Good evening. My name is Christian Barry and I'm the Director of the Research School of the Social Sciences and I'm delighted to welcome you here for the first inaugural Mintzan Law and Philosophy lecture. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the Ngunnawal Nambri peoples, the traditional owners of the lands on which we meet, and to pay my respects to their community leaders past, present, and emerging. This lecture is made possible by a bequest of Mintzan, Professor Mintzan, who I'm also delighted can join us for the lecture today. He is a graduate of the ANU, finishing his Masters in Law back in the 80s and has the career teaching in universities in the Pacific, in Malaysia, and also in Australia on topics ranging from human rights law, international law, and many other topics. This lecture series aims to feature outstanding scholars who are doing work at the intersection of law and philosophy and whose work is very much focused on engaging with issues of pressing public concern. I'm going to turn over the proceedings to our esteemed Chancellor, the Honorable Julie Bishop, in a moment, but I should just note that I can think of no better speaker to introduce this lecture series than Hilary Charlesworth. Professor Charlesworth's work is the paradigm of work that is both theoretically interesting and rich and also publicly engaged. And on a more personal note, I know that I was one of many young scholars who came to the ANU who benefited a great deal from her generosity and encouragement. So I'll turn things over to Chancellor Bishop, who I know just recently gave a talk at the Press Club on the topic of the tensions between the struggle or aspirations for a rule-based, impartial world order and the realities of great power politics. No doubt those also form the background of many of the deliberations of the Permanent Court of International Justice, which is the institution that is a topic of this evening's talk. Chancellor Bishop. Thank you, Christian, and good evening to the audience here at the ANU campus. And I welcome you all. And I too acknowledge and celebrate that we meet this evening on the land of the Nambri Nunnamal people and pay respects to elders, past and present. And I should say that I've just come from Llewellyn Hall, where ANU is hosting a discussion, a dialogue on the voice. And I'm pleased to say that it's very well attended. So I'm looking forward to the outcomes of that evening. It does mean, though, that we have a few events at ANU this evening. But I'm absolutely delighted on behalf of the ANU academics and staff here this evening and all the friends of ANU. Delighted to welcome Professor Mient Zahn and Professor Hillary Charlesworth this evening, for we are about to listen to one of Australia's most distinguished and eminent lawyers. And Professor Zahn, thank you for your support and making this lecture series possible through your generous philanthropy. Professor Charlesworth is one of our most distinguished and internationally recognized lawyers, particularly her focus on human rights law. And she is a graduate of Melbourne University Harvard Law School. Her list of awards and appointments and achievements is as many as it is eminent. And I'm so very delighted that she is a distinguished professor at the Australian National University. She's a director of our Center of International Justice and Governance. And she holds many other roles. But I think we're all so absolutely delighted when in November of 2021, her outstanding record of achievement was recognized by her appointment as a judge of the International Court of Justice. It is part of the international rules-based order, that network, that framework, if you like, of conventions and protocols and institutions that has evolved since the end of the Second World War. And the International Court of Justice has been an integral part of that rules-based order, which is increasingly under stress, is increasingly being used by some nations in a struggle for power, for relevance. So I cannot think of anyone more suitable to discuss the International Court of Justice, its history, its legacy, its significance, its future, its contemporary impact. And distinguished professor, Hilary Charlesworth, please make her welcome. I joined the Chancellor, first of all, of course, in paying my respects to the traditional owners of the land on which we're meeting, the Nambri, none of all peoples, and acknowledged that this land was never ceded. So Chancellor, many thanks for that kind introduction. And dear friends and colleagues, it's a great pleasure to be here. I'd first of all like to thank an absent person, and that's Professor Nick Southwood, who extended the very kind invitation to me to deliver this lecture. And Nick has come down with COVID and isn't able to be here, but he's here in spirit, and he's very, very ably represented by Christian Barry, who I'm also delighted to see here. Of course, it's a great honour for me to deliver this inaugural Minsan lecture. And Minsan and I actually go back a very long way. I first met him when we were both junior academics specialising in international law at different institutions in Australia. But the thing that has stayed with me over the past 30 years or so was his huge enthusiasm for the discipline, and particularly his deep appreciation of the history of international law. And I remember a very animated discussion with him about the contributions of Utant, the Secretary General, of course, who was from the Burmese Secretary General. So I'm really delighted that he's able to be present this evening. So what I'd like to do in this talk is to, first of all, because I know there are some relatives of mine in the audience who won't be familiar with this. I know there are also experts. So forgive me if I'm speaking to my friends and relatives more than the experts. But I plan to, first of all, introduce the jurisdiction of the World Court and then examine its contemporary significance by exploring various strands of criticism concerning the court's structure and its approach to international law. And I'll conclude by arguing that regulatory theory offers valuable insights into the court's strength, limits, and potential. Well, to start with just some background to the World Court, I was struck by the fact that this year marks the 100th anniversary of the very first case that was argued before the Permanent Court of International Justice, which is the predecessor of the International Court of Justice, where I now work. So the Permanent Court was the first permanent international tribunal that had general jurisdiction. It really emerged out of the late 19th century optimism about international adjudication as a constraint on power politics. And the Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907, which were largely initiated, interestingly, by Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, those two conferences really inspired the creation of an institutional structure for international arbitration, which was the Permanent Court of International Arbitration, an arbitral tribunal that still exists today. After that, the PCA was established, then there came proposals to create an international judicial as opposed to arbitral tribunal. But this came to fruition only after the end of the First World War. And indeed, the Covenant of the League of Nations in 1919 envisaged in its provisions the establishment of the Permanent Court of International Justice. The League then duly commissioned an advisory commission of jurists to design the court statute, and that was adopted in 1920, a year after the founding of the League itself. The Permanent Court was housed in the Peace Palace in the Hague, alongside the Permanent Court of Arbitration. The Scots American philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie, had funded the building. And the building I find fascinating as I walk into it every day, it was designed to embody ideals of international justice. How well it does that is another question for another lecture. But the court was finally inaugurated in 1922. But as I've said, the first case was filed in January 1923, the first contentious case. And this was known as the SS Wimbledon case after a boat. That was an issue. So this was an application by four states, Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan. And they were seeking orders against Germany to allow the SS Wimbledon free access to the Kiel Canal in Germany. And they also sought compensation for the economic losses that had been caused by the German refusal to grant access. So the four applicants were successful in that case. And I'm struck by the fact that even though that's 100 years old, one still finds that case cited in judgments of the court today. It has continuing relevance. So joint applications and interventions to protect collective interests under multilateral treaties have, it seems, been rediscovered lately. And the SS Wimbledon is offers, I think, really useful guidance as to the manner in which such applications can be dealt with. But more broadly, the SS Wimbledon case stands for two really important basic propositions of the international order. First of all, that international commitments are not in tension with but are rather a manifestation of state sovereignty. And also that that case made clear another cardinal principle that domestic law does not prevail over international law, international law rules. So in its rather short life between 1923 and 1940, the Permanent Court delivered judgments in 29 cases between states. And it also rendered 27 advisory opinions. Its last rather tragic public sitting was in December 1939, just after the outbreak of the Second World War. But the PCIJ wasn't formally dissolved until 1946. And it was promptly replaced by the International Court of Justice under the terms of the Charter of the United Nations. What's interesting, even though this is a new creature, the new court inherited a statute almost in large part identical to that of its predecessor. And it's also striking that it adopted remarkably similar rules of procedure. One legal difference was that the new court, the ICJ, was elevated to the status of a principal organ of the United Nations. So it's at the same level as the Security Council and the General Assembly. So the International Court is composed of 15 judges who under the statute must be from different nationalities. The judges are elected by the UN General Assembly and the Security Council voting simultaneously. And the judges are elected for nine-year terms which are renewable. So I do have a colleague who's onto his third term and really shows no sign of stopping at all. So I think the record is three full terms, 27 years on the court. That won't be my fate, I assure you. The court's statute mandates, and I'm quoting from it here, representation of the main forms of civilisation and of the principal legal systems of the world. So it says this is the guidance we have to what sort of judges there should be. And how that's actually translated in practice is there is an informal regional allocation of the 15 seats, a rough regional allocation, so, for example, three seats to Africa and so on. But an interesting sort of tradition overlays that. There's been a tradition that the five permanent members of the Security Council always have a national on the court. The single exception to that has been the case of United Kingdom when in 2017 the United Kingdom's candidate was not re-elected. So at the moment it's the other four members of the permanent members of the Security Council that have judges on the court. Another interesting feature of our court is that if there is no judge of the nationality of a state party to a dispute who's sitting on the bench, that state can appoint what's called a judge ad hoc for that case. And I myself have been an ad hoc judge before I was appointed to before I was elected to the court in a couple of cases.  