It has been an honour to be a member of the International Law Association (ILA)’s committee on the potentials and pitfalls associated with urbanisation and international law, since 2024. Subsequent to the publication of its interim report, the Committee just met during the ILA’s 82nd biennial international law conference in Vienna. I have been privileged to attend, and found both the closed meeting in which the committee strategised the way forward towards its final report in 2028 and an open session in which it entered into dialogue with other ILA committees on its findings thus far, extremely rewarding. I was also given much food for thought as I contemplate how to take my own background paper for the interim report, which considers how international human rights tribunals deal with urban infrastructure in various registers, forward into publication.
Check out the Committee’s website here, and do distribute or consider responding to its call for city reports!
Marius Pieterse 