@UKintlaw – tweeting and engaging on international law

On 2 April the International Law Team at the British Embassy in The Hague launched a Twitter account dedicated to international law issues.

@UKintlaw is the first government Twitter account set up to tweet and engage solely on matters of international law.  Its primary focus is on tweeting news arising out of events taking place within the Hague-based Courts and Tribunals such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

But @UKintlaw also seeks to engage more widely on international law developments such as tweeting about relevant decisions and judgements of other international, regional and domestic courts including the European Court of Human Rights, the US and UK Courts; as well as PSVI, human rights, rule of law and speeches of Ministers and officials that touch on legal issues. This is all with the aim of promoting and engaging on the work of the international law team in the British Embassy, becoming even more visible, as well as vocal, to the wider world, and, more widely, showcasing and exchanging views on some of the legal issues with which international lawyers in the Foreign Office engage.

When we began @UKintlaw we set a target of obtaining 100 followers within a month. In fact, within an hour of the launch we had 50 followers and a hundred within half a day. We currently have over 600 followers and are focused on growing our influential audience – @UKintlaw is followed by, among others, prominent international lawyers and bloggers, international institutions, students, academics and a number of individuals within the FCO and other Foreign Ministries around the world.

So @UKintlaw has so far been a success. Feedback has been positive with many people pointing to the speed at which the latest developments such as decisions of the ICC or ICTY are tweeted, the readiness to engage with fellow tweeters, and retweeting interesting news that our followers would not otherwise necessarily pick up.  In fact, a couple of diplomats have told us that they have advised their capitals to follow @UKintlaw for all the breaking news on the ICC as it is quicker than their own reporting!  While another Mission in The Hague has sought advice from us in a lessons learned exercise they are doing on their social media presence on the various innovative ways we engage with our followers, our plans on expanding beyond a niche audience, and how we gained the number of followers we did in such a short space of time.

One of the best received occasions was our tweeting from the European Society of International Law conference in Amsterdam in May when @UKintlaw picked up almost a hundred new followers through live commentary of some of the sessions, as well as exchanging thoughts with fellow conference tweeters. Since April we have also live-tweeted from a briefing of the ICC Prosecutor at the UN Security Council, speeches by prominent international legal academics such as James Crawford, and the Australia v Japan whaling case at the ICJ; as well as posting quotes after the event to commemorate 20 years since the beginning of the ICTY and the inaugural FCO International Law Lecture by former State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh.

The challenge for the future is to maintain this current level of engagement – not easy with the very heavy workload the International Law team has – and to continue to find innovative ways to attract new followers. You can help us with this. If you have a Twitter account, please follow us and retweet our messages to your followers; and let us know if you have anything.