You were there just for one case and you came in and you left. So it is possible that in some cases all the judges sit on every case. I should have added that. And so in some cases you might have 16 or even 17 judges if there are ad hoc judges. In its contentious jurisdiction the court deals only with disputes between states. So unlike the International Criminal Court, which of course is also based in the Hague, the ICJ can't hear cases against individuals. Also the International Court doesn't have discretion to select the cases that it hears, unlike many national and international courts. Going back to the drafting of the UN Charter of the San Francisco Conference in 1945 in which Australia played such a critical role, there was some very interesting discussion about whether the court should have a compulsory jurisdiction. And interestingly both Australia and New Zealand were really strong proponents of that position. But ultimately the view of the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom, that jurisdiction should be voluntary, that view prevailed and that view governs today. So this means that the courts can't be compelled to have disputes heard by the court unless they can be taken to have consented to the court's power to do so. So there are essentially three ways that that consent can be shown. So the first way is pretty obviously where there's explicit consent, where states enter into a special agreement to submit a dispute to the court. So a current example that's currently on our docket is a case between the Caribbean coast neighbours of Guatemala and Belize. Those two countries have agreed through a special agreement to submit a territorial dispute to the court. So the court knows when it gets the case submitted by special agreement that there are very good chances that it will be followed. But a second route by which consent, the consent of states is taken to have been manifested, is when both states before the court are parties to a treaty that grants the court jurisdiction to decide disputes between treaty parties. And there are clauses like this, sometimes called compromissory clauses. For example, there's a clause like that in the genocide convention, in the convention on the elimination of racial discrimination and the convention against torture. And actually before the court at the moment, there are, we have a series of cases which are based on clauses in such treaties, including two brought against Russia by Ukraine. Ukraine's bought a case based on against Russia based on the alleged violations of the convention on racial discrimination and also on yet another convention that has a compromissory clause, the convention on the suppression of the financing of terrorism. And one of our most recent cases filed just a month ago is a case brought by Canada and the Netherlands against Syria on the basis of a compromissory clause in the convention against torture. So that's the second way. And a third way by which states manifest consent is by making a standing declaration accepting the compulsory jurisdiction of the court. So I counted today and there are 74 of the 193 members of the United Nations that have made such declarations. So that's close to 40%. Australia was among very early countries to make such a declaration. We made such a declaration in 1946. We have changed its terms on several occasions. But it's striking in terms of the permanent members of the Security Council that only one of them, and perhaps ironically the one that no longer has a judge on the court, that's the United Kingdom, has a declaration, such a declaration in force. The most recent declaration we've received at the court comes from Iran, an acceptance made just in June 2023. Many declarations, if you look at them on the court's website, you'll see that they're not open checks to the court. You can hear any dispute that's submitted. Many of them are hedged by relatively broad reservations which constrain the court's jurisdiction. As it's predecessor, the Permanent Court, the International Court, also has an advisory jurisdiction whereby certain organs of United Nations can request advice in the critical languages on any legal question. So in its, those are the two, so contentious and an advisory jurisdiction. So over its 77 years of its life, the International Court has had 160 cases submitted to it, contentious cases, and it's received 29 requests for advisory opinions, and it's actually delivered 27 for technical reasons, it turned down two of them. As many of you will know, there have been some lean periods in the court's life. The longest perhaps was the period after the delivery of the judgment in the Southwest Africa case in 1966. In that case, as every international lawyer knows, the court was evenly divided on the question whether Ethiopia and Liberia had standing before the court to obtain a ruling on South Africa's performance of its duties as a mandatory power over Southwest Africa. Of course, that's modern day Namibia. The casting vote of the President, who was the Australian judge, Sir Percy Spender, decided the case against the two African states. Many of the new members in the 1960s of United Nations from the developing world were dismayed by the decision, and I think it's fair to say lost faith in the court as a useful forum for dispute resolution. And that distrust lingered for many years. But today I can report that the court is at one of its busiest points ever. It has a crowded docket with 18 contentious cases from every region of the globe. And the pace seems to be quickening because since I wrote the abstract for this lecture, three cases have been added. There was a time in June when we got a case a week. And I noticed the President of our court looking paler and paler as the workload, particularly for our registry, mounted. But these cases, these 18 cases range from land and maritime boundary disputes to allegations of racial discrimination, torture and genocide. Interestingly too, the court has recently received two requests for advisory opinions from the United Nations General Assembly. One is on the legal consequences of Israel's policies and practices in the Occupy Palestinian Territory. And the other on international legal obligations in relation to climate change. So it may seem that the number of cases suggests that the court has a groundswell of respect and authority in the international community. Perhaps paradoxically, deep international political divisions that have hampered diplomacy and the Security Council appear in some ways to have made the court more appealing as a forum for dispute resolution. So that's the good news story, but it will not surprise you that the court has also attracted a great deal of criticism over the years. And what I'd like to do now is to sketch some of the themes in those critiques. What I plan to do is to sketch three strands of criticism in the court in very broad brush general terms. And I say now to the scholars among you who perhaps are adherents to one school or another, I admit straight away I've simplified the arguments for the purposes of being able to reject them in the end. I've simplified the arguments so I can give this broad brush appreciation. So what really what I want to do the purpose of sketching these is to illustrate the sustained scrutiny applied to the court from a range of angles. So the first critique I'll deal with is what I'm going to call the realist critique. So the consent based nature of the court's jurisdiction that I've described has often sparked doubts about its legitimacy. And as there are very few enforcement mechanisms once the court delivers a decision, the court is often portrayed as a toothless tiger. So international relations scholars and I'm going as far back as Hans Morgental often have dismissed international law and the court as idealistic waffle. I think this is understandable given the assumptions of realist theory which posit the centrality of one type of actor states and a single type of motivation, the pursuit of self-interest. So realism is based on assessments of national interest from the vantage point of those with political and military power and it tends to discard the more diffuse evidence of what the weak are up to, the weak and the marginalised. Realists assume the coerced rule compliance is the defining feature of a fully fledged judicial institution. So perhaps it's understandable that international relations realists view international courts as embedded in an international system where there's an unequal distribution of power. So following this powerful states can simply ignore international judicial rulings that they deem unfavourable to their account of their national interest. For these reasons, realist scholars have regularly compared the court unfavourably to national courts which they've seen as paradigms. So we can see that international relations theorists have taken those views and we see this also reflected in writing by international legal scholars. So the American author Eric Posner, for example, writing in 2006 concluded that the ICJ could neither please the major powers, which always resisted, he said, constraints on their actions, nor he argued could it maintain the loyalty of smaller powers who regarded the court in his word as a puppet of the major powers. That some of these international law scholars have studied the voting behaviour of international judges focusing on their degree of convergence with the interests of the state, of their state of nationality. They've also explained the reluctance of some states to appear before the court as based on a lack of trust in an international judiciary to apply the law impartially, assuming that judges will always vote in favour of positions to promote the interests of their home states or that reflect their cultural prejudices. In the legal academy more generally I think it's fair to say that often international lawyers are considered purveyors of a rather suspect form of legal reasoning and I recall debates in the past with colleagues saying well really international law is far too close to politics. We domestic lawyers deal with the real law and you are in the realm of politics. So the lack of a centralised system for the enforcement of international law is taken as proof of its questionable legality. International law is readily found wanting when measured against John Austen's idea of law, his classic idea of law as and these are his words the command of a sovereign to habitually obedience subjects. International law just doesn't make it on that account. So that for all its generality is what I'll call the realist critique. A second style of critique that has many manifestations I'll call the technical critiques. So there are many styles of critique of the court's judgment that focus on the quality of the court's jurisprudence and the