To Invoke or not to Invoke: International Humanitarian Law and the “War on Drugs” in Mexico - Pablo Kalmanovitz
Location:
Virtual Event
Date/time
Tue 3 May 2022
14:00-15:30
The Edinburgh Centre for International and Global Law presents
To Invoke or not to Invoke: International Humanitarian Law and the “War on Drugs” in Mexico
Professor Pablo Kalmanovitz (ITAM, Mexico)
Professor Alejandro Anaya (Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico)
About the seminar
When do state governments facing large-scale domestic violence invoke and apply International Humanitarian Law? This co-authored paper investigates the political dynamics that lead state governments to frame domestic large-scale violence as an armed conflict in the technical sense of international law. We identify the normative effects of invoking IHL norms domestically and theorize the strategic calculations of governments when they can make a plausible case for an armed conflict qualification. We generate our theory through a study of the legal qualification of Mexico’s “war on drugs,” i.e. the sharp militarization of counternarcotics and internal security policies that escalated in 2006 and continues to the present day. While many legal experts have found Mexico to be a case of non-international armed conflict, Mexican authorities have decided against invoking IHL or any other international norm of exception. We explain this choice on the basis of local perceptions of IHL and the flexibility of constitutional law to accommodate norms of undeclared emergency that have facilitated militarization. We conclude by drawing general implications for the study of the domestic mobilization of international norms of exception.
About the speaker
Dr. Kalmanovitz is visiting professor in the Department of International Studies at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) and professor (on leave) and former director of the International Studies Division at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE), both in Mexico City. Previously he was associate professor at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, postdoctoral fellow at Yale University and the European University Institute, and visiting scholar at McGill University and the University of Ulster in Belfast. His research agenda focuses on normative aspects of organized violence, in particular the international regulation of armed force, on which he has published numerous articles and book chapters. His book The Laws of War in International Thought was published by Oxford University Press under the History and Theory of International Law book series in 2020.
This event is free and open to all but registration is required (link below)
Image credit: Eddi Aguirre on Unsplash