In association with the International Commission of Jurists

August 2014

07 Aug

[Eugene Kontorovich is a Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law.] Rumors and speculation about a Palestinian ICC bid continue to abound. However, news accounts about the process behind the PA’s consideration of the issue underline the point I made in a prior post that based on the Morsi precedent, Abbas could not accept the Court’s jurisdiction. I will elaborate on that here, and address some comments about my argument (partly concurred in by Kevin) about the relevance of the Morsi matter to a Palestinian referral. In a meeting last week Abbas sought "written consent to join the ICC” from other Palestinian factions. According to another account Abbas has a draft acceptance letter, and is "waiting for signature from Hamas and Islamic Jihad.” If the PA needs the written consent - not just a political nod- from the Gaza–based factions, it strongly supports the view that the PA government does not have full power to accept jurisdiction on behalf of Palestine, especially for Gaza. Some might say that if the government is divided and both possible claimants to full powers agree, then any defect is cured (this may be why Abbas wants written authorization).  The argument does not work: the sum of governmental authority is greater than its parts. To accept ICC jurisdiction, especially after the Morsi matter, it must be clear which particular government is in control, and it must be that government that accepts jurisdiction. The reason to require government control over a state for ICC jurisdiction is it is that government that will be responsible for enforcing the treaty. A joint signature raises myriad intractable problems. Who will ultimately be carrying out the obligations of the treaty? Abbas would presumably not mind signing over authority over Israeli crimes, but then not cooperate with the court in investigating Hamas crimes, saying he has no control there. If all factions give written consent to join, who has authority to terminate membership?
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06 Aug

Philippe Sands is well-known as a scholar and as a practicing attorney. Now let's add spoken word artist: October 1946, Nuremberg. Human rights lawyer Philippe Sands narrates an original piece that offers new insights into the lives of three men at the heart of the trial, with the music that crossed the courtroom to connect prosecutor and defendant. A personal exploration of the...

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06 Aug

[Jillian Blake is an immigration attorney at a non-profit organization in Alexandria, Virginia. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).] In May, Dominican President Danilo Medina signed a new naturalization law aimed at restoring the rights of some who were stripped of their citizenship in a September 2013 Supreme Court ruling. The ruling held that those born in the Dominican Republic to undocumented immigrants, who are predominantly black and of Haitian origin, are not Dominican citizens and instructed the government to apply the ruling retroactively, going back to 1929. International human rights groups strongly condemned the decision as racist and xenophobic and argued it would render hundreds of thousands of people stateless. The Caribbean Community (CARICOM), an international organization made up of 15 Caribbean states, also denounced the ruling and suspended the Dominican Republic’s application for membership. The new citizenship law, Law 169-14, was passed this spring in response to the international backlash against the Supreme Court decision. Law 169-14 establishes a regime to restore the citizenship rights of those born between 1929 and 2007 who are entered in the civil registry. Notably, the law excludes restoration of citizenship to those born between 2007 and 2010, the year the new Dominican Constitution first revoked jus soli citizenship, or citizenship based on where one is born. All those born after 2007, or who are not in the civil registry, are required to register as foreigners and will then have to apply for regularization and naturalization. While the law could restore citizenship rights to thousands of people, it is far from a final victory against statelessness in the Dominican Republic. First, the law only addresses a small percentage of those impacted by the Supreme Court ruling. According to human rights groups roughly 24,000 of the more than 200,000 people rendered stateless could qualify to have their citizenship restored under the law, and even that restoration is not automatic. Part of the reason so few will be affected is that for many years hospitals and government agencies refused to issue birth certificates or other identity documents to children of parents of Haitian origin. Many children born in the Dominican Republic do not have birth certificates and/or are not listed in the civil registry. Any long-lasting solution will require hospitals to issue birth certificates for, and enter into the civil registry, all persons born in the Dominican Republic and recognize their citizenship. There also should be a national drive to document (as citizens) those born in the Dominican Republic who do not currently possess birth certificates. Second, the new law is still premised on the illegal assumption that those born in Dominican territory are not citizens. This retrogression of established inter-American law, which recognizes jus soli citizenship, is not only illegitimate but could lead to the denial of rights elsewhere in the future. Third, given the racially-biased administration of past immigration and naturalization regulations in the Dominican Republic, there is a serious concern that even those entitled to the restoration of citizenship under the law will never actually be recognized as citizens. Fourth, the law requires those who are not in the civil registry to register with the government within 90 days after the law takes affect, which will exclude many who can’t register in time, especially the poor and those living in remote areas. Finally, the law will not restore citizenship to future generations born in the Dominican Republic, which will leave a perpetual system of statelessness in the country. In an Article forthcoming in the Georgetown Journal of Law and Modern Critical Race Perspectives entitled, “Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Race-based Statelessness in the Americas” I analyze the 2013 Supreme Court decision and long history of citizenship exclusion based on racial and ethnic prejudice in the Dominican Republic.
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05 Aug

I had the privilege today to attend a conference in Taipei today discussing the "East China Sea Peace Initiative".  The ECSPI is Taiwan's proposal to reduce and maybe even eliminate the confrontation between China and Japan in the East China Sea over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands.  The ECSPI is not all that complicated.  1) Shelve Territorial Disputes;and 2) Share Resources Through Joint Development.  There is...

