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Emerging Voices: Responsibility of the Netherlands for the Genocide in Srebrenica–The Nuhanović and Mothers of Srebrenica Cases Compared

by Otto Spijkers

[Otto Spijkers is an Assistant Professor of Public International Law at Utrecht University.]

Introduction

This post compares the recent judgment of the District Court in The Hague in the case of the “Mothers of Srebrenica” with the judgment of the Dutch Supreme Court of last year in the Nuhanović case. I will try not to repeat what Kristen Boon wrote about the case in an earlier post.

Facts

Both judgments deal with the legal responsibility of the Netherlands for the death of (some of) the Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995. When the so-called “safe area” of Srebrenica fell into the hands of the Bosnian Serbs, the Dutch UN peacekeepers all left the area. Hasan Nuhanović was permitted to leave with them, because he had worked for the UN, but the UN peacekeepers refused to take the relatives of Hasan Nuhanović as well. Hasan’s brother and father were subsequently killed, together with thousands of other Bosnian Muslims. Most of the victims were situated outside the compound over which the Dutch peacekeepers exercised effective control. Even those Bosnian Muslims that managed to enter the compound, just before the fall of Srebrenica was a fact, were later surrendered by the Dutch peacekeepers to the Bosnian Serbs. Almost all of them were killed.

Legal Question

Nuhanović argued that the refusal of the Dutch UN peacekeepers to save his relatives constituted a wrongful act, attributable to the State of the Netherlands. The Mothers of Srebrenica argued that the refusal of the Dutch UN peacekeepers to save all Bosnian Muslims within the so-called “mini safe area” constituted a wrongful act, attributable to the Netherlands. This is the area where most people fled to after the city of Srebrenica had fallen into the hands of the Bosnian Serbs. This mini safe area consisted of the compound in Potočari and the surrounding area, where deserted factories and a bus depot were located (para. 2.35 of Mothers of Srebrenica judgment).

Attribution

In Nuhanović, The Dutch Supreme Court held that the same conduct could in principle be attributed both to the Netherlands and to the United Nations. In reaching this decision, the Court referred to Article 48 of the ILC’s Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations (2011, DARIO). In the Mothers of Srebrenica case, the District Court reached the same conclusion (para. 4.34)

Since the UN was not party to the Nuhanović-proceedings, the Supreme Court could look only at the rights and responsibilities of the Netherlands. The Mothers of Srebrenica initially involved the UN in the proceedings as well, but the Organization effectively relied on its immunity (this led to some landmark judgments by the Dutch Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights), and thus the case continued without the UN. In Mothers of Srebrenica, the District Court explicitly rejected the position of the Mothers that, given the immunity of the UN, the rules on attribution should be interpreted more “broadly,” as otherwise the Dutch UN peacekeepers would be placed “above the law” (para. 4.35). At the same time, one cannot help get the feeling that it played a role.

With regard to attribution, the Supreme Court in Nuhanović based its decision primarily on Article 7 DARIO. This provision states that the conduct of an organ placed at the disposal of an international organization by a State must be considered to be the conduct of that international organization, when the organization has effective control over the conduct. The Netherlands argued that Article 6 DARIO was the relevant provision, and not Article 7. Article 6 DARIO states that the conduct of an organ of an international organization is attributable to that international organization. The argument of the State was thus that the peacekeepers were a UN organ. This is also the view of the UN itself. But the Supreme Court followed the ILC Commentary to DARIO, according to which a battalion of peacekeepers is not a UN organ, because the battalion to a certain extent still acts as an organ of the State supplying the soldiers. Important in this assessment is the fact that the troop-contributing State retains disciplinary powers and criminal jurisdiction over its peacekeepers.

Interestingly, the Dutch Supreme Court also referred to Article 8 of the ILC’s Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (2001, ARS). Strictly speaking, Article 7 DARIO says nothing about the attribution of conduct of an organ placed at the disposal of an international organization by a State to that State. The Article deals exclusively with the responsibility of international organizations, such as the UN. All it says is that, if the international organization does not have effective control over the conduct of the organ, then it is not responsible for that conduct. But that does not mean that, by definition, this makes the State responsible in such cases. In theory, it could very well be that neither of the two is responsible. And so to complete the picture, the Dutch Supreme Court relied on Article 8 ARS. According to this provision, the conduct of a group of persons shall be considered an act of a State if the group is in fact acting under the effective control of that State in carrying out the conduct. This provision was meant to make it possible to attribute acts of persons not formally part of the State system to the State in exceptional circumstances.

