Table ronde 2 - S’affranchir de la règle commune

While international law is applied selectively, or even openly ignored, a new hierarchy seems to be taking shape, differentiating between victims and sovereignties. Each conflict has its own rules, each situation its own balances. Looking more closely at the violence at work, it becomes clear that we are not witnessing an “exception,” but a shift toward a world in which force tends to take precedence over law. Yet legal language persists: it now serves to legitimize illegal actions or discredit those who remind us of its fundamental principles, while the bodies supposedly responsible for upholding them struggle to make themselves heard. In this context, civilian populations remain the first victims. The use of force is no longer a tool of negotiation, but a form of domination aimed at annihilating otherness. Faced with this loss of bearings, several questions arise: do common rules still exist? How can we regain the ability to act and protest in a world where regulatory frameworks are crumbling? How can we continue to talk to one another when principles once shared now seem to depend on contexts and power dynamics? With **Jérôme Heurtaux** (political scientist), **Nadim Houry** (Lebanese lawyer and researcher specializing in international law, director of the Arab Reform Initiative) and **Sophie Bessis** (Tunisian historian)