growth of social media has allowed such critiques to flourish and barely day goes by when one blog or another doesn't unpack a recent ruling of the court to show how unsatisfactory it is. But this extensive literature has many subcategories. So one subcategory of this technical critique points to the time consuming and apparently outdated working practices of the court. And one example I'd offer is a chapter written by the great Italian jurist Antonio Cassezzi and his critique of the court along these lines is rather disarmingly titled The International Court of Justice. It is high time to restyle the respected old lady. I'm not sure about the imagery there at all but in it he calls for the modernization of court procedures and working practices. He says let's get rid of the position of judges ad hoc. Let's increase the ability of third states to intervene in contentious proceedings. Let's have more amici curiae in contentious cases and let's create a fact-finding body for the court. So that's one style of critique. Another subcategory concentrates on the quality of judgments and allow me to use the example of a recent book by an American scholar Mark Weisberg and I've chosen it partly because of his rather arresting title which is called Failings of the International Court of Justice. I have to admit reading that is quite a bleak task for any judge. He starts out, Mark Weisberg, he says he's very skeptical of the difference often accorded to jurisprudence of the court and he goes through and details the errors he detects in the court's jurisprudence of every of every type. Apart from what he regards as dodgy reasoning and slap-dash fact-finding Weisberg is alarmed by what he sees as the court's policy positions. For example he's very critical of what he sees as the court's whining back the right to self-defence. He claims that the court regularly relies on unauthorized sources of law and that it in fact often avoids resolving disputes that have been brought before it. So you won't be surprised to hear that Weisberg overall gives the court a very low score for its performance. But there are other critiques. More recently the German scholar Stefan Thalmon has really criticized the court for its approach to the next question of the determination of customary international law and I was struck by his opening he starts it with an opening rather withering diagnosis that methodology is probably not the court's strongest point. So that's a guide to some of the the technical critiques of the court. Let me turn then to the third school well this is really a set of different critiques. I'm going to just lump under the umbrella of critical approaches. So just as critical theorists have taken on national legal systems since the 1970s they've also of course influenced the study of international law. They've argued that the politics of international law shape international adjudication and yet they also point out how often international courts and tribunals are at pains to disguise this. On this analysis the language of objectivity found in international adjudication is really just a cloak for fundamental policy choices and it's striking that many critical scholars appear to avoid even looking at or studying the international court of justice. I assume that's because it just doesn't seem an interesting enough or challenging site for critical investigation. To take one of the best known critical figures of the modern days the Finnish scholar Marty Koskanyemi who spoke from apology to utopia the structure of international legal reasoning really shook up the field of international law in the late 1980s. So Koskanyemi describes international law as combining both human desires and human practices in the sense that it expresses ambitious aspirations for a better world while also being a set of professional techniques to analyze disputes. And Koskanyemi points out that the tension between the search for both normativity and concreteness gives a dichotomous rather ambivalent character to international law. So he says its principles typically contain both a utopian idealistic aspiration and yet also an apologetic or realist account of power. So an example of this pairing that Koskanyemi is talking about in the international legal doctrine is the principle of self-determination of peoples which is often paired with the affirmation of the principle of territorial integrity on the other. So yes there is a right to self-determination of peoples but it should not impair territorial integrity. So the former the right to self-determination offers a tool to criticize repression while the latter an insistence on territorial integrity might be taken as a way of limiting its impact. So Koskanyemi in some of his work has tracks apologies and utopias in decisions of the court. But interestingly he reserves praise for one a very controversial advisory opinion of the court the advisory opinion on the legality of nuclear weapons delivered in 1996 where I then foreign minister Gareth Evans actually argued before the court in that case. While many jurists at the time and since have criticized the court's failure in that decision in that advisory opinion to declare the threat or use of nuclear weapons to be illegal. Koskanyemi for his part louts the opinion. He finds it an honest recognition so refusing to say that international law outlaws the use of nuclear weapons. He just says well this is a recognition that international law isn't a complete system these are his words capable of giving a response to every conceivable normative problem. And he says these are his words again for the voice of justice to be heard. Law must sometimes remain silent. By contrast in reflections on the exactly the same advisory opinion Koskanyemi's colleague and fellow critical theorist David Kennedy has said of the nuclear test advisory nuclear weapons advisory opinion that the court and these are his words operates in a fantasy world of law and that its opinion in the case is both crafty and craven at the same time. Also in a critical vein the Azerbaijani jurist Fouad Zarabyev has complained about the status accorded to judicial pronouncements in international legal scholarship. And he's argued in I think a very interesting article in the European Journal of International Law that the focus on the court he says it shrinks and even distorts the nature of international disputes to always be doing this in the shadow of the court. And he also in his article points to the sometimes what he sees as sometimes circular or even flimsy reasoning that he detects in court's judgments. Feminist writings illustrate another style of critical analysis of the court. So one interest of feminist approaches to international law has addressed the lack of representation of women on the court. It's striking in the 100 years of the PCIJ and now the ICJ called the world court together there've been a total of five women elected to the court over a century compared to 141 men elected in the same time. Feminist scholars have also attended to the gendered nature of the court's decisions arguing the court tends to take a blinkered approach to international dispute resolution. And in the context of national legal systems Margaret Davies of Flinders a wonderful feminist theorist she's pointed to the way that law is typically presented as a type of superstructure distinct from morality politics and the real lives of people. And she argues as part of a feminist project for a recovery of human life in law. In other words she says for the primacy of the subject in the construction of law. So that method has been taken up in international law too most strikingly perhaps in a series of a wonderful series of rewritings of some of the classic decisions of the court by feminist scholars and these rewritings say of the Lotus case and the Lockaby case and the reservations the genocide convention advisory opinion illustrate the possibilities of feminist theories shaping international law. The final sort of on my very quick tour around critical approaches when I want to mention a third world approaches to international law sometimes known by their acronym TWAIL. So TWAIL scholarship fits I think clearly under this umbrella and it's concerned particularly with a colonial context of international law and it challenges the claim of the universal applicability of international law. The Sri Lankan and Australian scholar Professor Tony Angi has noted and these are his words that imperialism far from being peripheral to the development of the discipline was central to its very identity and operations. So TWAIL scholars have studied how colonial relations endure and prosper in an era of apparent decolonization. At a general level and I'm using Tony Angi's words here TWAIL encompasses a project of solidarity a heuristic to understand the plight of disadvantaged communities and the structures that bring about exclusion and inequality and politics of anti-subordination. TWAIL scholars have paid a quite a bit of attention to the work of the international court. Some have studied the legacy of judges from the developing world such as Judge Wiramantri from Sri Lanka. Others appointed to the value of aspects of the court's jurisprudence in bolstering a TWAIL approach to the international legal issues. But TWAIL scholars certainly have identified biases in favour of their set of powerful states in the court's decisions and perhaps the most studied one, the most studied recent one, include the cases brought by the Republic of the Marshall Islands against nuclear states in 2014. This was a case that sought to enforce provisions of the Nonproliferation Treaty requiring nuclear states to engage in good faith negotiations towards nuclear disarmament. In that case, an intriguing decision, the court held that it didn't have jurisdiction to hear the cases because it argued there was no dispute, formal dispute between the parties. It decided that the respondent nuclear states were not made properly aware of the fact that a dispute existed between them and the Marshall Islands. There was only a very narrow majority of the decision, the court was evenly divided and, as in the South West Africa cases, it was decided, the critical vote was decided on the casting vote of the president. In this case, the president was Judge Ronnie Abraham of France. So TWAIL scholars have reflected that the Marshall Islands litigation and these are Angi's words, reinforce the sense that the international legal system is operated by the powerful for the powerful. More generally, TWAIL scholars note the court's limited attention to global structural injustices. It's been reluctant to tackle structural questions such as redistribution of resources and the argument goes it focuses instead on individualised claims. But what I find striking is that despite this pessimism that I've sketched about international law's capacity, many TWAIL scholars nevertheless retain a faith that the court can establish some limits on power politics. So those are the the critical strands that I wanted to put before you and you might think it's extremely predictable that as a member of the court I think that these various critical strands while each containing some insights to me they don't offer a broad enough lens to understand the work of the court. One of the ANU's many gifts to me was the chance to work with the brilliant scholars in the regulatory