In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Human Rights Law

15 Jan

We are happy to announce that Opinio Juris and EJIL:Talk! will be providing reactions to the European Court of Human Rights decision in Jones v. United Kingdom over the coming days. The critical question in Jones was whether Saudi Arabia and Saudi officials enjoyed immunity from suit for allegations of torture. The Court denied petitioners claims, holding that "The weight...

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15 Jan

[William S. Dodge is The Honorable Roger J. Traynor Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Research at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. From August 2011 to July 2012, he served as Counselor on International Law to the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State, where he worked on a variety of immunities matters. The views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the State Department or of the United States.] In Jones v. United Kingdom, a chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) held that the United Kingdom did not violate Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees a right of access to court, by dismissing civil suits alleging torture on grounds of immunity. Jones and others sued the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and some of its officials in UK courts alleging torture in violation of international law. In 2006, the House of Lords held that both Saudi Arabia and its officials were immune from suit under the UK’s State Immunity Act. The ECtHR’s decision with respect to Saudi Arabia is not remarkable. In Al-Adsani v. United Kingdom, the Grand Chamber of the ECtHR held by a closely divided vote that international law did not recognize an exception to state immunity from claims of torture. Since Al-Adsani, the International Court of Justice has confirmed in Jurisdictional Immunities of the State (Germany v. Italy), that there is no exception to state immunity for human rights violations. What is remarkable is the decision in Jones to extend that immunity to foreign officials. In so doing, the ECtHR has effectively concluded that torture is an “official act” entitled to immunity from civil suit in the courts of other countries. That conclusion not only runs against current trends (as Philippa Webb has noted), it is also mistaken as a matter of existing customary international law. Under customary international law, foreign official immunity takes various forms. Heads of state, heads of government, and foreign ministers (the so-called “troika”) enjoy status-based immunity (immunity ratione personae), which extends to all acts but lasts only during their time in office. Other officials—and all former officials—enjoy conduct-based immunity (immunity ratione materiae), which lasts forever but applies only to acts taken in an official capacity. (The immunities of diplomatic and consular personnel are governed by treaties: to oversimplify, diplomats have status-based immunity and consular officials have conduct-based immunity.) The foreign officials sued in Jones were not part of the troika, which means they were entitled to immunity under customary international law only if the conduct alleged was an “official act.” It is important to bear in mind that customary international law permits States to grant foreign officials immunity from the jurisdiction of their courts that is greater than the immunity required by customary international law. In Jones v. United Kingdom, the UK House of Lords interpreted the State Immunity Act to extend the immunity of the State itself to foreign officials for any act attributable to the State. The question technically before the ECtHR was not whether customary international law required the UK to grant such immunity, but rather whether Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights prohibited it from doing so. It would have been possible for the ECtHR to conclude that the UK was within its rights to extend immunity to foreign officials alleged to have committed torture, even though such immunity is not required under customary international law. Instead, the court undertook to “examine whether there was a general rule under public international law requiring the domestic courts to uphold Saudi Arabia’s claim of State immunity in respect of the State officials” (¶ 201). In doing so, it got the analysis badly wrong.
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14 Jan

Standard Digital News, the online platform of The Standard, one of Kenya's leading newspapers, published a long article yesterday entitled "Did State Parties Hoodwink Kenya, African Union on ICC Attendence?" Here are the opening paragraphs: KENYA: Did the Rome Statute Assembly of State Parties hoodwink Kenya that the country’s chief executives would be excused from physical presence at their trials? This...

