On Friday, UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer gave a speech at the Human Rights Council sharply criticizing its record of ignoring gross human rights violations worldwide unless they can be blamed on Israel. Read or watch the speech. In an unprecedented reaction, the Council's Chair, Luis Alfonso De Alba of Mexico, refused to thank UN Watch for its statement...
The first day of the annual meeting of the American Society of International Law began with a morning session on the future of arbitration involving states. This "pre-meeting" event is co-sponsored by the ASIL and the Institute for Transnational Arbitration and was chaired by Professor Catherine Rogers and yours truly. Details are available here. It included great...
The Yemeni Parliament ratified the Rome Statute yesterday, following what has been described as the most intense debate in the institution's history. Yemen is the 105th member of the ICC, and the fourth member from the League of Arab States, joining Jordan, Djibouti, and the Comoros. ...
As March draws to a close, I thought it would be helpful to recap some of the great blogging that has been going on at OJ. Some of these represent new directions for the blog, and it would be great to hear from our readership what you like and what you would like to see more of in the future. We...
I encourage readers in the Boston area to attend a terrific event taking place tomorrow at the John F. Kennedy Library: The Elizabeth Neuffer Forum on Human Rights and Journalism, sponsored by the International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF). The program tomorrow focuses on women in Islam and reporting. Here are the details: Date: Thursday, March 29 Time: 10:30am – 1:00pm Location: Smith...
Quite a bit actually. Notwithstanding Kevin's recent complaints, I’ve posted a book chapter on SSRN--Disaggregating Devils Lake: Can Non-State Actors, Hegemony, or Principal-Agent Theory Explain the Boundary Waters Treaty? (you can download it here) It's forthcoming in CCIL’s Responsibility of Individuals, States and Organizations. Although focused on exploring how well international relations theories--especially principal-agent theory and Karen...
Last October, the Lancet released a report by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health that estimated 655,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the Iraq war. Right-wingers immediately denounced the report, calling it a "fraud," and even lefty types suggested that the report's methodology was flawed, leading to inflated figures. Politicians — particularly those with a...
On Monday, Canada began its first prosecution under the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act 2000, which gives Canadian courts conditional universal jurisdiction -- jurisdiction predicated on the perpetrator being present in Canada -- over war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide committed anywhere in the world:A war crimes trial is underway in Canada for the first...
The BBC reports that the U.S. district court in D.C. has dismissed a lawsuit (Ali v. Rumsfeld) by former U.S. military detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq alleging torture and other severe abuses. Apparently, Chief Judge Thomas Hogan dismissed the lawsuit against Rumsfeld on immunity grounds, but a copy of the opinion is not yet on the D.D.C.'s website. When...
Thanks, Crooks & Liars, for this gem: ...
That's always been true in some cases, of course, but maybe there's more potential today. Two recent examples. The first (report from the WaPo here) involves the scaling back by 40 major banks of Iran-related business, which is hitting home in Tehran more than any form of diplomatic action. The move by the banks is apparently at...
On Monday, the UN Human Rights Council voted to discontinue examining the human rights situations in Iran and Uzbekistan, which it was considering under its confidential complaint procedure (known as the "1503 procedure"). See the Reuters story here. The recommendation to end consideration was made by a five-country committee (one from each UN regional group) called the...