One may wonder why the Supreme Court did not instead make use of Article 4 ARS, according to which the conduct of any State organ shall be considered an act of that State. If peacekeepers are not UN organs, then it would be logical to consider the peacekeeping force as a State organ instead. Peacekeepers are not the mercenaries, militants or bands of irregulars for which Article 8 ARS has been designed. But if we follow the Dutch Supreme Court, the peacekeepers are nobody’s organ; and whoever happens to be in effective control of them at the relevant time, is responsible for their actions.

July 23rd, 2014 - 11:30 AM EDT | No Comments » |

Events and Announcements: June 22, 2014

by Jessica Dorsey

Events

The Law and Practice of International Courts and Tribunals will take place on 18 July 2014 in Geneva. The seminar, the program of which is found here, will focus on the dialogue between the International Law Commission and international courts and tribunals. Members of the ILC, experts and practitioners will take part. The event is open to all.

Calls for Papers

The Editorial Board of Comparative Constitutional Law & Administrative Law Quarterly (CALQ) is inviting submissions for Vol. 2 No. 1 from legal academicians, professionals and students. The Journal attempts to initiate and foster academic dialogue concerning the subjects of Administrative Law and Constitutional Law keeping in mind a global perspective. More information can be found here.
Call for papers: Imagining post-neoliberal regulatory subjectivities @ Faculty of Law, University of Turku, Finland 15-17 October 2014. The Faculty of Law, University of Turku is pleased to announce a research seminar addressing post-neoliberal regulatory subjectivities. They have issued a call for papers dealing with different aspects of the “subjectivity turn”, understood here as the new art of neoliberal regulation aimed at producing actors with appropriate agency-a subjectivity. The papers could, for example, map the possible genealogies for the emergence of post-neoliberal law, or address the implications of anthropomorphic corporate regulation, or transformations in sovereign subjectivities. The organizers are able to pay for travel and accommodation for presenters.
Transnational Dispute Management has announced a new call for papers. The special will be edited by Craig Shepherd and Mike McClure and deals with “Arbitration in the Middle East - Expectations and Challenges for the Future.”

Last week’s events and announcements can be found here. If you would like to post an announcement on Opinio Juris, please contact us with a one-paragraph description of your announcement along with hyperlinks to more information.

June 22nd, 2014 - 11:10 AM EDT | Comments Off |

Analysing the US Invocation of Self-Defence Re: Abu Khattallah

by Kevin Jon Heller

Most of the discussion about Abu Khattallah’s capture in Libya has focused on the operation’s basis — or lack thereof — in domestic US law. Less attention has been paid to whether international law permitted the US to use force on Libyan soil. As Marty Lederman recently noted at Just Security, Abu Khattallah’s capture can potentially be justified on two different grounds: (1) Libya consented to the capture operation; or (2) the capture operation represented a legitimate act of self-defence under the UN Charter. The first justification does not appear open to the US; the available evidence indicates that the operation was conducted without Libya’s consent. So it’s not surprising that the US has claimed — in a letter submitted to the UN by Samantha Power on June 17 — that Article 51 permitted the operation:

The investigation also determined that [Abu Khattallah] continued to plan further armed attacks against U.S. persons. The measures we have taken to capture Abu Khattallah in Libya were therefore necessary to prevent such armed attacks, and were taken in accordance with the United States’ inherent right of self-defense. We are therefore reporting these measures to the Security Council in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.

Power’s letter obscures far more than it reveals. In fact, the US’s invocation of self-defence raises four very difficult questions:

Can a non-state actor launch an “armed attack” that triggers the right of self-defence?
If so, must that armed attack be attributable in some fashion to the state whose territory is the object of “self-defensive” force?
Do all uses of armed force qualify as an “armed attack” for purposes of Article 51?
Does the right of self-defence permit force to be used anticipatorily?

In this post, I want to put aside the first two questions. I have no doubt that a non-state actor can launch an armed attack within the meaning of Article 51, and my views on the “unwilling or unable” test are well-known. It’s worth spending some time, though, on the third and fourth questions.

