Netherlands Yearbook of International Law 2020

This volume of the Netherlands Yearbook of International Law (NYIL) addresses the question how the assumption that states have a common obligation to achieve a collective public good can be reconciled with the fact that the 195 states of today's world are highly diverse and increasingly unequal in terms of size, population, politics, economy, culture, climate and historical development. The idea of common but differentiated responsibilities is on paper the perfect bridge between the factual inequality and formal equality of states. The acknowledgement that states can have common but still different - more or less onerous - obligations is predicated on the moral and legal concept of global solidarity.