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Some very interesting papers have recently been made public by Yael Ronen, who specialises in the fields of international humanitarian and human rights law in the OPT. She has made a number of substantive contributions in her recent work on previously untrodden grounds. All three of her relatively recent papers are (from an objective perspective) [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, Middle East Crisis, Public International Law, Publications | Leave a Comment »
Although last year saw the marking of the bicentennial of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, slavery sadly remains a widespread problem in many countries. This week, however, the Community Court of Justice for the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) found that the government of Niger did not do enough to protect [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, International Courts, Public International Law | Leave a Comment »
The Commission of Inquiry into Post-Election Violence (CIPEV) established to investigate the violence witnessed after the 27 December 2007 elections in Kenya officially presented its much-anticipated report to President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga on 15 October 2008. The CIPEV, or Waki Commission, was vested with a mandate to ‘investigate the facts and [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, ICC, International Criminal Law | 1 Comment »
A recent judgment of the Israeli Supreme Court in the case of HCJ 10265/05 Physicians for Human Rights v Defense Minister (judgment of 7 October 2008) reexamines a number of questions concerning not only the status of the Gaza Strip and Israel’s obligations towards the local population. Equally, the Court’s reluctance to address the violations [...]
Filed under: Middle East Crisis, Public International Law | 5 Comments »
It is often asserted that developing countries lack the manpower and expertise to enforce environmental and health laws contributing to a “race to the bottom” in which companies and enterprises from the developed world flock to set up businesses under lax regulation and enforcement in the developing countries. Although such assertions are probably overstated, the [...]
Filed under: Public International Law | 1 Comment »
On 22 October, the House of Lords upheld the appeal, in EM (Lebanon) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2008] UKHL 64, where a mother sought to challenge her removal to Lebanon on the grounds that it would generate a “flagrant denial of her right to family life” under Article 8 ECHR (and [...]
Filed under: Public International Law | Leave a Comment »
Yesterday the Appeals Chamber of the ICC delivered two judgments with regard to appeals of the prosecutor against decisions of the Trial Chamber in the case of Mr Lubanga Dyilo (we reported on this case earlier here, and here). The first judgment concerned an appeal against the Trial Chamber’s decision on the release of Thomas [...]
Filed under: ICC, International Criminal Law, Public International Law | 3 Comments »
Amnesty International has submitted a briefing to the Committee Against Torture in view of its consideration of Israel’s fourth periodic report on its implementation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The briefing focuses on Amnesty International’s concerns about Israel’s failure to implement the Convention against Torture particularly [...]
Filed under: Middle East Crisis, Public International Law | Leave a Comment »
We have previously blogged about the effect of the current financial crisis on the influence of western countries and whether the crisis will change current power balances. Today’s NY Times has a good story on how the financial crisis, as it slowly makes its way into the real economy, affects countries like Russia, Iran and [...]
Filed under: Public International Law | Leave a Comment »
The EU’s external relations with third countries have always offered excellent object lessons with respect to the omnipresent tension between the promotion of the EU’s essential moral values and the political and economic interests of its Member States. Most recent evidence to this effect can be found in the 2897th External Relations meeting of the [...]
Filed under: EU Common Foreign and Security Policy, EU-Law, EU/EC Law, Human Rights, Public International Law | 1 Comment »
On October 13th, the Highest Electoral Tribunal of Ecuador announced that the new Ecuadorian Constitution has been approved in the referendum held on September 28th. With 63.93 per cent of the votes in favor compared to 28.1 per cent of the votes against the new constitution was clearly endorsed by the people. With the official confirmation [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, Public International Law | 1 Comment »
Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Georgia v. Russian Federation) Yesterday, 15 October, the International Court of Justice read during a public sitting its judgment on the request of Georgia to indicate provisional measures with regard to the situation in South-Ossetia. Due to the narrow vote it [...]
