This video from Anne Bayefsky of the Human Rights Council meetings on the Goldstone Report is fascinating (though I am not on board with her over-the-top attack on Goldstone personally). But note the indiscriminate and deeply hypocritical use of the words "genocide," "war crimes," and "crimes against humanity" by the least morally attractive member states of the HRC (How...
Ever since Ban Ki-Moon became UN Secretary-General, I have been hearing complaints about, well, nearly everything. He's a colorless personality. He's a diplomat and not 'global-presidential'. He brings no passion to the job. He wants (anyway wanted) senior officials to disclose their finances. He's just a placeholder. Etc. Many of these criticisms could be reduced down to ...
Economic blackmail is a part of politics -- but Israel's latest ultimatum to the Palestinian Authority regarding the ICC is still unfortunate: Israel has warned the Palestinian Authority that it would condition permission for a second cellular telephone provider to operate in the West Bank - an economic issue of critical importance to the PA leadership - on the Palestinians withdrawing...
Last January, I blogged about a request by the Sudan Workers Trade Federation Union (SWTU) and the Sudan International Defence Group (SIDG) to submit a brief to the ICC opposing the warrant for Bashir's arrest. The Appeals Chamber recently granted the request, limiting the groups to commenting on the legal issue at the heart of the appeal -- whether the...
Seemingly more interested in placating victims groups than the judges who will determine Dr. Karadzic's guilt or innocence, prosecutors have refused to trim their monstrous and completely unworkable indictment: In written submissions released by the tribunal Tuesday, prosecutors say further cutting down their 11-count indictment against Karadzic to squeeze it into a year would prevent them presenting evidence encompassing all his...
It's a great day to be teaching the powers of the Security Council to my international law class! President Obama presided this morning over the Security Council meeting on non-proliferation, securing a 15-0 vote for UNSC resolution 1887, which aims to bolster the nuclear non-proliferation regime through strengthening the NPT, enforcing existing resolutions on North Korea and Iran, and...
Over at Foreign Policy magazine's blog, Eric Posner has a brief, breezy column on differences, or not, between the Bush and Obama administrations on international law. Fun, quick read, whether one agrees or not. And events of the moment - the opening of the UN General Assembly, the UN confabs on things like climate change, the G-20 meetings, etc. -...
As part of the backlash against the Goldstone Commission's recommendation that the Security Council refer the situation in Gaza to the ICC if Israel and Hamas do not conduct credible investigations of their crimes, the far-right Jerusalem Post published an editorial today entitled "Strange Justice: The ICC, Europe, and the World." The editorial was ostensibly written by a Researcher at...
My sympathies are with those who have to drive anywhere in Manhattan this week as the General Assembly gets underway. In past years I have experienced the privilege of being inside the security cordon and also the inconvenience of being outside it. But now we can all experience being inside the main public events through the UN Webcast! The...
According to Newsweek, the answer may well be yes: As chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo has so far steered clear of controversial cases. In doing so, he hoped to allay U.S. fears that the ICC would become a politicized tool for settling scores. Which is why it's so surprising that Moreno-Ocampo is now considering an investigation into...
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner calls in the Financial Times for a tax on global financial transactions as a means of funding the currently moribund UN Millennium Development Goals. It is an idea that has been floated repeatedly since the 1990s - sometimes with the emphasis on the tax itself as a means of deliberately slowing down and making more...
The Trial Chamber in Karadzic has instructed the prosecution to reduce the scope of its indictment from monstrous and completely unworkable to somewhat less monstrous and somewhat less completely unworkable. The result? Victims groups burning judges and prosecutors (and my client) in effigy and threatening not to cooperate with the prosecution: Several hundred members of victims' associations have protested in front...
