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On 20 November 2024, Humboldt University of Berlin (HU), through the Berlin University Alliance (BUA), became a signatory to the Africa Charter for Transformative Research Collaborations. This piece positions and introduces the key argument of the Africa Charter, posits its relevance as a benchmark for RefLex, a new Centre for Advanced Studies at HU, and proposes a set of queries to guide its operationalisation within the Institute and possibly beyond in similar “North-South” initiatives.

I offer these reflections drawing on my close involvement in the development of the intellectual underpinnings of the Africa Charter, the coordination of the initiative to advance its implementation, and the BUA signature to it.

Transformative research collaborations

Co-created by Africa’s major higher education (HE) constituencies in 2023, the Africa Charter offers a new conceptual and normative framework for thinking about and for overcoming the multi-layered power imbalances that continue to pervade and are reproduced through joint academic inquiry between actors in Africa and counterparts, particularly the “global North”.

The Africa Charter emerged in the context of expanding international, particularly “North-South”, scientific cooperation, alongside an intensified debate – largely led by the Global North – on the need to ensure equitability in such collaborations. It shifts the locus of consideration firmly to the “South” and calls for moving beyond typical ideas of “equitable research partnerships” (ERP) to reconsider what genuine equity in collaborations needs to entail and, ultimately, what it is for.

Drawing on anti-, post-, and decolonial and other critical scholarship from the continent, the Africa Charter uses the heuristic of a set of concentric circles to locate, unlike ERP frames, not only tangible, visible power asymmetries – for example, those resulting from unequal resources and infrastructure across partner institutions, as well as from how labour, decision-making, and leadership over joint outputs are organised within collaborative projects. In addition, the Africa Charter identifies more fundamental power imbalances that have to do with the kinds of knowledge that are produced. These emerge through the dominant use of Eurocentric ways of knowing, concepts and theories, former colonial languages, and standard ideas about ‘development’ in the production of new knowledge in, for, or about the continent.

The Africa Charter calls for a new mode of “North-South” collaboration that redresses each layer of power imbalance. It argues that such a collaboration is, potentially, transformative. If adopted widely as best and standard practice across fields, it carries the potential to rebalance the unfavourable and peripheral positioning of Africa in the global academic research system overall.

Such rebalancing, ensuring that scholars, institutions, and knowledge produced from the continent take their rightful place in the global production of academic knowledge, is the Africa Charter’s ultimate goal. It frames this ambition as a matter of equity and social justice, of advancing Africa’s political and economic aspirations, and of fostering a richer and more potent and pluriversal global academic effort that is better equipped to address the crises and challenges facing humanity today.

In signing the Africa Charter, the BUA leadership signalled not only an agreement with its diagnosis. It also presupposed (perhaps problematically) a readiness of its faculty, senior management, and professional services staff to pursue a realisation of the Africa Charter’s principles and aspirations through changes to policy and practice.

RefLex as a potential site for exploring a transformative collaboration mode

RefLex is a new Centre for Advanced Studies of the Humboldt University of Berlin that encompasses ‘South-North’ dialogue and inquiry on the “South-North” encounter in contestations of dominant colonial foundations and concepts of law worldwide. As such, RefLex is ideally positioned to attempt a deliberate pursuit of a collaboration mode aligned with Africa Charter ambitions.

Doing so needs to begin with open and critical exploration of the positioning and orientation of RefLex, drawing on the individual and collective reflexivity of the Centre heads, research staff, fellows, and interlocutors.

The following set of foundational queries, which are reflective of the Africa Charter’s core argument, could serve to guide and structure a collective exploration:

On positionality and positioning:

• Who is in the room? What are their institutional and personal positionalities vis-à-vis “North” and “South”, bearing in mind the ambiguities and overlaps inherent in both terms? What power dynamics exist or arise among them?
• What orientations, values or “politics” inform the scholarship of those in the room? And how, if at all, do these relate to concerns about equity and social justice in academic knowledge production or material lives?
• What joint overall ambition for RefLex – between deepening intellectual insight and the fostering of “after worlds” – is to be forged from this?

On multilayered power imbalances and how to address them:

• What implications arise from RefLex’s current positioning as a unique intellectual effort funded and administered by a Northern institution; led, directed, and framed by two Northern scholars and centred on the elaboration of a concept proposed by them; undertaken in English; and taking place, geographically, in the North?
• Does a need arise for intentionally shaping RefLex approaches with respect to (i) the epistemologies, languages, theories, and concepts that are privileged in structuring the inquiry and (ii) conscious or unconscious assumptions about the nature of “development” and the positioning of North and South in relation to it?

