In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

23 Dec

[Catherine Harwood is a PhD candidate at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies at Leiden University] After over a decade of reports alerting the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) to serious human rights violations in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), in March 2013 the Council decided to establish an international commission of inquiry to investigate those allegations and to ensure “full accountability, in particular where these violations may amount to crimes against humanity”. Denied access to North Korea, the Commission travelled to several countries to hear from victims and witnesses. In a strong commitment to transparency, the Commission held public hearings and made many testimonies and exhibits available online. A year later, its report recorded a litany of serious human right abuses. The Commission found reasonable grounds to believe that North Korea had committed serious human rights violations and that many senior officials had committed crimes against humanity [para. 1225]. It issued a host of recommendations, including that the Security Council refer North Korea, a non-state party to the Rome Statute, to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Although the Commission dissolved upon the delivery of its report, its accountability recommendations reverberated beyond the HRC and have remained on the intergovernmental diplomatic agenda. This contribution discusses some interesting features of the Commission’s findings and tracks the consequences of its report – some of which have been curious and unexpected – before offering some thoughts as to the impact of the inquiry in relation to the goal of ensuring accountability.
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22 Dec

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa The death toll from Ebola in the three worst-affected countries in West Africa has risen to 7,373 among 19,031 cases known to date there, the World Health Organization said on Saturday. South Sudan rebels killed, raped and kidnapped civilians during an attack in October, leaving at least 11...

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21 Dec

Events For many years, the Frankfurt Investment Law Workshop - jointly organized by Rainer Hofmann (University of Frankfurt), Stephan Schill (Max Planck Institute Heidelberg), and Christian J. Tams (University of Glasgow) - has been a forum for the discussion of conceptual issues of international investment law. The next workshop, to be held March 13-14, 2015, will explore the role of history...

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20 Dec

This week on Opinio Juris, our regular bloggers touched on a variety of topics again with Kevin rejecting Ashley Deeks' evidence that the international response to ISIS supports the "unwilling or unable" test under article 51 UN Charter and Kristen expanding the UN's list of 13 things to know about UN sanctions to 16. Prompted by Christopher Kutz' essay, Julian asked...

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18 Dec

[Dr Rick Lines and Damon Barrett are the Chair and Director of the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy, University of Essex] These are interesting times for drug law reform, which, as it gathers pace, is asking important questions of international law. A UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs is set for 2016 just as national reforms are challenging international treaties that form the bedrock of a global prohibition regime that has dominated since the turn of the twentieth century. States parties to the three UN drug control conventions must now confront the legal and political dilemmas this creates. This is the situation in which the US now finds itself following cannabis reforms in various states that are at odds with these treaties. The State Department has issued its official position in this regard, one that stretches and boundaries of interpretation and raises other serious questions for international law. In an October statement Ambassador William Brownfield set out that position in the form of the ‘four pillar’ approach the United States will now follow in matters of international drug control. While the four pillars, set out below, have prompted much discussion and debate among those working on drug policy issues, attention among international lawyers has been rare. This is something of an important gap given the implications of what the US suggests:
  1. Respect the integrity of the existing UN drug control conventions.
  2. Accept flexible interpretation of those conventions.
  3. Tolerate different national drug policies…[and] accept the fact that some countries will have very strict drug approaches; other countries will legalise entire categories of drugs.
  4. Combat and resist criminal organisations, rather than punishing individual drug users
Internationally, the four pillars have emerged in the context of efforts, led primarily by Latin American States, to open discussions on the future of the international drug control regime, and look at alternatives to the current and destructive prohibitionist paradigm.  Domestically, it comes in the context of successful referenda to legally regulate cannabis in several US states. Both of these are welcome developments. The international drug regime is long overdue for reform, and the cannabis referenda will produce many positive criminal justice, health and social outcomes in those US states adopting them. However, domestic cannabis law reform places the United States in a compromised position within the coming debates on the future shape of the international drug control regime.
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16 Dec

The UN's Department of Political Affairs recently published this list of "13 things to know about UN sanctions."  If you scroll down on the link above, you'll also see some great sanctions graphics. United Nations Sanctions Primer 1. Since the creation of the United Nations, the Security Council has established 25 sanctions regimes. They have been used to support conflict resolution efforts,...

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16 Dec

Christopher Kutz, Professor of Law in the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program at Berkeley Law School, has a fascinating new essay examining the possibility that "norms" against torture and assassination have died in the United States in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.  Kutz is not writing to support the CIA interrogation program or the US government's use of assassination, but he...

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16 Dec

[Bede Sheppard is the deputy children’s rights director at Human Rights Watch, based in Barcelona] At an event at the United Nations in Geneva this morning, the ambassadors of Norway and Argentina unveiled a set of six new “Guidelines” aimed at better protecting schools and universities from being used for military purposes during times of armed conflict. They are intended to respond to the practice of government forces and non-state armed groups converting schools and universities into bases or barracks, or using them as firing positions or places to cache weapons and ammunition. This practice endangers students and teachers by turning their schools into targets for enemy attack. Students and teachers have been injured and killed in such attacks. It also exposes students to sexual violence, forced labor, and forced recruitment by the soldiers sharing their schools. Students must either stay at home and interrupt their education, or study alongside armed fighters while potentially in the line of fire. The Guidelines urge all parties to armed conflict to refrain from using schools or universities for any purpose in support of the military effort, but state specifically that “functioning schools” should not be used, even if it is outside of normal school hours, or during the weekend or on school holidays. Schools that have been abandoned or evacuated because of the danger presented by the armed conflict should also not be used, except in circumstances in which fighting forces are presented with no viable alternative, and only as long as no choice is possible between such use of a school and another feasible method for obtaining a similar military advantage. The Guidelines reiterate the prohibition on destroying a school as a measure intended to deprive opposing parties of the ability to use them in the future, and provide guidance on how to respond if enemy forces are using a school, or if military forces are the only option for providing essential security in response to threats of an attack on a school. Concerns about the negative consequences of where soldiers are accommodated—and resulting efforts to regulate their billeting—date back a long time.
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15 Dec

The new blog, which will focus on "multilateralism, international organizations, and world order" -- no small task there! -- includes Friends-of-OJ David Bosco and David Kaye, as well as my SOAS colleague Leslie Vinjamuri. Here is the complete contributor list: David Bosco is an assistant professor at American University’s School of International Service and a contributing editor at Foreign Policy magazine. Martin Edwards is...

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15 Dec

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir claimed victory over the International Criminal Court on Saturday after it shelved further investigation of war crimes in Darfur, and reaffirmed his hard line on the rebel region. The ICC confirmed four charges of crimes against humanity against Charles Ble Goude, and committed the ally of...

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14 Dec

Events The International Humanitarian and Criminal Law Platform of the T.M.C. Asser Instituut and the Kalshoven-Gieskes Forum on International Humanitarian Law of the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies of Leiden University cordially invite you to attend the launch of the book: ‘Nuclear Weapons Under International Law’  taking place Wednesday, 17 December in The Hague. Please find more information here. Calls for Papers The McCoubrey Centre...

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