The third question is interesting because it’s not clear that all uses of force qualify as “armed attacks” for purposes of Article 51. The UN Charter itself distinguishes between the “use of force” (Art. 2(4)) and “armed attack” (Art. 51), and the ICJ has suggested in both Nicaragua and Oil Platforms that at least some uses of force may be so de minimis that they do not entitle the victim state to use force in self-defence. (As opposed to taking other countermeasures.) On the other hand, customary international law seems to indicate that the threshold of force for an armed attack is extremely low. Here is Tom Ruys’ conclusion in his magisterial book “Armed Attack” and Article 51 of the UN Charter (p. 155):

In the end, customary practice suggests that, subject to the necessity and proportionality criteria, even small-scale bombings, artillery, naval or aerial attacks qualify as ‘armed attacks’ activating Article 51 UN Charter, as long as they result in, or are capable of resulting in destruction of property or loss of lives. By contrast, the firing of a single missile into some uninhabited wasteland as a mere display of force, in contravention of Article 2(4) UN Charter, would arguably not reach the gravity threshold.

In sum, the following general conclusions can be made: (1) the travaux of the Definition of Aggression suggest that a minimal gravity is indeed required and seem to rule out the aforementioned Option 3; (2) ‘concrete’ customary evidence nonetheless makes clear that the gravity threshold should not be set too high and that even small-scale attacks involving the use of (possibly) lethal force may trigger Article 51.

If Ruys is right — and he has examined state practice and opinio juris far more carefully than any other scholar writing on the use of force — the attack on the US embassy in Benghazi almost certainly was, in fact, an “armed attack” for purposes of Art. 51.

What, then, about the fourth question? Here is where the US claim of self-defence regarding the Abu Khattallah operation becomes problematic. The US clearly cannot use the original Benghazi armed attack to justify the operation — although a state’s response to an armed attack may not have to be immediate, the prohibition on armed force in Art. 2(4) of the UN Charter would be meaningless if a state could “pocket” an armed attack and respond to it with armed force much later — nearly two years later, in the case of Benghazi. Indeed, Power seems to acknowledge as much when she emphasises that Abu Khattallah was planning further armed attacks. Does that planning mean the capture operation was a legitimate act of self-defence by the US?

Answering that question, of course, requires us to address the temporal limits of self-defence under Art. 51. Three basic positions on that issue are possible:

Self-defence permits the use of force only in response to an armed attack; force cannot be used pre-emptively or preventively (“responsive self-defence”)
Self-defence permits the use of force to pre-empt an imminent armed attack but not to prevent a temporally more remote armed attack (“pre-emptive self-defence”)
Self-defence permits the use of force to prevent even a temporally remote armed attack (“preventive self-defence”)

Unfortunately, because of the US’s typical lack of transparency concerning its use of force, Power’s letter says nothing about the time-frame of the armed attacks Abu Khattallah was supposedly planning. (Nor does it provide any evidence of that planning, but that’s another question.) The time-frame doesn’t matter, however, if responsive self-defence is the correct position – as noted, the capture operation cannot be justified as a response to the original Benghazi attack.

Most readers — at least those in the West — will no doubt be inclined to reject responsive self-defence as too narrow, even though it is the only position consistent with the text of Article 51, which permits self-defence “if an armed attack occurs.” Surely customary international law does not require a state to wait until an armed attack has already taken place to defend itself, no matter what the UN Charter says.

This issue is much more difficult issue than it may appear. Those interested should read the relevant section of Ruys’ book; I’ll just quote his bottom line (pp. 341-42):

In light of the available evidence, it can be concluded that there has indeed been a shift in States’ opinio iuris insofar as support for pre-emptive self-defence, fairly rare and muted prior to 2001, has become more widespread and explicit in recent years. At the same time, it seems a bridge too far to claim that there exists today widespread acceptance of the legality of self-defence against so-called “imminent” threats. Such assertion tends to forego the opposition of a considerable group of mainly Latin-American, north-African and Asian States. In the present author’s view, it would therefore be more appropriate to argue that the crack in opinio iuris among States has widened, without, however, identifying one approach or the other as the majority view. The implication is that, taking account of the Charter “baseline” and the absence of a concrete precedent in State practice which convincingly demonstrates the international community’s support for some form of anticipatory self-defence, it is impossible to identify de lege lata a general right of pre- emptive – and a fortiori preventive – self-defence.

Ruys’ reference to the UN Charter’s “baseline” is important, because Art. 51′s adoption of responsive self-defence indicates that states who support a more relaxed concept of self-defence, such as the US, have the obligation to find sufficient state practice and opinio juris to establish a broader rule. And such state practice and opinio juris is simply lacking — unless, as is too often the case with custom, we simply ignore the views of the Global South.