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13 Jan

[Eliav Lieblich is an Assistant Professor at the Radzyner Law School, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzliya; his book, International Law and Civil Wars: Intervention and Consent, has been recently published by Routledge] While opinions are split whether U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will be able to bring, in his recent efforts, any progress to the stalemated Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it seems that Israel has recently decided to take the conflict back to the 19th century – at least legally. This time, we are talking about the revival of none other than age-old maritime prize law – a traditional body of the international law of war dealing with the belligerent capture of vessels and cargos. The importance of maritime prize law peaked in the American Civil War, and steadily declined through the two World Wars into virtual disuse in the last decades. However, on the last week of December, the District Court of Haifa, sitting in its capacity as the Admiralty Court of Israel, held a first hearing in prize proceedings initiated by the State of Israel against the Estelle, a Finnish vessel, intercepted by the Israeli navy while attempting to symbolically breach the Gaza blockade in late 2012 (see the story, in Hebrew, here). The state requests the court to condemn the Estelle, which carried cement and toys, based on jurisdiction derived from the British Naval Prize Act of 1864 (!), and conferred to prize courts in Mandatory Palestine by the British Prize Act of 1939. At the time, Britain was interested in conferring such jurisdiction to courts in its colonies, protectorates and mandates in order to facilitate the condemnation of Axis maritime prizes captured in nearby waters. This power was never before exercised by Israel, which inherited the mandatory legislation upon its creation in 1948. While the British prize laws are in essence jurisdiction-conferring rules, and deal mostly with procedure, the substantive norms of international prize law are derived from customary international law. Here lie the interesting aspects of the case. It is common knowledge, among those dealing with the nitty-gritty of IHL, that the process known as the “humanization of international humanitarian law” – as famously put by Theodor Meron – has generally not trickled to the law on maritime warfare. Prize law is perhaps a key example for this phenomenon. For instance, while in ground warfare (and occupation) private property cannot be seized or destroyed absent pressing military necessity (for instance, Articles 23(g) & 52 of Hague Convention IV), private ships can be captured and condemned through proceedings in front of the seizing state’s prize courts, just for flying the enemy state’s flag. Essentially, thus, prize law doesn’t differentiate between the “enemy” state and its individual citizens, as modern IHL otherwise purports to do. In addition, “neutral” vessels can be condemned for carrying “contraband” – defined unilaterally by the capturing state – or, as in the case of the Estelle, for attempting to breach a blockade (for an attempt to state the customary international law on these issues see Articles 93 –104, 146, of the 1994 San Remo Manual). It should be added that the concept of blockade in itself seems like an outlier in contemporary law, since it can be looked upon, through a human rights prism, as a form of collective sanction against civilians.
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10 Jan

Manuel Ventura, the director of the Peace and Justice Initiative, has published two excellent posts at Spreading the Jam (here and here) that criticize the specific-direction requirement -- and my defence of it. I cannot possibly address all of the points that Manuel makes, but I do want to respond to his understanding of the role that customary international law plays at the ICTY...

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09 Jan

[Lorenzo Kamel, Ph.D., is a Research Fellow at Bologna University's History Department and a Visiting Fellow (2013/2014) at Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies.] My previous post analyzed the EU’s approach towards Northern Cyprus and Western Sahara. This post will focus on the Palestinian Territories and the EU’s approach towards Israel’s policies in the area. The Palestinian Territories represent a “sui generis case” among most of the “occupations” currently in place in different parts of the world. Not only in consideration of how long this occupation has been prolonged, but also because it represents one of the rare cases in which a military power “has established a distinct military government over occupied areas in accordance with the framework of the law of occupation.” In other somewhat similar contexts, such as, just to name a few, Abkhazia, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) and East Turkestan, the occupying powers of these areas have created in loco nominally independent states (TRNC-Turkey, Abkhazia-Russia and so on), and/or are not building settlements in their “occupied territories” (Chechnya is just an example), and/or have incorporated the local inhabitants as their citizens: with all the guarantees, rights and problems that this entails. Some scholars have stressed out that the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem have been (unofficially, in the case of East Jerusalem) annexed by the State of Israel and that despite this, the EU Guidelines (discussed in the previous post) are to be enforced in these territories as well. Therefore, according to them, the comparison with other “occupations” would show that the Palestinian case cannot be considered “sui generis” and that the EU approach on the issue is marred by incoherence. These claims deserve a short preliminary clarification.
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06 Jan

Gidon Shaviv called it. The Muslim Brotherhood does indeed believe that it can accept the ICC's jurisdiction on an ad hoc basis because it is still the legitimate government of Egypt: Just how successful the ICC action will be is unclear. Egypt is one of the few countries that have not accepted the ICC’s jurisdiction. However, Mr. Dixon and other members of the legal team said the...

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03 Jan

So this is baffling: The international legal team representing the Muslim Brotherhood has filed a complaint to the International Criminal Court, reported state-owned media agency MENA. The team has previously said on 16 August and on 15 November that, following their investigations, they have gathered evidence showing that members of the “military, police and political members of the military regime have committed...

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30 Dec

Train wreck, fiasco, disaster, dumpster fire, bad joke, kangaroo court, show trial -- take your pick, the description applies. Eviatar's post at Just Security a while back is a must-read; here is but one particularly disturbing snippet: Recent pre-trial hearings have revealed, for example, that the Guantanamo courtroom was equipped with microphones able to eavesdrop on privileged attorney-client communications; that the CIA...

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27 Dec

John Sexton, the controversial President of NYU, has spoken out against the American Studies Association's much-debated resolution in favour of boycotting Israeli universities. Here is his statement, issued jointly with NYU's provost: We write on behalf of New York University to express our disappointment, disagreement, and opposition to the boycott advocated by your organization of Israeli academics and academic institutions. This boycott...

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