Regions

[Elizabeth Holland is an attorney with the law firm Foley Hoag LLP, where she focuses on international law and corporate social responsibility. The views expressed here are her own.] There is clear need for effective counterterrorism measures.  Equally compelling is the humanitarian imperative to address civilian need in situations of armed conflict.  It has been questioned, however, whether the balance struck...

I've spent a lot of time thinking about treaties. And I've read lots and lots of them over the years. From time to time, however, I encounter something I find truly novel on the treaty front. A case in point, was this story in IT World yesterday.  It refers to pending negotiations between the United States and Germany on an agreement...

[Aqsa Mahmud graduated from the University of Michigan Law School and currently practices as a government attorney in Washington, DC] The international community’s application (or nonapplication) of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) to the recent Arab conflicts highlights notable limits to R2P. R2P is a relatively new doctrine that holds States responsible for protecting their populations and, where the sovereign fails, allows...

On July 10, counsel for Al-Senussi filed a motion with the Pre-Trial Chamber complaining that Libya had announced it would begin Al-Senussi's trial no later than the end of Ramdan -- August 7 -- despite the fact that Libya's admissibility challenge was still pending before the ICC. On August 5, Libya filed its response, arguing that it has no obligation...

[Frances Nguyen is a recent J.D. graduate of Lewis & Clark Law School.] Forced marriage is a complicated subject. The multilayered acts of brutality frequently overlap with sexual slavery, enslavement, rape, and arranged marriage. This can create confusion leading scholars, courts, and legal practitioners to either disregard forced marriage or shelve it into the box of “other inhumane acts” under crimes against humanity. The purpose of this post is to facilitate a proper discussion and address the legal complexities of forced marriage. More importantly, this post is calling for a robust recognition of forced marriage as an international crime. Instead of putting it under the general rubric of “other inhumane acts” it should be explicitly listed and placed alongside other sex and gender-based crimes under the International Criminal Court (ICC)’s Rome Statute.  In doing so, the criminalization of forced marriage by the international community will gain ground. This will lead to greater punishment against the perpetrators and properly accord the victims justice. Victims of forced marriage often endure severe long-term physical and emotional trauma due to their continuous and exclusive relationship with their perpetrators. For example, Fatmata Jalloh was selling pancakes on a rural road in Sierra Leone when a rebel soldier kidnapped her and made her his wife. “I was a child. I didn’t know anything about love at that time. But he said, “If you don’t take me [as your husband], I’ll kill you,” Jalloh said. As his wife, Jalloh was forced to perform sexual acts and domestic duties for two years until Sierra Leone’s civil war ended. “There was no way not to do it. If I would leave, I would have no food. He would kill me.” Jalloh’s story is representative of many young women and girls who were forced to become “bush wives,” women who were forced into marriage and essentially became domestic and sexual slaves to militia soldiers. From 1991 to 2002, Sierra Leone was embroiled in a civil war, which resulted in the national government fighting against rebel groups. At least 50,000 people died, while an estimated 100,000 suffered from mutilation. While massive atrocities were prosecuted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), forced marriage remained a neglected issue until 2008 when the SCSL in Prosecutor v. Brima, Kamara, and Kanu formally recognized forced marriage as a crime against humanity as an “other inhumane act.”

As I recently noted, the Appeals Chamber has rejected Libya's request to suspend its obligation to surrender Saif Gaddafi to the ICC pending resolution of its admissibility appeal. Libya, of course, has no intention of complying with that obligation. Indeed, it admitted as much today: According to Libya’s Justice Minister Salah al-Marghani, Seif, who is being detained in the Libyan city...

[Leslie Schildt is a criminal prosecutor at the Monroe County District Attorney's Office in Rochester, New York and previously worked in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.] Earlier this year, the United Nations created its first ever offensive combat force – the “Intervention Brigade.”  It enters the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as part of MONUSCO, the long-standing United Nations peacekeeping operation in the DRC.  According to Security Council Resolution 2098, the Intervention Brigade will act unilaterally or alongside the Congolese army.  The Brigade is a creature of Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which governs peace enforcement operations.  The force will execute “robust, highly mobile ... targeted offensive operations” to find, engage, “neutralize,” and disarm the heavily armed rebel forces.  This is an unprecedentedly aggressive humanitarian combat force that arguably is the first of its kind. The Intervention Brigade raises serious questions regarding how the offensive mission might affect the non-combatant peacekeepers in MONUSCO.  To understand the potential dangers to peacekeepers and how to avoid them, one must first understand the core legal distinctions between peacekeepers and peace enforcers. UN peacekeeping operations operate under three bedrock principles: (1) Consent of the main parties, (2) impartiality, and (3) non-use of force except in self-defense and in defense of mandate.  Consent of the parties requires commitment and acceptance from the main parties to the conflict.  Without consent, “the peacekeeping operation risks becoming a party to the conflict; and being drawn towards enforcement action.”  Impartiality requires the peacekeepers’ even-handed treatment of all parties to the conflict, but not neutrality in execution of their mandate.  Indeed, where one party commits blatant violations, “continued equal treatment of all parties by the United Nations can in the best case result in ineffectiveness and in the worst may amount to complicity with evil.” (Brahimi Report)  Peacekeepers also cannot use force except in self-defense or in defense of mandate.  “Defense of mandate” may accommodate offensive use of force in some circumstances (e.g., to protect civilians under imminent threat), but peacekeepers certainly cannot lawfully conduct offensive seek-and-disarm missions. Because peacekeepers are not “used outside the humanitarian function to conduct hostilities,” they remain protected as civilian non-combatants.  During an armed conflict, “all persons who are neither members of the armed forces of a party to the conflict . . . are entitled to protection against direct attack unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities.”  This attribute enables combatants to distinguish lawful enemy targets from protected persons.  However, it is another matter entirely when peace enforcement units conduct aggressive seek-and-pacify operations.