On institutional design:

• What need, if any, arises for deliberate institutional recalibration in light of these implications? How might decisions concerning epistemic priorities, language, leadership and authority, the physical location of deliberation, and processes of decision-making be intentionally shaped to address the asymmetries identified above?

The very fluidity and envisioned continual reconstitution of RefLex – through successive cohorts of fellows – would allow for the iterative development of rich perspectives and conclusions in answer to these foundational questions. It also promises to generate progressively deeper insights into the very experience of seeking to apply the Africa Charter and into the relevance of its propositions for the field of law and for the “global South” beyond Africa. As such, RefLex stands to contribute substantively to the further elaboration and refinement of the Africa Charter argument itself.

Beyond RefLex, the proposed questions may also serve as a frame to guide the exploration of and distillation of learnings on a transformative collaboration mode in other similar “North-South” research initiatives.

A proposed outline for the way forward

To realise this potential, three constants in the process of RefLex will be essential. One is the need to create and protect – for each cohort – dedicated and “safe” space to support the open reflection and reflexivity described above. The other is to establish parallel mechanisms to foster conversations between and, progressively, across cohorts. The third is to devise a careful and rigorous method to distil, capture, track, and further analyse the key strands of thought and understanding as well as further queries and lines of inquiry emerging over time. With the official launch of RefLex on 11 February 2026 – and given the importance the Centre places on engaging its own practice – discussion on putting in place such parameters could begin.

In doing so, RefLex could help chart the potential for rebalancing “South-North” research relations that lies in the collaborative engagement, resource sharing, and leverage of Northern institutions – if done reflexively.

The post RefLex and the Possibility of Transformative “North-South” Research Collaborations appeared first on Verfassungsblog.

The Venice Commission, formally known as the European Commission for Democracy through Law, plays an important role in shaping standards of European constitutionalism. By providing expert advice to Council of Europe member states, but also a number of non-European countries; reviewing (draft) laws to assess their compatibility with European standards in the field of democracy, human rights and the rule of law; and by adopting important soft law documents such as its rule of law checklist, the Venice Commission (hereinafter: VC) has increasingly gained political salience and has influenced the lawmaking agenda in a growing number of countries. The EU’s rule of law crisis has similarly shown the increasing importance attached to the VC at the EU level. To give a single example, the VC is mentioned more than 160 times across the 32 rule of law reports published by the European Commission in July 2025. By contrast, the VC was “merely” referenced 68 times in the first edition of the EU’s rule of law report in 2020.

When it comes to specific instances of rule of law backsliding, the VC has acted as an important player and has been recognized as such by both backsliding authorities and EU institutions. From the very start of Poland’s rule of law crisis, for instance, it was striking to see the Polish government promptly asking for an opinion of the VC regarding a law of 22 December 2015 concerning the Constitutional Tribunal (a few days later, however, this manifestly unconstitutional law on 28 December 2015 was promulgated). Subsequently, the European Commission repeatedly recommended that Polish authorities work closely with the VC and made extensive references to its opinions within the framework of the pre-Article 7 and Article 7(1) proceedings it initiated in January 2016 and December 2017 respectively.

With greater influence, however, should come greater responsibility. As this post will outline, the VC suffers from one institutional flaw which concerns the method of selecting its members, a flaw which has been made worse by an unwillingness to enforce its own membership requirements and principles of conduct.

As per the (revised) Statute of the Venice Commission, it is for each member state concerned to appoint two “independent experts” (one member and one substitute). It is furthermore provided that these two members “shall have the qualifications required”, i.e., “have achieved eminence through their experience in democratic institutions or by their contribution to the enhancement of law and political science”. However, there are no mechanisms to review whether the appointees meet – or continue to meet – these qualifications.

The case of Poland shows the urgency of addressing this gap. With the term of Poland’s two (unbecoming) members soon coming to an end, this post will reflect on the VC’s failure to enforce the most basic standards when it comes to qualifications and behaviour, and further submit that the VC ought to make itself immune to autocratic contamination by (i) establishing a mechanism akin to the CJEU’s “255 Committee” and (ii) enforcing its code of conduct without tergiversations. In essence, we urge the VC to assess its own resilience to autocratic capture, and compliance with its duty to take full account of relevant CJEU and ECtHR judgments. The VC’s authority can only but suffer in a context where it is (rightly) stressing the crucial importance of the obligation to execute judgments of international courts while failing to police VC members who engage in a systemic violation of this obligation.

