In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

26 Mar

John Louth at OUP passes along the latest potential twist in Moreno-Ocampo's career path: The former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Mr Luis Moreno Ocampo, has offered to represent the victims of Barlonyo Massacre in the court.Barlonyo village in Agweng Sub-county, Lira District is where more than 400 people were massacred by suspected Lord’s Resistance Army rebels on February...

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25 Mar

Just in time for Michelle Obama's speech in Beijing extolling the benefits of free speech and a President Obama/President Xi summit, the NY Times published an article detailing how the U.S National Security Agency infiltrated the systems of Chinese telecom infrastructure giant Huawei.  According to documents the Times obtained from the Edward Snowden leak, the NSA "obtained information about the...

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25 Mar

According to Lebanon's Daily Star, Libya intends to begin the trial on April 14, just a few weeks from now: Seif al-Islam Kadhafi, Saadi Kadhafi and former spy chief Abdullah Senussi are among more than 30 officials from the ousted regime who are to stand trial on charges ranging from murder to embezzlement. Former premiers Al-Baghdadi al-Mahmudi and Bouzid Dorda are also among those...

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24 Mar

As widely reported in the press last week, President Obama announced sanctions against Russian and Ukrainian officials.   On Thursday, March 20, the “blacklist” was expanded to 2 banks and 20 officials, as detailed in this press release from the US Treasury.     Separately, the EU imposed sanctions on 21 individuals, including Russian military commanders. The U.S. goals, President Obama said,...

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24 Mar

For quite some time I zealously followed all of the various filings in the Libya cases -- by Libya, al-Senussi and Gaddafi, the Registry, the OPCV, everyone. I also regularly blogged about those filings. But I haven't lately, as consistent readers will know. The reason? The ICC judges seem to have lost all interest in actually making decisions. The record is quite...

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24 Mar

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa The Pentagon has reported that the Obama administration is sending about 150 Special Operations troops along with military aircraft to Uganda to help in the search for warlord Joseph Kony. Suspected Boko Haram fighters have detonated a bomb in a crowded marketplace in northeastern Nigeria killing at least...

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23 Mar

Call for Papers The ASIL International Economic Law Interest Group is calling for paper and panel proposals for its 2014 Biennial Research Conference, to be held at the University of Denver's Sturm School of Law, on November 13-15, 2014. The theme of the conference is "Reassessing International Economic Law & Development: New Challenges for Law & Policy". They strongly encourage scholars,...

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22 Mar

This week on Opinio Juris, we continued last week's YLS Sale Symposium with a post by Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen describing Sale's legacy as a game of cat and mouse between law and politics, a post by David Martin on the realms of policy and law in refugee protection. In a two part post (1, 2), Guy Goodwin-Gill looked at state practice preceding Sale and...

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21 Mar

As I discuss in a recent article published in the Santa Clara Journal of International Law, one of the most significant developments signaling the convergence of trade and arbitration is the use of trade remedies to enforce arbitration awards. This is done primarily when a developed country threatens to remove preferential trade benefits to a developing country if that...

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21 Mar

[Andrés Guzmán Escobari is a former Bolivian diplomat, a Professor at Universidad del Valle and Universidad de los Andes and an associate researcher for the German Foundation Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. The opinions expressed are strictly personal.]

A few days after Bolivia instituted proceedings against Chile before the International Court of Justice, Julian Ku wrote a post here on Opinio Juris entitled “Bolivia´s Ridiculously Weak ICJ Case against Chile”.  His main claim?  “This case looks like a sure loser on admissibility; it looks like it is going to be a major waste of time for the ICJ”.

In this post, I would like to offer a rebuttal to Mr Ku’s comments and to explain why Bolivia’s case is not only not a ‘sure loser’ but is reasonably strong.  The case concerns Bolivia’s request that the Court declare and adjudge that “Chile has the obligation to negotiate with Bolivia in order to reach an agreement granting Bolivia a fully sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean” because “Chile has breached the said obligation”. Specifically, for that reason, “Chile must perform the said obligation with good faith, promptly, formally, within a reasonable time and effectively, to grant Bolivia a fully sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean”.

Mr Ku develops two mains arguments to support his opinion: (1) that there is no compulsory ICJ jurisdiction under the Bogota Treaty; and (2) that there is no specific obligation on Chile to negotiate an agreement granting Bolivia an access to the Pacific Ocean because the language of the declarations made by Chilean authorities with the purpose of giving Bolivia back sovereign access to the sea were “non-obligatory”.

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