Zeitgeschichte has posted a special issue on "Utopien im Wandel: Zur Geschichte der Menschenrechte und des Humanitarismus im 20. Jahrhundert." Contents include:

• Eric D. Weitz, The Soviet Union and the Creation of the International Human Rights System
• Peter Ridder, Die UN-Menschenrechtspakte - Ein langer und steiniger Pfad zur Einigkeit
• Ned Richardson-Little, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in East Germany: Socialist Appropriation and Dissident Contestation, 1948-1989
• Janne Mende, Indigene Menschenrechte: Universalismus oder Indigenität?
• Daniel Stahl, Zur Genese des Rechts auf Wahrheit
• Michael Homberg, Technologie, die verbindet? Informationstechnik und Menschenrechte im digitalen Zeitalter
• Samuel Moyn, Theses on Humanitarianism and Human Rights
• Bill Sharman, Refugee Refusals: Human Rights and Humanitarianism since 1948
• Jakob Schönhagen, Ein vergessenes Jubiläum: Das „New York Protocol“ von 1967 jährte sich im Jahr 2017 zum 50sten Mal
• Ryan Heyden, For the Formation of a Peaceful Future: Humanitarianism, Occupation, and a defeated Germany, 1945-1949
• Jiayi Tao, Uncovering International Aid in China from UNRRA, 1943-1947

Matthias Goldmann (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt - Law) has posted The Entanglement of Sovereignty and Property in International Law: From German Southwest Africa to the Great Land Grab? Here's the abstract:

This article argues that an intricate entanglement existed between sovereignty and property in German Southwest Africa. Germany’s control over Southwest Africa depended considerably on European settlements, which received logistical, financial, and military support by Germany. The result was a symbiotic relationship between the government and private economic actors, a form of state capitalism under which private settlements contributed to the establishment of territorial control, a prerequisite of sovereign power. Contractual relationships suggesting formally equal relationships, and during and after the genocide, a mix of arguments drawing on tort law and an idea of formal legality, provided crucial justification for the assumption of territorial control. This description contradicts standard accounts of sovereignty, which tend to turn a blind eye on private property. The article discusses the implications of these findings for today’s international law, including for state responsibility for transnational corporations and the so-called Great Land Grab, the acquisition of vast lands in Africa by foreign public and private agents.