Impact of Poland’s rule of law crisis on VC membership

Prior to Poland’s rule of law crisis, Poland’s standing expert was Hanna Suchocka. A former Prime Minister and an eminent constitutional expert, she served in the VC between 1991 and 2016. In April 2016, the Polish government decided not to re-appoint her, in part due to the sharply critical VC opinion adopted in March 2016 in respect of the Polish government’s legislative attempts to capture Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal. This led the VC to (unusually) appoint Hanna Suchocka as its honorary president.

Mindful of the strategic importance of the VC with respect of its then ongoing attempts to implement the backslider’s playbook, the Polish government appointed Bogusław Banaszak as VC member and Mariusz Muszyński as VC substitute. Although they were both professors of law and could meet the criteria of “contribution to the enhancement of law” on paper, their (lack of) independence could be seriously questioned. At the time of his appointment, M. Muszyński was already well known as one of the framers of, and participants in, the changes which made Poland the world’s top autocratising country by 2020. He was also one of the irregularly appointed “judges” (so-called “double judges”) to the Constitutional Tribunal. Even after the ECtHR in May 2021 found his appointment to violate the very essence of the right to a tribunal established by law, due to multiple irregularities amounting to grave breaches of relevant domestic law, the VC did not budge.

Given that active participation in activities which the ECtHR characterised as “an affront to the rule of law” was deemed insufficient to call into question M. Muszyński’s VC substitute status, it is not surprising that B. Banaszak’s membership was not called into question either. A well-established law professor and academic author, he was also one of the key supporters of the (unconstitutional) changes which led to the effective capture of Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal. For example, he co-authored a July 2016 report that was highly critical towards the VC and the (not yet captured) Constitutional Tribunal. The combined efforts of M. Muszyński and B. Banaszak paved the way for the Constitutional Tribunal’s transformation into a discredited body which no longer meets the requirements of an independent and impartial tribunal established by law, as most recently confirmed by the CJEU.

Unaccountability, no matter what

Following B. Banaszak’s sudden death in January 2018, the Polish government decided to appoint Marcin Warchoł, a professor of law who served at that time as the Deputy Minister of Justice. His VC membership was so manifestly incompatible with the VC’s basic qualification and conduct requirements that one of the present authors wrote to the then-President of the VC in July 2018 and January 2020. In his response dated 13 July 2018, Mr Buquicchio accepted that “some recent appointments … raise questions” only to indicate that “it is the task of the member states to ensure that the individual members fulfil the criteria defined by the [VC]’s Statute”. In other words, there was seemingly “no procedure by virtue of which the [VC] can exclude or suspend” a member in any circumstances. In his response dated 27 January 2020 to the second letter which highlighted inter alia the Supreme Court of Ireland’s severe criticism of M. Warchoł’s behaviour in a specific case, Mr Buquicchio just repeated that “there is no procedure for excluding individual members if they act contrary” to the objectives of the VC, even when VC members challenge the legitimacy of the VC itself.

In short, the VC leadership was unwilling to contemplate any formal action, even in a situation where rulings from both the ECtHR and CJEU had repeatedly found relevant VC members to have been illegally appointed to the roles listed on the VC’s website and belonging to bodies found incompatible with basic rule of law requirements; bodies which remain mentioned to this day on the VC’s website without any qualifications.

The lack of accountability in respect of both M. Warchoł and M. Muszyński, who served their full terms until 2022, has similarly characterised the VC’s modus operandi in respect of their successors. To begin with law professor Joanna Lemańska, she was appointed to the VC while presiding over a body masquerading as a court and formally known as the Chamber of Extraordinary Control and Public Affairs, which is located in the (captured) Supreme Court. In this case as well, the VC failed to take any account of several CJEU and ECtHR rulings finding inter alia Lemańska’s Supreme Court appointment to have been made “in blatant defiance of the rule of law”, and of her role as president of a body which does not constitute a lawful court either in ECHR or EU law.

As for the new VC substitute member, Mr Justyn Piskorski, he is one of the so-called “double double judges” of Poland’s “Constitutional Tribunal”, i.e., he was irregularly selected when one of the original “double judges”, elected in 2015, died. The current VC therefore includes not one but two pseudo judges belonging to two pseudo courts. And yet, the VC has just been quietly waiting for Mrs Lemańska and Mr Piskorski to finish their four-year term due to expire in March 2026.