institutions network or REGNET here at the ANU. John Braithwaite founded REGNET in 2000 to study how events are shaped or regulated and using this knowledge how the governance of major social, economic, environmental and health issues could be improved. Today as many of you know REGNET remains a flourishing academic hub home to new generations of exciting scholars and if any of you don't know its work I encourage you to explore its truly remarkable research through its website and also it's founder John Braithwaite maintains a separate his own website since his retirement which is also really worth a look for inspiration. But what I'd like to do and I apologize to my REGNET colleagues that I won't do justice they're rich ideas either but I want to now draw on some of its ideas to look at the work of the international court of justice. So the concept of regulation as developed in REGNET has been described as and this is a quote from Julia Black writing some time ago and a very distinguished British regulatory scholar. Regulation is understood as the intentional activity of attempting to control order or influence the behavior of others and an even more perhaps expansive account of regulation offered by John Braithwaite and Christine Parker is simply influencing the flow of events. So regulation on this account includes all forms of pressure to change the course of events even the unintentional effects of agency. So regulation then goes beyond legal rules and mechanisms and also comprises political, social, economic and psychological pressures. So if we understand regulation that way you can see that it's much broader than the way that it's often used in the international and legal, national legal literature to mean simply governmental imposition of public obligations on private parties such as the direct duties placed on individuals created by international criminal law. So while international relations realists discount the power of international legal institutions regulatory theory draws attention to the multiplicity and complexity of both actors and motives in the international sphere deploying the notion of regulatory webs of influences. So regulatory theory observes that at the global level each separate regulatory control tends to be weak but that strength comes through the weaving of these fragile these frail strands together to form a web and then the animation of that web by networks. So savvy actors in the international order discern what strands they should tighten at what time to make the web effective. The idea of governance or regulation through networks explains why it's sometimes possible for those in a weak position to prevail over the strong. Network governance is organised from nodes of activity or interest. Of course not all the nodes in a network will have identical concerns or strategies and there can even be deep tensions between them. The strength or success of a network indeed depends on the management of tensions dissonance between the nodes. A regulatory theorist then avoids compliance based accounts of the effective law which are so popular with lawyers and international relations theorists and might ask along with John Braithwaite and Peter Drache and their wonderful book global business regulation but they wrote the question might be well can international law be using their language a weapon of the weak rather than simply a tool for powerful states to reinforce their dominance? So one example if one looks at the court's jurisprudence to answer the Braithwaite and Drache question is perhaps arguably Nicaragua's recourse to the International Court of Justice in 1984 when it argued that the United States had violated international law through mining Nicaragua's harbours and supporting Nicaraguan paramilitary groups notably the Contras. So this is a very significant case the judgment was delivered in 86 because it was the first case where the ICJ ruled on a major powers violations of international law against a developing state. The United States first unsuccessfully challenged the court's jurisdiction and then in protest at the court's decision that it did have jurisdiction withdrew from the proceedings. The court proceeded at the merit's phase to uphold Nicaragua's claims deciding that the United States had a duty immediately to cease its activities. Given the non-participation of the United States this case might appear as a rather peric legal victory but as our colleague at ADFA Douglas Guilfoyle has observed in relation to law of the sea disputes between small and large powers such litigation may have considerable long-term value. So the Nicaragua case succeeded certainly in undermining the legitimacy of the United States actions in Nicaragua. It assisted in mobilizing international support for Nicaragua and it's certainly we can see now what the benefit of hindsight created pressure for change in US foreign policy. But I think another potential example of the court's capacity to be again using the breakaway to Drahosh term a weapon of the week are the mechanisms of advisory opinions. The most recent advisory opinion delivered by the court was in the Chegos archipelago case delivered in 2018. At issue was the status of the Chegos archipelago which is right at the center of the Indian ocean. The Chegosians the people of the Chegos Islands had all been forcibly removed from the archipelago by the early 1970s and they were prevented from returning because a joint UK US military base was built on the main island of Diego Garcia. Mauritius led a campaign of the United Nations to change the status of the Chegos Islands from that of a territory of the United Kingdom to the Mauritian territory and one aspect of this extensive campaign was a request from advisory opinion which it eventually shepherded through the General Assembly and obtained the request to go to the court. It's striking and some of my colleagues my current colleagues at the court will often recall the proceedings in that case because they were unusually many respects unusually charged and emotional and there was quite a lot of evidence led about particularizing the sufferings of the Chegosians themselves and in a first for the court one Chegosian woman Marie Lisby Elyse gave by video and you can still see it online very moving evidence about the her pain from her removal from her island. The story of that case is for another lecture but eventually the court in its advisory opinion found that the United Kingdom's continued occupation of the Acapelago was inconsistent with the right to self-determination of international law. Well although the United Kingdom had resisted the advisory opinion request very strongly it's interesting that very slowly in the years following the opinion up to today there has been other forms of political pressure have come to bear on the United Kingdom and there are some admittedly there's simply press reports occasional press report that acknowledged the possibility that there may be some movement in the United Kingdom's position about whether it will negotiate with Mauritius to return the islands. So without wanting to overstate the impact of that advisory opinion I think the Chegos case might be seen as a good example of savvy actors weaving relatively weak strands together to form a regulatory web in this case that can be animated by networks. We could also understand the more recent initiative to seek an advisory opinion from the court on the legal consequences of climate change in a similar light. That idea as many of you will know began in a law school classroom in Port Vila Vanuatu one of the state's most susceptible to the effects of the climate change crisis. In 2019 a group of final year students at the University of the South Pacific pitched the idea of resorting to the ICJ to the then foreign minister of Vanuatu who in turn garnered support among the members of the Pacific Island Forum and eventually a total of 132 states. And four years later just on the 29th of March this year the General Assembly adopted the request for an advisory opinion on the legal consequences of climate change by consensus. And that's really very important because that's the first request for an advisory opinion from the court that has been adopted without a formal vote in the General Assembly. Now I don't want to overstate the potential of advisory opinions as a weapon of the week because of course the decision to seek an advisory opinion in the first place lies in the hands of international institutions whose members are states. And of course in the case of the legal consequences of climate change the nature of the court's response to that request is unknown. There's still the court is still waiting for written statements of interested states and international organizations to be made so that still is a relatively early state of the proceedings. But regulatory theory reminds us to take a broad view of how to influence behavior and not to assume that this is solely the province of law. So on this analysis I want to suggest the international court in its jurisprudence can be seen as one thread in a tapestry of effective regulation and of influencing the course of events. But of course this thread, this fragile thread can break if too much weight is placed on it alone and its strength depends on it being woven with other types of regulation. These could include institutional and political pressures, publicity and activism as well as art, architecture and literature. So then to conclude, few international institutions have survived as long as the world court and I think perhaps in my tiny part of the universe of the centenary of its first case is I think worth celebrating. The international lawyer and international relations theorist Richard Faulk once observed and I'm quoting something he wrote quite a long time ago but he said I was really struck by this phrase. He said it's understandable that anyone who's endured nine quiet years in the damp gray confines of the Hague would emerge from the experience with a grim determination to promote the court despite current adverse conditions. He was commenting on a judge Philip Jessup the American judge who once he was released from being a judge had written a very upbeat account of the court. So I hope that tonight I've not exhibited too grim a determination to promote the court. After just two years in the Hague I'm keenly aware of the limits of the court's jurisprudence and its capacity to contribute to international peace and security. International law infuses global society and shapes the international arena by regulating the location and the bounds of authority but while operating in an intensely political environment the court must hew to legal forms identifying legal principles to resolve disputes and to enlighten the work of international institutions. My point tonight is that we should be clear eyed about the court's potential and limits. It's not a panacea for all international disputes and its jurisdiction is limited as I've said based on state consent but at the same time the court is much much more than the hapless creature of powerful states as some of its critics insist. To me it deserves fine-grained analysis to understand its daily life and rituals and the possibility it offers to promote international justice. The wonderful intellectual community here at the ANU is well positioned to contribute to this work.


