All right, it's not the Today Show, but for anyone in the New England area who might be interested (or curious what I sound like), I will be discussing Amnesty International's recent human rights report on "Nite Beat with Barry Nolan" around 7:30 p.m. tonight on CN8, which is part of The Comcast Network. Also featured will be the...
This report details a curious effort by a South African businessman to attach an expected forthcoming money judgment from the International Court of Justice in favor of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. DR Congo has filed a claim against Uganda in the International Court of Justice seeking reparations for Ugandan violations of Congo sovereignty. In theory, DR Congo might...
What will the French “Non” to the EU Constitution mean for EU-hopefuls?I have just returned from a week and a half in Moldova and Romania. Romania is supposed to accede to the EU in 2007 or soon thereafter. What strikes me, though, is how many Romanians seems skeptical of European integration. There was, of course, the famous quip by Chirac...
French voters decisively rejected the proposed EU Constitution today by a 57-43 margin. This doesn't mean the EU is dead, but it does probably mean that the EU Constitution, which was a treaty intended to push Europe into an "ever closer Union" is probably dead, at least in its current incarnation.We haven't blogged much about the EU here, but I...
Just as Congress attacks the U.S. for failings in its Container Security Initiative ("CSI"),, the leading post-Sept. 11 effort to tighten security checks on shipping into U.S. ports, the U.S. announces that it is trying to expand the CSI framework to encompass all of the members of the World Customs Organization. (Brazil signed on to the CSI just this week)The...
As Peggy notes, Amnesty International's annual report is almost certainly getting more press than usual because of its aggressive condemnation of U.S. policy toward detainees in Guantanamo Bay. In fact, it's a bit more than aggressive, as this statement by Amnesty U.S.A.'s director suggests, Amnesty is putting out a list of "torture architects" and is asking foreign jurisdictions to arrest...
Amnesty International issued its 2005 Human Rights Report today, blasting the US on Guantanamo, rendition practices and the abuses at Abu Ghraib. The full report covers human rights practices around the world (or at least of 149 countries), and is generally respected as one of the best-sourced human rights reports available. And, unlike the annual State Department Report, it offers...
The U.N. announced today that it would once again hold a "treaty" day this September during which countries would be encouraged to sign various multilateral treaties. This seems like a fairly pointless event, since countries can sign treaties whenever they want. I somehow doubt that they will do so just because the U.N. is offering drinks and hor d'oeuvres along...
The financing of international organizations is a complex question, but one thing is fairly predictable. Nations are less likely to make "voluntary" as opposed to "mandatory" contributions to international organizations. The Sierra Leone Special Court for War Crimes is discovering this reality the hard way, as the President of the Court reported to the U.N. Security Council this week. In...
Not that there was much doubt, but a key U.S. House of Representatives committee has approved continued U.S. membership in the WTO. Under U.S. law, every five years any member of Congress can petition the Congress to withdraw from the WTO. As in 2000, the unlikely coalition of Socialist Vermonter Bernie Sanders and Libertarian Texan Ron Paul have made such...
Seems like Japan can't cut a break these days. While the Chinese continue to thumb their nose at Japan's attention to the graves of its war criminals, Australia is protesting Japan's palns ot increase the number of whales it can hunt. In fact, Australia's opposition party is pushing the Australian government to sue Japan in the ICJ for...
Ken Anderson has two posts on the ICRC today: this one addressing the criticism of ICRC in today's WSJ and this one on the ICRC CIHL study, which I mentioned in an earlier post. On the WSJ editorial, I think it -- like the Rifkin and Casey article in National Interest last month -- goes a bit too far by...