Shielding the VC from unbecoming “experts”

Poland’s episode of severe rule of law backsliding has brought to the fore many weak spots in Europe’s rule of law ecosystem, which have been exploited by those seeking to undermine the rule of law while encountering little to no resistance from gatekeepers.

In the case of the VC, it is not the toolbox which has been blamed for the lack of action over its manifestly unbecoming members, but the absence of a procedure for excluding or suspending individual members. Leaving aside the validity of the arguments raised by the VC leadership to justify inaction, a more formal filtering process of national appointments ought to be prioritised. The current rule preventing a VC member from voting on issues concerning the country appointing him/her is evidently insufficient to prevent “autocratic contamination” via the participation of manifestly compromised “experts” or agents of backsliding regimes, to the work of the VC.

As early as 2019, a network of rule of law experts (including one of the present coauthors) cautioned against any systemic involvement of the VC in the EU’s rule of law toolbox as long as the Council of Europe fails to establish a filtering panel akin to the Article 255 TFEU panel and starts “taking the vetting of aspirant [VC] members seriously”. Instead, the VC has sought refuge in revised but unenforced “principles of conduct” while re-electing in December 2021 Mr András Zs Varga as a Vice-Chair of its sub-commission for constitutional justice, the “President” of Orbán’s (captured) Supreme Court, who has since been busy threatening independent judges.

In 2013, PACE called for a reinforcement of the selection procedures for experts of key Council of Europe human rights monitoring mechanisms (such as the ECRI), at both national and international levels. Among the general minimum standards proposed by PACE, one may mention the need for transparent and competitive national selection procedures, as well as the possibility for the Assembly to reject lists of candidates who do not meet the criteria of competence, integrity and independence. While the Venice Commission was not explicitly referenced in this process, it seems obvious that the current status quo, coupled with a failure to apply to itself the standards it demands of others, endangers the VC’s authority.

After undermining the VC on the back of repeated and manifestly unsuitable appointments, Poland has an opportunity to strengthen the VC by applying the general minimum standards for selection procedures advocated by the Assembly. In the past two years, Polish authorities have already organised the competitive and transparent selection of candidates for the roles of ECtHR judge, CPT member and ECRI member. The time has come to finally return to the VC genuine, eminent, and independent experts. It is furthermore suggested that relevant texts are amended to provide for an automatic membership suspension in any situation where a VC member has been found to have been illegally appointed or belongs to a body which is not – or is no longer – a lawful court as established by either the ECtHR or the CJEU. Beyond the VC, we urge all relevant European associations, bodies or networks, such as the Presidents of the Supreme Judicial Courts of EU Member States, not to turn a blind eye on their illegal or compromised members. It is at the very least inconsistent to warn against rule of law regression and violations while failing to police one’s own membership. We are where we are because too many in senior positions who had and have the power to act have failed to do so.

The post Immunising the Venice Commission Against Autocratic Contamination appeared first on Verfassungsblog.

As the New York Times reported, President Trump and NATO have reached the framework of a deal that would grant the US sovereign bases over territories of Greenland. One of the officials present at the negotiations compared the proposed bases to the British Sovereign Base Areas (SBAs) in Cyprus, a comparison that has also been analysed by Marc Weller in a recent blog post. We argue that establishing such bases constitutes a violation of international law and cannot validly be agreed to by Denmark or NATO. This conclusion draws support from two distinct lines of argument: one relating to the (il)legality of establishing sovereign bases; and the other to indigenous rights.

Who May Consent to Sovereign Bases?

The first line of argument draws on the ICJ’s Chagos Archipelago Advisory Opinion. In this, the Court explained that the detachment of part of a non-self-governing territory must be based on the free and genuine will of the people of the concerned territory. If one is concerned about respecting “the free and genuine will of the people”, identifying said people is crucial. Denmark’s title to Greenland is uncontested in modern practice and has been expressly recognised by the United States in the 1951 Defense of Greenland Agreement and its 2004 update. While Denmark’s claim to Greenland has been described as “unimpeachable,” Greenlanders are constitutionally recognised as a “people” with a right to self‑determination, including a lawful pathway to independence by referendum and subsequent negotiation. If anyone were to consent to the creation of US sovereign bases, therefore, it would have to be them. It is not for Denmark to reach such an agreement, and it is certainly not for the NATO Secretary General.

Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland was abruptly questioned when President Trump declared that the US had to own the island and did not rule out using force to achieve this. In light of such threats, it is clear that if a transfer of sovereignty were to take place, it would not be the result of “the free and genuine will of the people”. Also supporting this argument is the fact that a threat of the use of force by the US violates Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which is a ius cogens norm. Thus, any transfer of sovereignty of part of Greenland’s territory to the US, as a result of such a threat, would be null and void.