Even if responsive self-defence is too narrow, however, that does not mean the Abu Khattallah operation was a legitimate act of self-defence. If the US had evidence that Abu Khattallah was about to launch another armed attack, it is reasonable to assume Powers would have said so in her letter. That she failed to do so thus seems to indicate — though is clearly not dispositive — that the US did not believe another armed attack was imminent when it launched the capture operation. Power’s letter may well indicate, therefore, that the US is promoting the broadest understanding of self-defence possible — preventive self-defence instead of pre-emptive self-defence. If so, as Ruys notes (pp. 336-38), the US is on shaky ground indeed:

[T]here can be no doubt that even among States adhering to the “counter-restrictionist” view, support for self-defence against non-imminent threats is virtually non-existent. Apart from the fact that the sponsors of Operation “Iraqi Freedom” avoided this justification, it may be observed that many States, such as Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Uganda, Singapore or Liechtenstein, which professed support for anticipatory self-defence after 2002, nonetheless placed great weight on the imminence requirement. Germany, for instance, expressly denounced an erosion of the Charter framework and State practice via the notion of “preventive self-defence.” Likewise, the French politique de defense unequivocally “rejects… the notion of preventive self-defence.”

What is more, even the “traditional” adherents of the counter-restrictionist interpretation of Article 51 generally appear to uphold the imminence requirement. Despite bold statements by its Prime Minister on the need to adapt the UN Charter, Australia’s response to “In Larger Freedom” was rather cautious: it simply “[supported] reaffirmation by the Secretary-General that Article 51 of the Charter adequately covers the inherent right to self-defence against actual and imminent attack.” Israel called for an explicit recognition in the World Summit Outcome that States may use force in self-defence “in the event of both actual and imminent attacks.” As far as the British position is concerned, Attorney- General Lord Goldsmith in 2004 declared before the House of Lords that: “It is… the Government’s view that international law permits the use of force in self-defence against an imminent attack but does not authorize the use of force to mount a pre-emptive strike against a threat that is more remote.”…

[W]e may therefore conclude that the trend in State practice has been broadly similar to that in legal doctrine: support for anticipatory self-defence has increased, but has by and large restricted this concept to imminent threats.

Again, in the absence of additional information, we cannot categorically reject the US’s insistence that the Abu Khattallah operation was a legitimate act of self-defence. But there is considerable reason to be skeptical. Indeed, the US’s lack of transparency concerning its understanding of Art. 51 of the UN Charter may well indicate it has adopted a position that even its closest allies formally disavow.

June 20th, 2014 - 1:29 PM EDT | 11 Comments » |

Bensouda Accuses UNAMID of Covering Up Sudanese Crimes

by Kevin Jon Heller

I’m not sure how I missed this, but these are very strong — and atypically blunt — allegations by Fatou Bensouda:

The International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Fatou Bensouda urged the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to investigate reports that the UN peacekeeping force in Darfur (UNAMID) deliberately contributed in covering up crimes in the restive region.

In reference to US-based Foreign Policy (FP) magazine reports, Bensouda asked the council to authorize a “thorough, independent and public inquiry” probe into allegations that UNAMID being subject to “manipulation” through acts committed “with the intentional effect of covering up crimes committed against civilians and peacekeepers”.

FP obtained confidential internal UN memos from UNAMID ex-spokesperson Aicha ElBasri that asserts how the UN peacekeeping force suppressed negative information on violations that occurred in Darfur by Sudanese government and other parties.

The ICC prosecutor said that the responsibility for the “cover-up” may lie “with a handful of individuals” but warned that it undermines the credibility of the peacekeeping mission.

Africa Review adds some additional detail to ElBasri’s disturbing allegations:

Last April, former Unamid spokeswoman Aicha Elbasri, revealed that the unit had misinformed the UN by withholding important details about Darfur.

Unamid has observed the government forces indiscriminately bombing entire villages, targeting civilian and military targets alike. However, these observations are never publically reported in the regular updates by the UN Secretary General to the UNSC,” Ms Elbasri claimed.

She reported that the UN peacekeeping mission did not tell the world that the Khartoum government failed to disarm the Janjaweed militias; that it, conversely, reintegrated them into paramilitary forces under new names, and let them continue committing their widespread, systematic attacks directed against the civilian population in Darfur.