Pensioners in southwest Nigeria have vowed to draw governance of the states in the geopolitical zone to court by November, that if they fail to attend to their pressing demand. The pensioners had zonal meeting in Adoakiti, the state capital. They condemned the governance for non-implementation of 33 percent pension increase to members areas of pensions and gratuities and refused to effect consequential adjustment of pensions. The express sadness that governance in the southwest are not bothered by the plight of pensioners despite all pleas and pressure mounted. Our zone has met and we have discussed seriously about this issue. I want to seize this opportunity to inform you gentlemen of the press that we give the state government of Lagos, I mean of Lagos, Ogun, Oshun, Oyo, Ekiti, Oundo till the end of October within which to address the issue of consequential adjustment of pension to pensioners, failing which by November we shall take them to court. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


The next item of business today is a member's business debate on motion number 10990 in the name of Christina McKelvie on voting franchise for 16 and 17 year olds. The debate will be concluded without any questions being put. I invite members who wish to speak in the debate to press the request to speak buttons now or as soon as possible. MacElvie, addysg hynny yw 7 perio ar y cyflancion nesaf. Thank you very much, Mr Prime Minister. It's a great honour to lead this debate today, but I certainly haven't been leading this debate for as long as some people I know in this chamber who have been leading it for many, many years. Can I say a huge thank you to my colleagues across the chamber who signed this motion, to allow it to be debated? I did go and lobby some of them and I really appreciate their support and thank you very much for that, but more so I think the young people who have petitioned, who have worked hard, who have taken part in democracy will give them their thanks too. Can I pay particular tribute to the Scottish Youth Parliament, who for many years have had their votes at 16 campaign? There's been many petitions over the years and a lot of them that we have all taken part in and signed. Can I also pay tribute to a constituent of mine, Mr Max Cruickshanks, who has been working alongside the Scottish Youth Parliament and has been a youth worker for many, many years and has always backed the votes at 16 campaign. Our party policy, because I remember debating it many decades ago now, has always been and we have always been committed to votes at 16 and we have applied that as a government over the very, very limited areas that we have. It was a great delight to see in the Edinburgh agreement that, for this referendum, we have just experienced that 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds would have that very important civic duty and responsibility. There were some cynical voices about the ability of our young people to participate in the debate that we've just had on the referendum, while they were certainly put to rest those cynical voices and they got it very, very wrong. I'm grateful to the member for giving way. I wonder if she would accept what I found, which was that some 16 and 17-year-olds themselves were a little bit doubtful as to whether they knew enough to vote, but those same ones have come to me since the referendum and said, yes, we got it right. I've got a few anecdotes of my own of some of the young people that I have spoken to, many hundreds of them over the past wee while. There's no way of predicting voting patterns in an untested group, and it was something of an unknown quantity for us all. It was a bit of a leap into the dark, and that's a quote that Disraeli spoke of when the franchise was extended under the 1928 Representation of People's Act, when it came in to play again on 18 September. It was a bit of a leap into the dark, and John Mason has just made some reference to that where there was some doubt from some of the young people themselves. It took a century for voting rights to be extended from that tiny minority of property-owning men over the age of 30 to the universal suffrage for every adult aged 18, regardless of wealth, property, class or employment, or location. Some 3.6 million people of our small, amazing country turned out to vote in the referendum. Of those, 109,533 were 16 and 17-year-olds, so I think that maybe a lot of their doubts were blown away by the time it came to referendum day. The future of Scotland lies not exclusively in the hands of the older generation, but I know that all my colleagues across the country would have had amazing conversations with young people who even stumped me in some cases with their knowledge and their aspiration for what they want for their country. Those young people will build their lives, families, careers and ultimately their old age in this country. Democracy is not just a snapshot in time for them, it's a process, it's an evolution, a constantly changing arc of responsibility. To work successfully, democracy must respond to those shifts in society, so that reflects the demands that are made upon it. I think that we are taking that very seriously in this chamber today. The First Minister himself has said that 16 and 17-year-olds have shown themselves to be serious, passionate and committed citizens, and that there is an overwhelming unanswerable case for giving them the right to vote in all future UK and Scottish elections. Like myself, as I said, I have been enormously impressed with the teenagers with whom we have debated with and discussed the question of our independence and our future of Scotland. Camping around my constituency in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse, I met hundreds of 16 and 17-year-olds who have become seriously engaged in politics because their referendum vote and their own part in it became very important to them. I remember, Presiding Officer, one day we had a yes hub in the centre of Hamilton, where a group of 15 young people came along and their lunch break from Hamilton grammar. None of them had made up their mind how they were going to vote in their referendum and they all had ideas on what they would do. We stood in the street, it was a nice sunny day, we stood in the street and had this debate about the powers that Scotland should have and what it could have. One of the most endearing and absolutely amazing facts that will remain in my memory for all time was those kids walking along the road, armed with all the bits of information that we were going up the top cross to see the better together people to do the same with them. They were going along the road and they were talking about nuclear weapons and they were talking about pensions and they were talking about childcare and they were talking about their standing in the world. One person was saying, but could we move nuclear weapons safely? Another one was saying, no, I don't think so. That kind of debate took place in every street and every part of Scotland and none more so with some of our amazing young people. They took that great leap. The membership of my local branch is now huge and absolutely populated by many, many, many of those young people. Some of them as young as 14. However, it is not because of the president set by the Scottish referendum that the law needs to be changed. It is because seeing young people engaged and involved in their own futures is a fundamental tenant of democracy and one with which they demand to engage. None more so than my 16-year-old son, who this time last year would never have thanked me for a political conversation, never mind even a debate, who got so engaged in this, who was up at 7am knocking my door saying, we need to go and vote. I don't think I had any influence on him because he's a very strong-willed young man and how he'd vote, but he'd just made up his mind and he's become so involved. I think I've created a bit of a monster. He now watches every debate and critiques me on them. I don't know if that's a good thing, but Scotland can be a beacon to the rest of the UK. This extension of the ballot for once let the UK Government accept that we were right. We have proven it. Our young people have proven it. It's now time to give every 16 and 17-year-old the same right as anybody else to decide who governs them directly. It's good for every political party, and it's good for democracy. I would ask my colleagues across the chamber, the young people who have all arrived in the gallery, to ask the Scottish Government to use every means, including the Smith commission, to ensure that votes at 16 are brought about for every young person in the UK. Thank you. I now call on Kezia Dugdale to be followed by Claire Adamson. Four minute speeches are thereby pleased. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I congratulate Christina McKelvie on securing this debate and note her long-term commitment to this issue. Like her, I've supported votes at 16 for a long time. I think that there's a much wider need for political and electoral reform around a whole number of different issues. I'm very grateful to her for her recent support for a campaign that I'm involved in called Women 5050, which is about ensuring that all future parliaments in this place will be balanced 5050. There are at least four other MSPs in the chamber just now who have signed that. I encourage my colleagues to do that as well. I think that the moment is now. On the issue of votes at 16, I can't believe what I'm looking back that was ever viewed as controversial. Post referendum and Christina McKelvie touched on that. It just now seems like the normal thing—the right thing to do to give young people a voice. Christina McKelvie was reflecting on some of her experiences of the referendum campaign. I remember doing one street stall on the east end of Edinburgh, and around about three o'clock the school tipped out. We were absolutely overtaken with S5 and S6 pupils from Port of Bello high school, desperate to ask some hard questions about the currency, about what we bought, about X, Y and Z, so much so that we blocked the road. There were a few people on Twitter highlighting the health and safety hazard that we created, and it all got a bit dramatic for a second. There were also dozens and dozens of other hustings that I participated in. Without a doubt, the most invigorating ones were the ones for young people. I took part in one, for example, hosted by Burymere High School and James Gillespie High School, where they had 700 S5 and S6 pupils in one place grilling me and Sarah Beattie Smith from the S campaign about the case for and against independence. To say that the best questions came from young people has the danger of sounding patronising, but the reality is that it is true. I will tell you why I think that that is. I think that young people are less likely to think about I, the individual, and more likely to talk about we, the country, and what type of country we want to be. They have less political baggage and are more driven by the first principle of what we can do to make this country a better place. I have not read the full report, but I did hear Professor Ailsa Henderson talk on Scotland tonight, I think that it was earlier this week, about some of the demographics around the referendum result. I am sure that I heard her say that the most informed group were 16 and 17-year-olds when they researched who had read the most before they came to their conclusion about how they were going to vote, and the evidence from the University of Edinburgh was that it was the age category 16 to 17 that had done the most homework. What now? We have a duty to keep the political engagement alive, and there is a great danger that those people who have a voice will be excluded from next year's general election. I appreciate the sensitivities of a member's debate, but I have no doubt that Christina McKelvie is calling on us and David Cameron to ensure that 16 and 17-year-olds have voted in next year's general election. I support that call, and I have written to David Cameron myself asking for that to happen. There is a reason for that, because if you voted no, like I did, you did it because you believed that the best way to make our country a more prosperous, equal and just place was to gather across the aisles using the resources, hopes and ambitions of 63 million people. If you are 16 and 17 and voted no, you are now relying on other people to vote for that vision. If you voted yes, you are angry and you are disappointed, and I get that, but there is a great danger that you might be disenfranchised from the political process, because you too are voiceless without a vote. 100 per cent back what Christina McKelvie is arguing for today, I fully support her campaign and I hope that the message from this Parliament is loud and clear to Mr Cameron that we need to give 16 and 17-year-olds a vote next year. Now Colin Clare Adamson to be followed by John Lamont. