Director Marie-Laure Salles opened the event, professioning the Institute’s steadfast belief in the importance of international law, “The Geneva Graduate Institute has it in its DNA, ever since its creation in 1927, to believe that the only hope for peace and justice lies in international collaboration and international law.”

Anne Hiltpold, State Councillor of the Department of Public Education, Training and Youth Affairs at the State and Republic of Geneva, shared a welcome address, and Beth Krasna, President of the Institute’s Foundation Board, presented Hilary Charlesworth with the esteemed Picciotto prize. 

Charlesworth’s lecture considered the role of the International Court of Justice in the development of international law, sharing the crucial role optimism played in the establishment and history of the Court. The role it must continue to play today, established almost 80 years ago, is at its busiest ever point. 

Yet, enforcement is a constant challenge for international law, and as a result, the Court is sometimes dismissed as a toothless tiger. Compliance, according to Charlesworth, is “a subject which typically evokes fears about the value of the institution.” 

“International law infuses global society and shapes the international arena by regulating the location and the balance of authority. So while operating in an intensely political environment, the Court has to hue to legal forms, identifying legal principles to resolve disputes and to enlighten the work of international institutions,” Charlesworth explained. 

“The Court isn’t a panacea to international tensions and disputes, and its jurisdiction is limited based on state consent,” she insisted. “And yet, at the same time, the Court is much more than the hapless creature of powerful states, and I think it deserves fine-grained analyses to understand its daily life and rituals, and the possibilities it offers, sometimes in the interstices of what it does to promote particular forms of international justice.” 

Charlesworth’s lecture was followed by a discussion with Nico Krisch, Professor of International Law and Head of the Department of International Law at the Geneva Graduate Institute. They addressed questions on the political fractures currently spreading across the globe and whether indeed, the international community still exists. 

“I think there’s this bedrock of principles that can still be seen to apply more broadly,” Charlesworth affirmed.  

The Edgar de Picciotto International Prize was created as a tribute and token of thanks to Edgar de Picciotto who, along with his family, gifted a generous contribution for the realisation of the Edgar and Danièle de Picciotto Student Residence, which houses students coming from all over the world to study at the Institute. The Prize, awarded every two years, is intended to reward an internationally renowned academic whose research has contributed to the understanding of global challenges and whose work has influenced policymakers. 

The prize was awarded the first time in 2012 to Amartya Sen, 1998 winner of the Nobel Prize for economics; in 2014 to Saul Friedländer, Emeritus Professor at the University of California Los Angeles and recipient of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize; in 2016 to Paul Krugman, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics; in 2018 to Joan Wallach Scott, Emerita Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University; in 2020 to Saskia Sassen, Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University; and in 2022 to Michael Sandel, Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government, Harvard University.