The UNAMID situation obviously requires a UN investigation, so it’s encouraging to see that Bensouda request was quickly supported by both Australia and Rwanda. The UK’s statement, however, is disappointingly tentative, suggesting that the Secretariat — and not the Security Council — should investigate. Given the seriousness of the allegations, that’s simply not good enough.

June 20th, 2014 - 8:17 AM EDT | Comments Off |

Bombing Iraq Doesn’t Just Pose Serious Questions of Domestic Law, International Law May Be a Problem, Too

by Deborah Pearlstein

My blogospheric colleagues have begun debating whether the Administration has sufficient domestic legal authority to proceed with what the Times has called a “targeted, highly selective campaign of airstrikes against Sunni militants in Iraq” – reportedly now under contemplation. Jack Goldsmith, for example, thinks it might, under the 2002 statute authorizing the President to use military force against the government of Iraq for the purpose of ridding it of its “weapons of mass destruction.” My friends at Just Security and elsewhere have usefully debunked this notion, and related others (like the idea I’ve argued against here, that ISIS can be considered any kind of “associate” of Al Qaeda).

But while I’d contest the idea that the discussion so far is “premature” – it is no doubt precisely a topic with which Administration lawyers are currently struggling – the doubtful legality of such a set of strikes under domestic law is made even worse by the likely illegality of such strikes under international law. That is, even if the United States could come up with a domestic statutory basis for some military action in Iraq – extant Title 50 covert action authorities are quite broad, for example – it would still struggle for the approval of our allies on international legal grounds. Here’s my thinking. (more…)

June 18th, 2014 - 10:10 AM EDT | Trackbacks(4) | 10 Comments » |

Charles Taylor Requests Transfer to Rwanda

by Kevin Jon Heller

Full disclosure: Taylor is represented by John Jones QC, who is my colleague at Doughty Street Chambers.

Charles Taylor has filed a disturbing motion with the Special Court for Sierra Leone’s Residual Mechanism, requesting that he be transferred from prison in the UK to a prison in Rwanda because of his mistreatment by the British government. Here are the key paragraphs from the motion’s introduction:

Charles Taylor is the first and only person sent by an international court to serve their sentence, against their wish, outside of their continent of origin. This previously invariable practice accords with a basic requirement of humane treatment: that prisoners should be able to receive periodic visits from their families. International human rights standards, including as recently affirmed by the European Court of Human Rights (“ECtHR”) in Khodorkovskiy, prohibit sending a prisoner unnecessarily for away from the habitual residence of family members, or otherwise creating obstacles that prevent periodic visits.

That is precisely the consequence of Mr. Taylor’s detention in the United Kingdom (“UK”). The extraordinary cost and difficulty of travel for Liberian citizens to the UK, given the financial circumstances of Mr. Taylor’s family, means that Mr. Taylor will seldom, if ever, see his wife and three young daughters, let alone the rest of his family, again. That deprivation will continue, given the length of Mr. Taylor’s sentence, for the remainder of his life unless significant measures are taken to facilitate those visits. The UK has, to the contrary, obstructed such visits. Visa requests by Mr. Taylor’s wife and two of his young daughters have been denied even though the UK was well aware of the purpose of the requested visit. Mr. Taylor has not seen his wife and children since being transferred to the UK eight months ago. This already constitutes a human rights violation: the ECtHR has specifically held that even shorter periods of deprivation of family contact constitute a violation of the right to family life.

Even if these legal impediments were to be surmounted, neither the UK nor the RSCSL has demonstrated any willingness to overcome the inherent difficulties and cost of travel to the UK so as to permit family visits of even a minimally acceptable frequency. The United Kingdom and the RSCSL are jointly and severally responsible for the violation of not only Mr. Taylor’s right to family life, but that of his family members. An immediate remedy is required to put an end to this ongoing violation, and a remedy is readily available to the RSCSL: terminate his enforcement in the UK and transfer Mr. Taylor to Rwanda.

Mr. Taylor’s isolation is exacerbated by the conditions in which he is, and must be, held in the UK. Mr. Taylor has been confined to the prison’s hospital wing, effectively in isolation, since his arrival there. The prison authorities believe, correctly, that Mr. Taylor is too much of a target and too vulnerable to be accommodated within the general prison population. The seriousness of the danger is underscored by the interception of an anonymous letter, possibly originating from within the prison itself, threatening Mr. Taylor with bodily harm and death. Radislav Krstić, whose crimes were less notorious than those for which Mr. Taylor has been found responsible, suffered a near-fatal attack by fellow inmates in a UK prison in 2010. The ICTY was apparently sufficiently concerned about the UK’s ability to ensure adequate conditions of detention for Mr. Krstić that he was transferred back to The Hague. The RSCSL should be equally concerned about the real threat faced by Mr. Taylor, and the unsuitability of a UK prison to ensure that he is kept in a situation that meets the minimum standards required by international law.