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I congratulate Christina McKelvie on securing this debate this afternoon, a very important debate and one that gives us an opportunity to reflect once again on the great civic participation that we had in Scotland during the referendum. There are many examples of how young people have engaged in the process, but through schools, youth clubs and the Scottish Youth Parliament, as we mentioned by Ms McKelvie, I would like to highlight in particular one group of young people and their response to the referendum. Scottish Youth Theatre is Scotland's national theatre for and by children and young people. The Scottish Youth Theatre chose to have the independence as the centre of their deliberations over the two years leading up to the referendum. By choosing to use independence as the theme, it was prompt to ask young people questions and allowed them to voice their fears, to research all aspects on all sides of the debate. That was reflected in the many versions of the production now's the hour. It was performed as part of the youth theatre summer festival in 2013 and went on to be adapted and performed in many different areas. It was a very interesting and unique concept. The young people wrote a letter to their future selves expressing their deliberations about the referendum process and above all it was really entertaining. I had the delight in seeing it here in this Parliament in the Festival of Politics in 2013. I attended that with my then 16-year-old son who was going through the process himself. He found it thought-provoking, informed, fun and really reflective of young people and their maturity in the way that they were approaching it. There was a documentary by the BBC made about the production. It was broadcast in April 2014. Again, the young people took part in their collaboration in the cross-party group and culture in May 2014 in this Parliament. Undaunted by a very esteemed audience, which includes the National Theatre of Scotland, who we are also performing, and a panel that included Ruth Wishart and Billy Kay, the young people performed part of now's the hour and then went on to engage and talk to people attending the cross-party group and give more insight into their experience of what they were doing in their deliberations about the referendum. I thought that this was a fantastic opportunity for young people. Many people also had the ability to see the production in the Edinburgh fringe. It was performed every lunchtime during the fringe process. It was a great reflection of our young people, a great reflection of Scotland's support for young people through the National Youth Theatre. For 38 years, they have been giving children and young people in Scotland a wide variety of opportunities to precipitate in high-quality theatre and giving a voice to those young people. We owe them a great debt and a great thanks for their opportunity in that respect. The Scottish Youth Theatre put young people at the centre of everything that they do. They believe that every young person in Scotland is a great deal to offer, and they, in their work, give those young people a chance to shine. If we put our young people at the heart of everything that we do, we can only expect the same wonderful outcomes that were shown by now's the hour. Extending the franchise should not be doubted. If anyone does, go and look at the work of the Youth Theatre and the amazing young people who took part in that. I hope that, in the future, the franchise will be extended to all elections, and I encourage every young person involved in politics, involved in their youth organisations to consider making that known to the Smith commission. I am too pleased to speak in this debate, and I congratulate Christina McKelvie for securing the time to allow the debate to take place. I would also like to add my support to the call for a franchise to be lowered to include 16 and 17-year-olds across the whole of the United Kingdom. It is true that my party initially opposed lowering the age for the referendum. At the time, we made it clear that we were opposed not to the debate on altering the age for voting but the singling out of the referendum for a trial extension of the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds. Notwithstanding that, I fully accept the decision of this Parliament to lower the voting age for the referendum. Indeed, without the Prime Minister's signature on the Edinburgh agreement, 16 and 17-year-olds would not have been allowed to vote. However, the situation now is entirely different. 16 and 17-year-olds have been given the vote. They have conducted themselves in a commendable way and have engaged in the political process. The motion speaks about how 16 and 17-year-olds were highly visible, active and made a welcome contribution to the constitutional debate in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse. That certainly reflects what I witnessed of young people across the Scottish Borders. During the long campaign, I spoke to many young voters at school debates, hustings and on polling day. I was hugely impressed by the level of engagement and understanding that our young people demonstrated. It was clear that many of them were taking their responsibility very seriously, that they were turning out to vote and that their experience will hopefully encourage them to participate in future elections. That is why I believe that the case has now been made to lower the franchise, but I do so in the correct way, namely on a UK-wide basis. I will not repeat at length the arguments about what age people should be allowed to vote. Parliaments have to draw a line somewhere, and it seems to me that there are valid arguments for having that age at 16, at 17 or at 18. Particularly in the United Kingdom, where there is no single age at which all responsibility and liabilities are imposed at once. One age is not necessarily better than others, and across all ages, we need to do more to engage with voters and increase turnout. However, one point that I do find convincing is that, when voting age has been reduced in other countries, turnout rates of 16 and 17-year-olds were found to be comparable to those of the electorate at large and higher than 18 to 20-year-olds. If lowering the age will help to increase overall turnout rates, then that is a compelling reason to look very closely at lowering the voting age. On a purely practical level, we cannot ignore the fact that the vote has now been given to 16 and 17-year-olds. We are therefore now talking about withdrawing the right to vote to a group of people who have been allowed to vote on the future of Scotland and the future of the United Kingdom. I think that to oppose extending the franchise to all elections, now that the decision has been taken, would be the wrong thing to do. Given the way in which 16 and 17-year-olds conducted themselves last month, we should all be proud of them and should be thinking about very carefully extending the franchise to them all on a permanent basis. Thank you. Thank you also to Christina McKelvie for holding this debate and also a note that it's good to see Joe Fitzpatrick in the place responding to the debate. He doesn't get many opportunities to do that and I'm sure he'll be thanking Christina as well. I have, like Christina, been a supporter of this campaign for as long as I've been in the SNP and probably longer as well. I have always seen the theory of this, the point of the three things that you can do at 16, marry, you can join the army, you can work full-time and pay tax. I think that everybody has seen that theory, but now we've seen the practice as well of what actually happens. As with so many big reforms, things that seemed a bit scary and risky before they happened after they get done, suddenly everybody sees how well they can work. Perhaps there's a wider lesson in there, but I will leave that aside for another day to avoid accusations of digging up the referendum. To go back to what Kezia Dugdale was saying about the questions that are asked, it is fair to say that the kind of questions you got during the referendum when you were in front of a youth audience were different. You would always get the ones that you expected, the classics, the standard questions that always came up about the currency or the EU or even EastEnders, but you would get things that would just surprise you. I remember that the Scottish Youth Parliament questioned and answered a panel there. It wasn't so much the content that surprised me, but the electronic voting, the instant reality TV style rating of our answers—that was a nerve-wracking experience, I can assure you—but all the schools I went to, there was just such a fantastic atmosphere and fantastic energy. At Broughton High School, I was ushered in to speak to the head teacher who realised that the head of modern studies had brought me in as a sole MSP for this and said, whatever you do, don't talk about the referendum. I said, of course, I wouldn't talk about the referendum. There was just a question and answer, not a debate, but of course that was all the young people wanted to talk about. So I talked about the importance of voting. I said, leave the decision, make the decision, research it, I'll leave that up to you, but what matters here is to vote and boy did they do so. But I've had great experiences even from primary schools. The unpredictability of those questions are amazing. Flora Stevenson's primary, I got asked at the end of a long series of quite serious questions, one of those ones that just throws you, what is your secret talent? I thought, oh heck, because it was a bit reality TV, but it was also, you know, what can you say to a group of 11-year-olds, really, in that situation? I would ask you to maybe think about how you would answer. Another primary school, I got asked towards the end of a set of questioning if any MSPs had ever been arrested. You know, that's an interesting question. I wouldn't think about where the question came from, but it gave me an excuse to talk about non-violent direct action, the kind of things that many MSPs have done for causes that they believe in, whether they've tried it or others. I remember as well, in the last two days of the referendum, there was a yes shop that opened up in Gorgie roads, just along from Tynecastle High School. On the first day, the Tynecastle kids all came in looking for information. It must have been good information because they all came in the next day wearing yes badges. All of those are great experiences that I'm going to look back on fondly. Looking ahead, will 16 and 17-year-olds, if they're enfranchised, vote in elections with as much passion as they voted in the referendum? Maybe, maybe not. Elections are different to referendums. Are we ever going to have an 85% turnout? Let's remember that not everybody who has the right to vote exercises it, and that is a valid choice that you have to respect. I hope that 16 and 17-year-olds will get the vote. I hope that 16 and 17-year-olds will be able to use the vote, whether that is through the Scotland Act or UK-wide. That is a really good reform. As was said at the eve of the referendum, I think that let's do this. Many thanks. Colin Hansala-Mallick, to be followed by Joan McAlpine. Thank you very much and good afternoon, Presiding Officer. I thank Christine McAlpine for securing today's debate. Thank you very much, Christine. There are over 1.5 million 16 and 17-year-olds in the UK, denied the vote, and during the referendum debate, I debated and campaigned with many 16 and 17-year-olds in Glasgow. There was thoughtful and passionate engagement in this debate by the age bracket and there is an overwhelming case for the vote to be given to the 16 and 17-year-olds in any election. I believe that 16 and 17-year-olds have sufficient maturity and knowledge in order to cast a vote if they wish to do so. Not only are 16 and 17-year-olds by law able to make complex decisions and take a wide range of responsibilities, they are also showing in practical that they are making a positive difference. Furthermore, there is a wide problem of young disfranchising from politics. During the referendum, putting the referendum aside, recent reports suggest that 30 per cent for young people aged 18 to 25 were not registered in advance of the recent local and European elections and there are also the people who have registered didn't even bother to vote. Action is now long overdue. It is essential that we let 16 and 17-year-olds engage and participate in our democracy. Having learned the principles of compulsory citizenship education to solve this, there are suggestions such as automatic registration, but this is not for me to decide that that should be the case. It is just an example. Votes at the age will inspire young people to get involved in our democracy, which I believe is fundamentally very, very important. Our 16 and 17-year-olds engage in many aspects in our industry and in our communities culturally in terms of going and serving in the armed forces, for example, working in industry, getting married and having a family. These are more dangerous and more important issues than a vote and if they can participate