Outside of Kigali, no one really doubts that the Rwandan government and military have financed, supplied, and at times even directed M23's actions in the DRC. But it's still nice to see the US government acknowledging that fact: It is the first response by Washington to recent M23 clashes with Congolese government forces near Goma, the largest city in the DRC's...

[Solon Solomon will join King’s College of London, Dickson Poon School of Law as of September 2013, and Jackson Nyamuya Maogoto is a Faculty member of the University of Manchester, School of Law.] Much has already been written on the Comoros referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in light of the Mavi Marmara incident (EJIL:Talk!, Opinio Juris, Human Rights Blog and Dov Jacobs Blog). The referral while premised on a legal footing arguably has a second facet which is significant—political. It is as been noted elsewhere (EJIL:Talk!) that this was the first case where an African state referred a non-African state to the Court. The political parameter aside, the Comoros referral introduces two important doctrinal issues which pervade the discussions of this referral. These are article 12(2) of the Rome Statute regarding vessel jurisdiction and the legal discourse around the axiom that all State Parties can refer to the Court possible crimes perpetrated on the territory of a State Party. The authors’ assertion is that the two spectra have wider implications for future cases and thus their elaboration is essential in the realm of the Prosecutor’s response to the Comoros referral. As far as jurisdiction is concerned, we add our voice to authors who have so far who have held this is asserted. (See EJIL:Talk!, Opinio Juris and Human Rights Blog-spot) In this particular piece we would like to argue that such an assertion is de lege lata and not necessarily the case de lege ferenda. The assertion of jurisdiction derives from article 12(2)’s grammatical reading. However it is imperative to bear in mind that since the Rome Statute is a negotiated treaty, it is subject to wider reflection other than the narrow confines of the black letter provision. In this regard we aver that as a treaty, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) is at play and in this regard invite consideration that the treaty provisions as provided for in the VCLT should be read in their contextual and historical depth, including their negotiation history and the volition of the parties. As such, there are elements that accompany the Rome Statute provisions on vessel jurisdiction which while not embedded in the wording of the provision itself, still constitute part of its essence. The Rome Statute provision was drafted along the lines of article 91 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The latter, echoing a strong jurisprudence and treaty tradition stipulates and favours the notion that there must be a genuine link between the flag state and the vessel. This genuine link requirement is critical. While in some instances judicial bodies may have appeared reluctant to assert it, the reason was not its denial, but judicial and academic fears that a strict diligence to the principle would eventually preclude the forging of any nationality bonds, a far worse scenario. In the MV “Saiga” (No.2) case, the International Tribunal on Law of the Sea expressly stated that the role of the genuine link requirement is to secure more effective implementation of the duties of the flag state. UNCLOS does not envision an arrangement where states just confer nationality to ships and then are not at all engaged in their activities. Nationality is regarded as having a functional character. States try to protect social bonds of attachment against mere formal nationality imposed by the technicalities of law. This functional inquisition is evident in diverse fora. For example in the case of UN sanctions, such as those against Serbia and Iran, the relevant Security Council Resolutions considered the nationality of the vessel based on ownership or contract terms, regardless of the flag under which the ship may sail. (see UN SC Res 787 (1992) and UN SC Res 1929 (2010)). Essentially then, Article 91(1) of UNCLOS should be read in conjunction with article 94, in a way that the exercise of effective jurisdiction over the vessel constitutes one of the necessary conditions for granting nationality. It is thus too long a legal bow to draw that with embryonic jurisprudence on the subject, the ICC will have in mind previous positions and thus reflect on its article 12(2) vessel jurisdiction as not only encapsulating the straight line reading on flag jurisdiction but also the matter of a genuine link with the vessel particularly given the nature of its mandate. In the case of Comoros, the Mavi Marmara was Comoros flagged just a week before the flotilla incident.

As I was checking my news feeds on Google News, I came across this: The snail photo is not actually part of the Washington Post article. So does that mean Google shares my concern with Libya's endless stall tactics?...

Well, not really. But that's the unintended consequence of yesterday's awful decision in US v. Sterling, in which the Fourth Circuit held that James Risen could not rely on journalist's privilege to avoid testifying against James Sterling, whom the government believes leaked classified information to Risen. According the court, the government is entitled to Risen's testimony, because he is the...