We must adopt a realistic view of so-called international law. The first step is to free ourselves from a body that has lost its way
15 March 2025 3:00pm GMT
International law is not all it’s cracked up to be.
.jpeg)
Most democracies around the world will readily resile from their international “obligations” if it suits them. They recognise, unlike the British government, that international law is secondary to national interests.
This is why Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, deeply fearful of Russian aggression, has recently said that Poland will withdraw from the 1997 Ottawa Convention which bans the use of anti-personnel mines. Poland will become the first EU state to withdraw from this treaty. The Poles’ intent is probably to place landmines along the Polish borders with Russia, Belarus and Kaliningrad to deter a Russian invasion. Lithuania has also said in the last few days that it will leave a 2008 convention which bans cluster munitions.
When the future of their country is at stake, leaders quickly wake up to the irrelevance of international law. If the bad guys are paying no attention then the good guys can’t afford to do otherwise.
It’s not just withdrawals from international law obligations that highlight its irrelevance. It’s the actual misuse of international law which has discredited and devalued it.
And that brings us to the European Court of Human Rights. It’s time for the UK to take our leave. Yes, the left will squeal and portray the UK as falling into despotism – but they will be wrong. The ECHR is not sacrosanct, it isn’t the high priest of jurisprudence, whose words will be imparted through the Eons like the wisdom of Solomon. It’s a body that has badly lost its way. It protects not the rights of society but those of the antisocial. It damages respect for the law with its offensive and highly damaging rulings.
Withdrawal from the ECHR will not be a panacea to the UK’s problems with international law. Our lexocracy (my word for the rule of lawyers, rather than the rule of law) also includes our own Human Rights Act, as well as a rather out of control concept of judicial review and other problems which have allowed our judges to become a law unto themselves. These things will all have to be addressed – but withdrawing from the ECHR would be an important first step.
Beyond that, the Government should seriously reconsider its current slavish obedience to international law generally. There are many examples in which international legal forums have been misused for nakedly political purposes.
The Swiss, for instance, had until quite recently been planning a conference in Geneva of something called the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, which has only convened three times in the past 26 years (all of them of course in relation to Israel). The plan was to alter the Geneva Conventions to make things harder for Israel – making this a rather blatant politicization of the Conventions. Fortunately the project failed.
Meanwhile there is the wilful blindness of so-called international law to enormous and genuine atrocities elsewhere.
Thousands of Tibetans seek refuge in India whilst their unique culture is destroyed in their ancient homeland. The Uighurs are forced by the Chinese communist party into re-education camps. Buddhist militias have driven out Rohingya people from Myanmar and into Bangladesh. Russia steals Ukrainian children to force their adoption into Russian families.
So-called “International Law” is deafeningly silent on these issues.
Meanwhile the United Nations elects Iran, that renowned beacon of justice, to chair its regional group on the United Nations Human Rights Council. This is like electing the Imperial Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan to chair the Equal Rights Commission.
It’s time to start treating international law like the ass it is, and begin by leaving the ECHR.
Sir Michael Ellis served as Attorney General of England and Wales in 2022