in those issues, then why not the vote? Hence, so much not to make the 16 and 17-year-olds overweight, it is squandering their energy, their passion and enthusiasm in participating in democracy. I think we as a community and as a nation suffer for that shortfall. I think it is very important that our young at 16 and 17 are made to realise that we actually do value their ideas and their aspirations. If they are not allowed to vote, I believe that there is a segment of our community missing in real terms. Hence, it is important that even people who are at schools, colleges and universities are made to believe and they see it practically that we as a community take their views seriously, they are allowed to participate in decision making. I think what is more important is that it will then hopefully encourage them to continue to use the vote throughout their lives, which I think is very important. If democracy is to survive, we must allow a young as we do in our schools and colleges to be educated in democracy. I believe that they are right, I think that time is right and therefore I support the 16 and 17-year-olds to vote not only in Scotland but all of the UK for all elections. Thank you very much. I thank Christine McElvie for securing this very important debate in such a timely one as well. I want to start by listing some of the arguments against extending the franchise. For example, 90 per cent of them do not want the vote. The benefit does not outweigh the expense, it will cause division in families, politics is corrupting and of course they do not know enough about the serious issues. Those arguments were not ones that were put recently against young people getting the vote. They were put against women getting the vote back in the days of women's suffrage and of course some of them were repeated to stop the franchise being extended to 16 and 17-year-olds. They seem as absurd now as denying women the vote for those reasons and that is why I feel very confident listening to the debate right across the Parliament today that we will see an extension of the suffrage to 16 and 17-year-olds. I wanted to talk a little bit about praising the role of schools in particular in educating young people in democracy in the course of the referendum debate. It was very notable that the journey that young people travelled on in the course of the referendum campaign. If you could just indulge me, I would like to praise the schools that I participated in debates in, which would be Trinence secondary, Jed Bruggrammer, Langham academy, Dumfries High, Dumfries academy, St Joseph's and Dumfries D&G college, Moff academy, Wallace hall academy and Annan academy. Out with my constituency region, I stepped in for a colleague at Clifton secondary just up the road from my house. In all of those debates, I was really struck by the effort that the teachers and the pupils who were often involved in organising the debates had put in to make them happen because it's not an easy thing to pull off. The curriculum is busy and it's really quite a logistic exercise so I think they should be congratulated and congratulated in the way that they prepared the pupils. If we extend the franchise in future to 16 and 17-year-olds, I think that it will benefit all voters because you will start educating young people when they are at school, when they have access to good, clear, quality, balanced information, not just through the media. I think that that will make them good citizens and political participants for the rest of their lives and I think that that's very important. In terms of the teachers, modern studies teachers in particular played a really important role in organising a lot of these debates. I'm not saying that it was exclusively modern studies teachers but certainly in the schools that I spoke in they certainly played a prominent role. I would just perhaps make the observation that going forward if we get the votes 16 and 17-year-olds and we can continue this level of political education in schools, we have to find a way to make sure that it's consistent and it reaches all pupils because modern studies are a fantastic subject and it would be great if everyone took it and it's a real pride in the Scottish education system. Perhaps we should look at how we can roll out the best quality political education to all our 16 and 17-year-olds. I too had experience in the last few weeks of running many street stalls around different towns in the south of Scotland, many of which were close to schools, and we benefited from the marvellous weather in the last few weeks that allowed us to engage with young people. One of the best memories was in the town of Moffat and seeing three 50-year pupils from Moffat academy sitting on a park bench in the sunshine at the lunchtime reading the wee blue book, which was one of our materials, and being absolutely focused on that. I would also suggest that a lot of young people got engaged in the campaign towards the end and a lot of our debates were really about six months before the campaign. Six months is a long time in the life of a 16-year-old, so I would be keen in future, if we see this extension in the franchise, to ensure that the activity takes place in schools as close to the vote as possible and really captures that kind of sense of excitement that we saw in the last few weeks of the campaign. Thank you very much. Thank you. I now call Minister Joe FitzPatrick to wind up the debate in behalf of the Government. Minister, seven minutes are thereby pleased. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer, and I add my congratulations and thanks to Christina McKelvie for bringing such an important and timely debate to the chamber. The referendum was a remarkable demonstration of democracy at its best, and I do think that this afternoon's debate has been a demonstration of this chamber at its best, too. We have heard in passion speeches, as members have recalled the engagement energy and considered contributions of young people to the debate on Scotland's future. Clare talked about the youth theatre and how that was a great reflection of our young people. Joe McAlpine, I think, very important, articulated and praised the role of schools in making sure that our young people had the information that they required in order to, as Hanzala Malik put it, take part in a passionate debate. However, it was right that Christina McKelvie started off by thanking our ambitious young people, who I think largely made sure that that came about and made sure that we did have votes at 16 for the referendum. However, it was also important that Christina McKelvie acknowledged others, perhaps longer in the tooth, who have been campaigning for votes at 16 for a very, very long time. A lot has been said about the record-breaking turnout and unprecedented levels of engagement among the people of Scotland, but it is crucial that, going forward, we continue to engage and influence the people of Scotland. In particular, we must not lose the momentum in respect of the substantial number of people who voted for the first time. Around 109,000 of those were 16 and 17-year-olds, a huge number of people. 18 September was the first time that 16 and 17-year-olds were entitled to vote in a national poll. It was a policy that the SNP Government has had as a policy for a long time. We have always believed, as Christina McKelvie said, in the extension of the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds, where we can do so, and we have done that in the Parliament where we have had the powers. However, I know that that is the position of probably everyone who is in the chamber today and a very large number of people across the parties who are not with us just now. When the Government introduced the Scottish independence referendum franchise bill in 2013, there was not universal agreement for the principle of franchising 16 and 17-year-olds to vote in the referendum. Members of the Parliament, particularly the referendum committee, should be proud of the way in which they scrutinised the Scottish Government's proposals and their constructive and pragmatic approach. That was the case for members of that committee and members of the Parliament, irrespective of where they stood in the principle of the franchise. They all made sure that this was going to happen and that we did it properly and safely, and they managed to devise a workable system for safely extending the franchise. It is a measure of the strength of those proposals, and this Parliament's work, that those arrangements received broad support across the political spectrum and among key stakeholders such as child protection groups and electoral administrators both before and after the referendum. As I say, at the time, not everyone agreed with the principles, but, as Kezia Dugdale said, sometimes you cannot believe that it was ever viewed as a controversial now when you look back, but it really was. It has been a pleasure to witness the democratic engagement of our young people, proud to claim the right to register their vote in a question about the future of their country, and it is no longer controversial. It was Marco Biagi who touched on the fact that the arrangements worked to such good effect that they are now providing us with a template of how the franchise could be extended, not just here in Scotland but elsewhere in the UK and maybe there are other jurisdictions who will be looking at how things worked here in Scotland. I was particularly pleased to hear John Lamont's support for that position of the franchise being extended for all elections. The Scottish Parliament already has a range of powers in regard to local government elections and we have used those to good effect, but Westminster retain responsibility for the franchise, the method of electing members to the Scottish Parliament and the length of tenure of this Parliament. Sections 1 to 3 of the Scotland Act 2012 will devolve some but not full responsibility for the administration of those elections. Those sections will be commenced as soon as possible to ensure that we can prepare for the Scottish Parliament elections in 2016. However, even after the commencement of those sections, the Scottish Parliament will still be without some key powers in relation to the election of its members. Let me be clear. Without powers additional to those being devolved by the Scotland Act 2012, we cannot legislate to allow 16 and 17-year-olds to vote on the elections for this Parliament in May 2016 or indeed the local elections in 2017. I hope that colleagues will strongly agree that this Parliament must have those powers. The referendum and its underpinning legislation were made in Scotland and there is no reason why that should not be the case for all elections going forward. With the Scottish elections now just 20 months away, the Government has written to the UK Government requesting, as a matter of urgency, the devolution of those remaining responsibilities for elections to the Scottish Parliament and to local elections in Scotland. We have also urged the UK Government to bring forward legislation at Westminster to lower the voting age for its elections to, I think, resonating with what John Lamont said. In the run-up to the referendum, I was privileged to join Cabinet colleagues at a number of events to engage thousands of people on our proposals for Scotland's future. One of those events was specifically designed to interact and listen to our young people. Held in SCC in Glasgow and jointly organised with the Scottish Youth Parliament, Young Scott and YouthLink Scotland, supported by other youth organisations, the range of subjects discussed at that event were varied, covering education, constitution, defence, young carers, the environment and much more. However, there was one question that a very articulate young woman put to me, which I think stood out for me. She asked, very reasonably, if 16 and 17-year-olds would get to vote in the elections to the Scottish Parliament in 2016. An election that, at the time, of course, I had hoped would be for the first independent Scottish Parliament. I answered that, in line with SNP policy and SNP Government in an independent Scotland, we would legislate to reduce the voting age to 16 for all elections. However, what about the election in May 2016 was her retort. She said, you cannot give us a vote, then take it back. That would be wrong, she said, and she was absolutely right. It will not be an election for an independent Scotland, but it would be a trabosae if we cannot find a way to ensure that 16 and 17-year-olds are enfranchised to vote in that election. Scotland's young people have amply demonstrated that enthusiasm, engagement and willingness to participate in our democratic processes. They have not taken their responsibility lightly, and neither should we. I sincerely hope that the UK Government will take proper note of the positive experiences that we have had here in Scotland, so that we can ensure that all 16 and 17-year-olds are able to vote in all future elections. I thank you all, and I now suspend this meeting until 2.30.