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05 Aug

The ICC Office of the Prosecutor has just released the following statement: Palestine is not a State Party to the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the ICC; neither has the Court received any official document from Palestine indicating acceptance of ICC jurisdiction or requesting the Prosecutor to open an investigation into any alleged crimes following the November 2012 United Nations...

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05 Aug

The request is supported by a number of leading QCs and professors in Britain. (Full disclosure: three of the signatories are barrister members and one is an academic member of Doughty Street Chambers, with which I'm associated.) Here is the Bar Human Rights Committee's summary: Public international law and criminal law Q.C.s and Professors based in Britain join with the Bar Human...

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04 Aug

As Eugene notes in today's guest post, the Palestinian Authority (PA) appears to have decided to ratify the Rome Statute. I'll believe it when I see it: the PA has threatened to ratify before, only to back down at the last moment. But could it? Most observers have assumed it could, but Eugene disagrees. I think his bottom line may well be...

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04 Aug

[Clare Frances Moran is a teaching fellow in law at Abertay University, and is due to submit her PhD thesis at the University of Glasgow in late 2014.] In the eight years since Cesare Romano’s assertion that the ‘season’ of international criminal law was coming to an end, the season appears to have turned into an Indian summer. During this summer, the focus of international criminal law has evolved. The formative debates on the significance of the idea of aggression and the conceptual boundaries of genocide have developed into a discussion on how to use such concepts in order to protect individuals, regardless of traditional concerns such as a state link or sponsorship of the violence. This shift in focus indicates a continued interest in the idea of international criminal law, and the aim of creating a system of international criminal justice, but with greater attention to the protection of individuals. As such, the reason for continuing interest in international criminal law can be explored in relation to two strands of reasoning: the fading of the State requirement, and the shared purpose of international human rights law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law. The law of the initial international criminal tribunals – those of Nuremberg, Tokyo, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia - focused on criminal conduct committed by those acting on behalf of States. Even the name of such tribunals gives away their aim: punishing those who have committed crimes while acting in official positions. Although the International Criminal Court looked a likely successor to these tribunals, it has taken a different direction with its prosecutions. Not a single defendant convicted or tried by the International Criminal Court to date has been affiliated to a state; the focus of the Court has shifted to the most serious situations, rather than those linked to acts on behalf of a State or committed by those representing a State. This premise represents a true departure from the origins of international criminal law in national military tribunals and the internationalised tribunals of Nuremberg and Tokyo. The trial of such individuals utilises the silence by the Statute on what may constitute an ‘organisational policy’ in the context of a crime against humanity. Many international lawyers would, in a similar vein, read into article 8 on war crimes the idea that the criminal activity was backed by a State, or at least that the State was complicit. However, this article is similarly restrained on mentioning the idea of a link to a State. The lack of direct prosecutions against State officials is interesting, and the arrest warrants issued for certain Heads of State indicate that the idea has not yet faded into obscurity. There is substantial difficult, however, apparent in organising such prosecutions. Laurent Gbagbo, former President of the Ivory Coast, remains the first and only Head of State to be detained by the ICC. His arrest warrant was issued in 2011 and initial hearing to confirm the charges was adjourned in February 2013, with the charges against him confirmed only recently in June 2014. In postponing the hearing in 2013, the Court clearly stated that the seriousness of the charges underpinned its decision to give the prosecution more time, and invariably it seems that trying Heads of States and the decision-makers of the piece is more complex. This again demonstrates the priority that the Court is giving to the seriousness of the crimes, rather than the link between the State and the individual. The number of prosecutions which have been raised against individuals who are part of groups which are non-state actors further indicates a shift away from the traditional focus on the State. The reduction of the number of States which engaged in armed conflict with one another makes it less likely that States ought to be the central focus of the Court, and that its mission to prevent impunity would be better served by ensuring that those who breach international criminal law and international humanitarian law are prosecuted. The recent crimes committed by Boko Haram in Nigeria and ISIS in the Middle East indicate that the discipline is evolving with the world.
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04 Aug

[Eugene Kontorovich is a Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law.] New reports say the Palestinian leadership has decided to seek to join the International Criminal Court as a member state. The PA has been threatening such action fairly constantly for several years, and it remains to be seen whether they mean it this time. A recent and little-noticed development at the ICC suggests the Palestinian Authority may have a harder time getting the Court to accept its accession than many previously thought. A few months ago, in a situation quite analogous to the Palestinians', the Court rejected an attempted accession. Recall that the ICC rejected a 2009 Palestinian attempt to invoke its jurisdiction by saying that it lacked the competence to determine if Palestine was a "state" under international law. A main motive for the last year's General Assembly's vote to treat Palestine as a non-member state was to bolster its case for ICC membership. The idea was that the OTP would look only to the formal, "political" action of the General Assembly, rather the the objective factors of whether Palestine satisfies the criteria of statehood, such as whether they control their own territory. Whether that is true or not, recent developments show that even if the OTP accepts that Palestine is a state - ignoring objective tests - it would conclude that the PA cannot accept jurisdiction on behalf of that state, certainly not for Gaza.
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04 Aug

Africa The United States will announce nearly $1bn in business deals, increase funding for peacekeeping and commit billions of dollars to expanding food and power programs in Africa during a summit this week, officials said. Little action has been taken to clean up pollution caused by oil production in Nigeria's Niger Delta region, either by the government or Shell Oil, Amnesty International and other groups have said. Health...

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