In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Latin & South America

24 Jul

[Alonso Illueca is a lawyer and adjunct Professor of International Law at Universidad del Istmo] On July 12, 2019, Panama announced its decision to withdraw its flag from any vessel violating “sanctions and international legislation”. This decision resulted in the removal of 59 ships (mostly tankers) from Panama’s shipping fleet due to their link with the Islamic Republic of Iran (“Iran”)...

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23 Jul

Paula Baldini Miranda da Cruz is a Lawyer, LLM Adv. Studies in Public International Law at Leiden University (Netherlands). Ph.D. candidate at Leiden University (Netherlands) and Rafael Braga da Silva is a Lawyer, LLM University for Peace and United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) (Italy) and LL.M. Adv. Studies in Public International Law at Leiden University Netherlands). In...

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18 Jul

On 23 January 2019, Juan Guaidó, the President of the Venezuelan National Assembly, proclaimed himself as the caretaker President of Venezuela in accordance with Article 223 of the Venezuelan Constitution. Guaidó’s Government falls foul of the criterion of effectiveness (control of at least some territory, habitual obedience of a majority of the population, and reasonable prospect of permanence), which remains with Maduro. The claim is purely...

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15 Jul

[Ricardo Arredondo is professor of Public International Law at the University of Buenos Aires and at the University of Palermo. He is Professor of Diplomatic Law and Practice at the Institute for the Foreign Service of Argentina.] After more than two decades of negotiation, on June 28, Mercosur and the European Union reached “a political agreement for an ambitious, balanced and comprehensive trade agreement”, according to the...

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24 Jun

Recently, there’s been many a discussion in the Global North on the semiotics of law. What does it mean to say there was a genocide in Canada or that ICE runs concentration camps. In general, these debates follow a similar pattern: specific groups of people are outraged that scholars and experts would use the correct terminology to describe a policy they support, because it sounds...

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28 May

You have heard the news and know what might happen. Your President may pardon a war criminal. You, certainly, disapprove. You believe in international justice and you are convinced war criminals need to be punished for their crimes. You want to do something about it, but you have read the blog posts and newspapers. Judging by recent experience, the ICC will likely not help. Yours...

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24 May

A few days ago, the New York Times broke an explosive story on Colombia. The journal claimed Major General Nicacio Martínez, the head of the Colombian Army, had issued new and worrisome targeting orders for his troops. Soldiers were requested “not to demand perfection” and to “do anything to boost their results”. According to the article, the order asks commanders to “launch operations with 60...

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18 May

I wanted to draw readers’ attention to an important case decided this Wednesday by Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace, the tribunal set up to spearhead its transitional justice process. The case involves the extradition request of Seuxis Pauxias Hernández Solarte, better known as “Jesús Santrich”, a demobilized FARC commander accused of narco-trafficking by the US. As a demobilized FARC member, Santrich is covered by the Colombian Peace...

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23 Apr

[Chiara Redaelli is Visiting Research Fellow at Harvard Law School and Research Fellow at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.] Over the past months, while international legal scholars have been engaging in passionate debates as to whether Nicolás Maduro is still the de jure president of Venezuela or whether Juan Guaidó should be considered the new interim representative of the country, Venezuelan lawyers...

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19 Apr

The Amazon is a 7,000,000 km2 ecosystem, containing the world’s largest rainforest, boasting some 390 billion trees, 2.5 million species of insects and over 2,000 species of birds and mammals, spanning the territories of eight states (Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela). It is also the name of a company worth 810 billion dollars. Back in 2012, Amazon – the company – applied to register...

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01 Mar

I wanted to call readers attention to a particularly interesting ongoing case regarding recognition of governments in the context of Venezuela. The case (Rusoro Mining Ltd. v. Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela) revolves around damages caused to Rusoro, a Canadian company, by Venezuela’s nationalisation of the gold mining sector. In 2016, an ICSID tribunal ordered Venezuela to pay approximately one billion...

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