in the number three spot. We're talking Zelda. And I'm gonna get a little controversial here. I'm actually gonna pick a lane. I am going to pinpoint the game I want.  Zelda Wind Waker! I need it! Give it to me yesterday. I wanna be traveling the high seas with Link, with the Wind Wand. Skiddy-dee-dee-dee-dee. Opening chess, hovering on a leaf. The art style fits perfectly with illumination. It has one of the most interesting stories. A princess in disguise. A Hyrule underwater, lost to the ages. And one of the most epic final duels with Ganon, where Link grabs the sword, runs up the fucker, and implants the thing into his head. Right into the skull. As Zelda helps out from the sidelines, reflecting light off a shield. It truly is a game for the ages, and it's a game I wanna see brought to the big screen.


Now moving on to news outside Africa, Ukrainian forces downed an enemy aircraft over Kiev in the early hours of today, which then crashed into a residential building and set it on fire. An advisor to the Interior Minister Anton Herashchenko says it was unclear whether the aircraft was manned. Kiev Mayor Vitaly Klitschko released a video of a burning apartment building in his telegram channel saying that three people are reported wounded. And Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Thursday and Kiev has reported dozens of casualties and hundreds of wounded people.


There are currently 158 MD programs and about 37 DO programs in the US and in Canada there are 17. Stay tuned to find out how my Canadian students realize their US medical school dreams. Hi, I'm Dr. Josie. This is Write Your Acceptance. Welcome, welcome. If you are here for personal statement advice, medical school admissions advice, make sure you click that subscribe button so you don't miss a video. I have worked with hundreds and hundreds of students personally. And you know, to realize their medical school dreams, I have students in med school, in residency and beyond. And I'm ready to help you maximize your content, really stand out as an applicant. And it all starts here. Stay tuned. Let's dive really quickly into the numbers, about 40% acceptance rate for med schools right now in the US, about 9% acceptance rate for international students. Canadian students are considered for the most part out of state. And there are Canadian friendly schools that have a higher, slightly higher acceptance rate for Canadian students or out of state students. And so let's dive into those details. So step one, put together a strong Canadian friendly medical school list that you are kind of matching or that your stats are comparable basically to the matriculating students, right? So about 15, 25 programs, I hear students applying to more and more every cycle, which I know is a lot. But you want to make sure that you have a very varied list. You want to check the stats, what GPA and MCAT score are the matriculating class coming in with. So really kind of vary your target list, where it's like, you know, a few of your schools are that your stats are a point or a couple points higher than the stats that are being advertised that are getting in a third of the of the list are kind of like on target for you. So kind of make it balanced in that way. And later in the video, we'll kind of go through a couple of the resources that you can kind of use to start building out that varied list. But that is number one, make sure that you have a varied kind of Canadian friendly school list to start maximizing your chances. Also make sure you have in this varied list, private institutions, because public funding is for public schools. And so public institutions, public programs, sometimes focusing on in-state students to really kind of shape and nurture their in-state student population. And so it could be harder to get in as an out of state, you know, candidate into a public institution. Step two, your plan ideally to apply to a medical school in the US should be a multi-year plan. It has been my personal experience working with Canadian students that sometimes they tend to have less shadowing and clinical experiences largely because of insurance liability kind of hoops in Canada. But if you are, you know, set on or if you're thinking of considering to apply to US medical schools, you want to make sure that you are kind of thinking about this in a multi-year fashion so that you do get in clinical hours, do get in shadowing hours, figuring out how you can do that. If you're applying to DO programs, you want to make sure that you have that kind of immersive experience in DO approaches. So, and I'll give you a few of really, really good contacts for Canadian students a little later in the video. So we'll talk a little bit about that too. I will link another video above on what it really takes to get into medical school, just breaking down all of the steps because right now I'm just focusing on shadowing and clinical just because that's kind of historically been what my students have had a little less experience in, but I'll give that to you there if that's of interest. So another point is to start volunteering with your community as soon as possible, right? Think about ways that you could kind of volunteer that could make a local difference, but that could have kind of international appeal, a Neal Exchange program, elderly center, tutoring, and then possibly maybe your volunteering experience has tangentially a connection to medicine and wellness so that you can kind of bring that in and loop that into kind of deepening your why medicine. So you're serving your community, but you're also kind of clarifying and deepening your why medicine, which is super important. Step three, as you are building up your shadowing clinical experiences, volunteering, shore up those research opportunities. Ideally, maybe even contact a US faculty member and see what research opportunities you can get into really kind of I think connecting and making kind of strides to have connections in the US within the medical space could potentially go a long way. So one of the things I want you guys to do is to connect with the Canadian Osteopathic Association. If DO is of interest, here is the link. They have a list of regional DO physicians in Canada as well. Start reaching out to them to get shadowing experience. I'm going to give you their Facebook page in the description. And then here's a breakdown of the associations. They have the Ontario Osteopathic Medical Association, British Columbia has theirs, American Osteopathic Association. They also have a student association you can kind of connect with. You know, it really is about networking and really is about really finding those opportunities as much as possible. So I think these kind of may serve as potential, you know, starting points to start nurturing those relationships. If you're applying to this upcoming cycle and you want to learn more about how I work with students to elevate your message and write your strongest application, schedule your free call today, my calendar is in the description below. Step four, the US timeline is earlier than Canada's. Too often I connect with Canadian students and they want to apply, but they're applying around the same time as their Canada applications. And my advice to you to be as strong as possible because of the rolling admission kind of game, you want to apply as early as possible. So the US timeline applications open for submission end of May, you're kind of finishing with that end of June, July, August after the verification process, you're kind of working those secondaries, then interviews are September through February, then kind of like, you know, decisions are released. So you want to think about applying earlier in the cycle for the US schools and then dedicate your energy to your Canadian applications. So step five is to actually build that Canadian friendly school list. And so you want to go into the MSAR and really just start to learn as much of the stats as possible so that you can really kind of pinpoint the schools that are going to be the best fit for you. Here are some MD and DO programs that you might consider to at least research and do your kind of due diligence on to see if they're a good potential fit for you. So here are acceptance rates for top US medical schools for Canadians. I'll link the source below, but you have Boston University, you have Pennsylvania, you have Stony Brook, University of Illinois, University of Virginia. So you have a few schools there, some of them to kind of consider Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook. They have the learn curriculum, then you have the SUNY Upstate Medical University's Norton College of Medicine. Applicants must have at least 90 semester course hours in the United States or Canada. The university considers academic accomplishments extracurricular kind of, you know, in a holistic process. The University of Illinois College of Medicine is one of the largest public medical schools in the US and their class is approximately 1400 students. So that might be of interest. They have three campuses, Wayne State University School of Medicine, except undergrads who are US citizens, US permanent residents, Canadian citizens. I'll link a longer list of Canadian friendly schools in the description for DO programs. MSU has a very interesting kind of newly fostered relationship with Canada. So that may be of interest. So Michigan State partnered with the Canadian Osteopathic Association. I linked in the description and they have this kind of student profile on their website. So you can see it too. But basically Philip Van, I can't say his last name. My apologies. I have a weird last name too.  So he is from Vancouver and was first introduced to the field of osteopathic medicine in undergrad. And then it talks a little bit about because Canada does not have any colleges of osteopathic medicine. He began researching schools that would sponsor him in the US. He was pleased to discover MSU.com has a Canadian initiative program which reserves seats for Canadian students to study at MSU and offers a scholarship to reduce the international tuition closer to the in-state rate. In 2019, he matriculated to the class of 2023. And in 2020, he discovered the Canadian Osteopathic Medical School Association. So his profile is super interesting and a program and initiative that may be of interest to you. Other DO programs that may be of interest. Kansas City, University of New England, NSU, AZCOM, Turo, New York, Rowan, Western U, Pomona. So I have a few there. So some rapid-fire questions. Do Canadian students require a visa? No. You will need an I-20 or a DS 2019 certificate of eligibility from the school that you are studying in. So will your Canadian prerequisites be accepted? For the most part, yes. If you are coming from a French school in Quebec, that might be a little kind of of interest. So that might be a little tricky. So you want to make sure that all of your credits are being transferred. Hope this was helpful. And if you're starting to think about applying this coming cycle, make sure you grab your spot on my calendar for a free call to learn about how I work with students, how I help you build your personal statement and activities and interview prep, and just really maximize your chances to get that acceptance and be one step closer to your white coat dream. Thank you so much for stopping by and I'll see you soon. Bye.