure of the Andean Community or Mercosur and similar organizations to promote true integration or economic development, or the difficulties in multilateral approaches to addressing crises such as those in Venezuela, Nicaragua, or Haiti.

Any speculation about the promise and future of multilateralism in Latin America turns fundamentally on what we mean by multilateralism. If multilateralism is defined in numeric terms, as any formal cooperative endeavor undertaken by three or more states, then it is easy to predict that multilateralism is going to be an ongoing feature international politics everywhere. If the question concerns the future of particular Latin American multilateral institutions, such as the Inter-American Human Rights system, Mercosur, or the Andean Community, there might be greater worry and room for disagreement. We would then want to know “what part of the inter-American Human Rights system/Mercosur/Andean Community are you talking about?”

I will take Karen's challenging question about the goals of a multilateral institution as the starting point for analyzing whether the promise of multilateralism in Latin America has been honored, if the current crisis is related to those goals (or their absence), and whether multilateralism still holds any promise for the future. In my analysis, key elements of Ruggie's definition (institutional form, coordination, generalized principles) will also be at stake. Thus, objectives and principles are at the center of this discussion.

If we focus on the past sixty years, which coincides with the founding of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), we can unequivocally say that there have been a number of notable and successful examples of “multilateralism” in Latin America in the context of economic development and integration. This assumes we define “multilateralism” broadly as groups of countries in Latin America (1) cooperating or participating in institutions, organizations, and initiatives that include more than two countries; (2) which include among their goals or objectives the advancement of economic development or economic integration in the region; and (3) which have produced or resulted in some economic outcome or benefit for the participating countries that we generally believe could not have been achieved by one country alone. While this definition may not perfectly follow John Ruggie's definition, my formulation of the definition of “multilateralism” ensures that we do not overlook or discount important examples of institutions formed by Latin American states and other states that are based on principles to address issues of common concern, namely economic development in the region. The advances and benefits that have been achieved through these institutions have been significant even if the more ambitious (and perhaps more aspirational) goals over the years of certain Latin American political leaders of a broader inter-American political and economic integration modeled on the European Union or even the narrower (but also ambitious) goal of projects focused on economic integration, like the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), have not been fully achieved. Based on the definition that I have proposed of “multilateralism” with its focus on economic development, I would highlight some common features of the examples and cases where we have seen successful multilateralism and common features of the challenges that have been encountered in advancing multilateralist projects.

While it is true that Latin American multilateralism currently appears fragmented and paralyzed in many ways, the situation remains more positive with respect to democracy and human rights.

Thank you for having me on this esteemed panel. My first two sets of comments are based on views articulated in my book, published by Cambridge University Press, Existing Legal Limits to Security Council Veto Power in the Face of Atrocity Crimes. The third set of comments responds to remarks by other panelists.

My mandate as Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide entails four main functions that can be summarized as follows: collect information of violations that if not prevented or halted might lead to genocide; analyze it; alert the Secretary-General when I consider there is a risk of commission of the crime, and work with other partners to mitigate this risk.

On behalf of the American Society of International Law and as part of its first virtual annual meeting, I am pleased to welcome you to this panel on the promise and prospects of the 2019 Hague Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters. As many of those listening know, the negotiations for this newest Hague Convention were concluded at the Hague Conference on Private International Law on July 2, 2019.

Ladies and Gentlemen, as Deputy Mayor of The Hague, I am glad that this esteemed panel will discuss the promise of cities in relation to international law. As a representative of the international city of peace and justice, this subject is of course close to my heart.

Ladies and Gentlemen, a warm welcome to the Closing Plenary of the 2020 Virtual Annual Meeting of the ASIL. A warm welcome also on behalf of the City of The Hague. We just listened to the deputy mayor, who kindly supports this Plenary. My name is Janne Nijman, I am the academic director of the Asser Institute in The Hague, and professor in Amsterdam and Geneva.

Janne thank you so much. First, it is a pleasure to be with this esteemed panel and I want to thank the American Society for International Law and the Municipality of The Hague for bringing us together today.

First of all, I want to thank the American Society of International Law, the Municipality of The Hague, and all of you for this invitation, I am delighted to be part of this great group of panelists speaking here today.

Thank you, Janne. Thank you to our hosts, the American Society for International Law, the City of The Hague, yourself, and the Asser Institute for making this possible.

A warm thank you also from my part to the City of The Hague, the Asser Institute, and to everyone involved in this panel.

Thank you all for your explorations of the relationship between the city and international law and governance. Of course as we take from all your comments “the city” does not exist, nor does “the relation” between the local and the global. We explored the landscape of this intensifying dynamic—the promises and the complications. Thank you very much for your rich contributions to this Closing Plenary.

We are at a moment. An inflection point. We are in a moment of interlocking pandemics. Not only the health pandemic sparked by the COVID-19 crisis. But a pandemic of policing, poverty, and protest. George Floyd and Eric Garner were arrested for crimes of poverty. We live in a time of record-breaking unemployment and economic fragility caused by the global health emergency—a crisis that has unmasked structural inequalities baked into the foundation.

COVID-19 has exposed the underlying racial hierarchy in the United States and elsewhere. Tragically, one study indicates that Black and Latinx people have COVID-19 mortality rates as much as nine times higher than White people in the United States when age is taken into account. Several commentators have attempted to account for these glaring health disparities by pointing to preexisting health conditions like hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and the higher prevalence of cardiovascular disease among Black people, which can make for greater and more severe and deadly complications with COVID-19. Yet, structural factors ensure that Black people are “more likely to encounter those things that we know compromise health–like inaccessible or biased health care providers, inadequate schools and education systems, unemployment, hazardous jobs, unsafe housing, and violent, polluted communities.”

Human rights documentation around the world has shown that crises disproportionately or distinctly impacts women and girls, whether conflict or natural disaster-related. This is true for disease outbreaks as well. Human Rights Watch has raised the concerns about the gendered impacts of the Ebola virus outbreaks in West Africa, or the human rights dimensions of the Zika virus impacts in northeast Brazil. The COVID-19 pandemic and response are no different. We are already seeing the disproportionate and gendered ways government responses to the pandemic are generating harm to women and girls and reinforcing longstanding gender inequity.