Changes in International Lawmaking: Actors, Processes, Impact. Conference Report of the 16th Annual Meeting of the European Society of International Law (ESIL), held in Stockholm from 9 to 11 September 2021

Changes in international lawmaking brought about by new actors and processes were the theme of the Annual ESIL Meeting, held in Stockholm. For the first time, due to the pandemic, the conference was organized in a hybrid format, with more online participants than on-site attendants; itself already a powerful sign of change. Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden opened the conference. She recalled that Stockholm was, in 1972, the site of the 1st United Nations World Conference on the Environment (UNCHE), which adopted the Stockholm Declaration (United Nations 1973); the United Nations, she said, have always been a cornerstone of Swedish foreign policy, with Dag Hammarskjöld and Folke Bernadotte representing it. The Crown Princess, herself a peace and conflict researcher, demonstrated her personal interest in the subject by attending further panels on the first day of the conference.Jessika van der Sluis, Dean of the host law faculty at Stockholm University, emphasized the paramount importance of the rule of law in international relations, especially for small and medium-sized industrialized nations like Sweden. The role of states in the production of international law is changing, said Photini Pazartzis, President of ESIL, private and transnational actors are emerging, and the conference programme reflects this increasing diversity. According to Hans Corell, former Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and the Legal Counsel of the United Nations (1994–2004), the greatest enemy of the rule of law is corruption; the former is indispensable for justice, stability and security. The rule of law is now threatened even in democracies such as Poland. The Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (RWI) provides politicians worldwide with an informative guide to the rule of law in 26 languages (RWI 2012). Pål Wrange (Stockholm) spoke on behalf of the organizers. Although the Covid-19 pandemic affects everyone, not everyone is affected equally. The challenges for governments and international law are immense, especially in terms of sovereignty, universality and solidarity. In terms of the sheer volume of regulations and numerous new actors, international lawmaking under the classical Westphalian system had been comparatively easy, unlike today; in the meantime, even rules that were not recognized by the international community of states as binding hard law would very much have an impact on international law; however, all this did not mean the end