Filed under: ICJ, Public International Law, International Courts, Caucasus Crises, Responsibility to protect | Leave a Comment »
The International Criminal Court (ICC), dubbed by one leading commentator, William Schabas, as ‘arguably the most significant international organization to be created since the United Nations’, has ushered in a new era in the protection of human rights. The Rome Statute of the ICC puts in place individual criminal liability for those responsible for the [...]
Filed under: ICC, International Courts, International Criminal Law, Public International Law | 1 Comment »
Without having read the report discussed by Valentina below, her post raises (apart from bringing to mind David Kennedy’s excellent paper The International Human Rights Movement: Part of the Problem? to mind) an interesting and in international law debates often overlooked issue of legitimacy of non-state actors. In this case that of non governmental organisations [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, Public International Law | 1 Comment »
The report, published by NGO Monitor, is an unprecedented source that should however be read attentively with a critical eye towards its evidently biased perceptions of the situation in the region. Less fortunately, it is clear that the report puts greater weight on the underlying critique that it has endeavoured to submit against the activities [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, International Courts, Middle East Crisis, Public International Law | 4 Comments »
Philip Stephens has a very interesting and to the point op-ed in yesterday’s Financial Times in which he speculates whether the current world-wide financial crisis signals the beginning of a new world order. Stephens argues that, in addition to the moral corrosion of western values which started with the Iraq war, the current financial crisis, [...]
Filed under: United Nations | Leave a Comment »
With an entry on the upcoming advisory opinion on the legality of Kosovo`s independence a new author, Maja Smrkolj, has made her debut here on International Law Observer. Maja is a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, Germany. Her areas of expertise are mainly the various fields of [...]
Filed under: Blogroll | 2 Comments »
In a recent interview (reported in the Israeli paper Ha’aretz) conducted with the a new military commander at the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) it was discovered that in spite of the military’s grave failures in the war with Lebanon in the summer of 2006 and the extensive critique it received both nationally and internationally, the [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, International Criminal Law, Middle East Crisis, Public International Law | 1 Comment »
Yesterday, the UN General Assembly by 77 votes in favor, 6 votes against and 74 Member States abstaining backed Serbia’s proposal to submit the question of the legality of Kosovo’s independence to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). According to the resolution the ICJ will thus have to give an opinion on whether “the unilateral [...]
Filed under: EU/EC Law, International Courts, Public International Law, United Nations | 7 Comments »
Tomorrow the European Parliament is expected to approve a motion tabled by the Committee for Constitutional Affairs, which will adopt a flag, an anthem and a motto for the Union. Not surprisingly, the flag will be the well-known blue banner with the twelve stars. Equally unsurprising, the anthem will be based on the ‘Ode to [...]
Filed under: EC-Law, EU/EC Law | 1 Comment »
With hardly one month until the 2008 presidential election in the US, yesterday’s second debate between Senator McCain and Senator Obama was a rather unspectacular event, at least from a substantive political point of view. There was little the average follower of the presidential election hadn’t heard already. However, from the perspective of international law [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, Public International Law, Responsibility to protect | 1 Comment »
UK National Contact Point under the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises delivered in late August an important decision in Global Witness v. Afrimex (UK) Ltd. Global Witness alleged that Afrimex paid taxes to rebel forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo and employed insufficient due diligence on the supply chain, sourcing minerals from mines that [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, human rights and business, International Criminal Law, Public International Law | Tagged: corporate responsibility, human rights and business | Leave a Comment »
For those with an interest in international criminal law Professor Jon Heller of University of Auckland has posted a highly recommendable paper on SSRN titled “Situational Gravity Under the Rome Statute”. In it, Heller criticises the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) for the ICC and the way it decides which cases receives its attention. Heller [...]
Filed under: ICC, International Courts, International Criminal Law, Public International Law | Leave a Comment »
Thomas Hammarberg, Human Rigts Commissioner of the Council of Europe, yesterday released a call for more human rights education in schools. The call rests on the premise that human rights become more effective when people are actually aware of them. This seems a fair and perhaps rather evident idea. However, I am not sure Hammaberg [...]
Filed under: Human Rights | Leave a Comment »
