Asia-Pacific

[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.

Over at The National Interest, I have an essay considering the strategic implications of the Philippines arbitration claim against China.  I argue that the Philippines made a mistake by trying to force China into an arbitration under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and that their "lawfare" strategy is probably going to backfire. Due in part to domestic pressures for...

In observance of United Nations Day on October 24, China's foreign minister Wang Yi issued a long statement expressing China's view of itself as a "staunch defender and builder of international law" (Chinese version here). As China-watchers know, China's Communist Party has just completed its "Fourth Plenum" (sort of a Party leadership strategy meeting) on the theme of the promotion of...

[Alvin Y.H. Cheung is a Visiting Scholar at the US-Asia Law Institute at NYU School of Law.] After two years of increasingly acrimonious debate over Hong Kong’s electoral reforms for 2017, the city’s pro-democracy movement has finally attracted global concern.  A consistent theme of international responses has been that Hong Kong’s democratisation should occur in accordance with the Basic Law, the...

There's been much discussion in the blogosphere about the University of Illinois' decision to "un-hire" (read: fire) a Palestinian-American scholar who resigned a tenured position at Virginia Tech to join its faculty, a decision motivated by a series of anti-Zionist (but not anti-Semitic) tweets that made the University's wealthy donors uncomfortable. But the rightful revulsion at Illinois' decision (more than 5,000...

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...

Harry J. Kazianis, the managing editor of The National Interest, has a smart post discussing the risk that the U.S. is taking if it tries to take more aggressive action to counter China in the South China Sea.  Essentially, he argues the U.S. has no effective strategy to counter China's "non-kinetic" strategy to subtly alter the status quo by using...

I've been swamped with various projects and distractions here in Taiwan (mostly food-related), so I didn't notice until today this very interesting Zachary Keck post about how Japan's recent decision to re-interpret its constitutional provision to allow expanded overseas military activities would enable Japan to help defend Taiwan against an attack from China.  It's a fascinating post, but it also made...

The conflict between China and Vietnam over a Chinese oil rig has (thankfully) calmed down a little bit, with fewer reports of rammings and water cannon fights in the South China Sea.  But the war of press release and government-sponsored editorials has heated up and all of them are wielding international law as a weapon of authority and legitimacy. Vietnam's government...