Modelling the proposed US bases on the SBAs in Cyprus does not enhance their credibility. The SBAs are a remnant of Cyprus’ colonial history, but even when seen through this light, they are arguably illegal. The Treaty of Establishment 1960 that created the SBAs allowed the UK to retain its sovereignty over the two large bases, while at the same time, granted independence to the rest of the island. Yet, the UK’s sovereignty is not unlimited: Appendix O of the Treaty (which Cyprus considers to be legally binding, but the UK does not) declares the UK’s intention “[n]ot to set up or permit the establishment of civilian commercial or industrial enterprises”; prohibits the creation of “custom posts or other frontier barriers” between the SBAs and the rest of the island; and mandates that UK law in the SBAs will “mirror” that of the Republic of Cyprus. As one of us has already argued (here and here), even with such restrictions on the UK’s sovereignty, the SBAs remain of doubtful international legality, precisely because they were established in contravention of the principles set out in Chagos.

The establishment of SBAs might have been considered acceptable in the era of decolonisation, but not anymore. Contemporary practice to establish military bases overwhelmingly no longer grants this type of enclave sovereignty within the host state, but only grants defined functional (exclusively military) rights to the sending state. Problematically, what President Trump envisions in Greenland are not just SBAs, but “SBAs plus”, which would allow the US to not merely use the bases for military purposes, but also develop them commercially. Thus, any future Greenland “framework” built on sovereignty transfers would in our view not just “trade short‑term optics for long‑term legal uncertainty”. Instead, it would constitute an overt violation of international law.

Indigenous Rights, Environmental Due Diligence, and Climate Obligations

The second line of argument for why US sovereign bases in Greenland would be illegal relates to the protection of indigenous rights. Where indigenous lands, territories or resources are affected, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, as customary international law, requires processes oriented toward Free, Prior and Informed Consent for large‑scale, high‑impact measures. Such consent must be supported by prior environmental and social impact assessments and equitable benefit‑sharing. A sovereignty carve‑out for enclaves would plainly qualify; without demonstrably robust consent from Greenlandic/Inuit institutions, it would conflict with today’s Indigenous‑rights baseline. The International Law Association’s 2020 Guidelines likewise affirm duties of rational, sustainable and safe resource management with particular regard for indigenous rights, and embed transparency, public participation, access to information and justice, and benefit‑sharing.

The ICJ’s 2025 Climate Advisory Opinion closes remaining gaps by integrating fields that once were siloed. The Court confirmed that environmental treaties, the customary no‑harm rule and duty to cooperate, and international human rights obligations operate cumulatively. It articulated a stringent due‑diligence standard, required impact assessments for activities posing significant environmental risks, recognised the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, and characterised key obligations as erga omnes (for an accessible synthesis of the Advisory Opinion, see here). Applied to Greenland, a sovereignty enclave that removes areas from Danish/Greenlandic jurisdiction would impede the host’s ability to carry out due‑diligence controls, run cumulative EIA/ESIA processes with public participation, and secure the clarified human‑rights baseline – problems that do not arise when access is organised under host‑state sovereignty through normal international treaties for stationing of foreign militaries and their bases. This is exacerbated by US law, which does not treat sovereign bases such as Guantanamo as US territory, i.e. neither US domestic nor international law would fully apply.

Rather than starting a resource “race to the Arctic”, States should embrace the spirit of the Arctic Council.¹⁾ While most Arctic Council outputs are non-binding recommendations, Member States could potentially conclude a new binding instrument associated with the Council focused on de-militarization. Such an agreement could limit military use of the Arctic Ocean in the spirit of the BBNJ agreement, similar to how the Antarctic Treaty operates. Indigenous representatives on the Arctic Council participate fully in its drafting.²⁾ It feels deeply disturbing that one of the countries that has withdrawn from the constitution of climate change in the form of the Paris Agreement would use the warming of the Arctic Ocean as an excuse to lay sovereignty claims on Greenland.

In twenty-first-century international law, carving out a sovereign enclave, “forever” as President Trump called it, constitutes multiple breaches of international law. Any move towards US sovereign enclaves in Greenland would contravene the UN Charter and ius cogens norms, the right of self-determination, and the rights of indigenous peoples; it would undermine Denmark’s and Greenland’s ability to discharge binding environmental and human‑rights duties, and it would depart from prevailing practice for military bases. It should be ruled out.