The RSCSL should accordingly exercise its authority pursuant to Article 9(2) of the Enforcement of Sentences Agreement between the Court and the UK on 10 July 2007 (“SCSL-UK Enforcement Agreement”) and immediately terminate the enforcement of Mr. Taylor’s sentence, and order that he be transferred directly to Rwanda or, in the alternative, to The Hague pending further deliberations. Rwanda is a location that will permit reasonably frequent family visits and provide Mr. Taylor with a safe environment without being segregated from all other prisoners.

The motion’s allegations, which are supported by hundreds of pages of annexes, are profoundly unsettling. I’d like to say I’m surprised that I haven’t heard more about Taylor’s situation, but I’m not: the media generally pay attention only to individuals accused of international crimes, producing article after article about the allegedly cushy conditions in the UN Detention Unit — the so-called “Hague Hilton.” Once defendants are convicted, journalists seem to lose interest in them. I hope this new motion will spur more coverage of post-conviction detention, which is anything but cushy even in places as “advanced” as the UK — as Taylor’s situation demonstrates.

It will be interesting to see if the SCSL takes the motion seriously. It should.

June 17th, 2014 - 4:47 AM EDT | Trackbacks(2) | 12 Comments » |

Weekly News Wrap: Monday, June 16, 2014

by Jessica Dorsey

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world:

Africa

Three armed groups from northern Mali have agreed to begin peace talks with the government aimed at resolving long-standing disputes in the country.
More than 50,000 children in South Sudan face death from disease and hunger, the United Nations has warned while seeking over $1bn to support those hit by six months of civil war.
Entire elephant populations are dying out in many African countries due to poaching on a massive scale, wildlife regulator CITES has warned, while also hailing the continent for improving its crackdown on ivory smuggling.

Asia

The Philippines said on Monday that China’s “expansion agenda” in the disputed South China Sea threatened security and stability in the region, calling on all claimant states to halt construction activities that may raise tensions.
Thailand’s junta denied on Monday that they were pursuing a “sweep and clean” policy of driving illegal foreign workers out of the country, despite mass departures by fearful Cambodians since the military took power last month.
Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has filed a case with local police accusing 17 people of breaching regulations over the construction of a building that collapsed last year, killing nearly 1,130 mostly garment workers, officials have said.

Europe

NATO is preparing measures to help Ukraine defend itself in its stand-off with Russia, and must adapt to the fact that Moscow now views it as an adversary.
Ukraine’s energy minister says Russia has cut off all natural gas supplies to his country, adding however that he guarantees reliable gas flows will continue to Russia’s European clients who get imports through pipelines via Ukraine.
UK’s Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative party said on Thursday it would resume a stalled drive to make a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union legally binding, a move designed to woo Eurosceptic voters and unite the party.
Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko took office this past weekend, immediately promising to sign a long-awaited trade deal with the European Union as soon as the latter approves the pact.

Middle East and Northern Africa

An offensive by insurgents that threatens to dismember Iraq seemed to slow on Saturday after days of lightning advances as government forces regained some territory in counter-attacks, easing pressure on the Shi’ite-led government in Baghdad.
Sunni rebels in Iraq have posted pictures on Twitter apparently showing their fighters killing many Shia soldiers.
Israeli forces have killed a Palestinian man and arrested the speaker of parliament, as the hunt for three Israelis believed to have been kidnapped in the West Bank continued.

Americas

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos won a second term on Sunday with an election victory that allows him to continue peace talks with Marxist guerrillas to end a half-century war.
President Barack Obama has said that the United States will not be sending its troops back to Iraq, but is reviewing other options to assist the Iraqi government threatened by an advancing armed group.

UN/Other

Nuclear-armed states are modernizing their arsenals and appear determined to keep sizable numbers of such weapons of mass destruction for the foreseeable future, the SIPRI think-tank said in its annual report on Monday.

June 16th, 2014 - 7:55 AM EDT | 2 Comments » |

Lethal Drone Strikes — Not Just for American Citizens Any More!

by Kevin Jon Heller

Not surprisingly, drone strikes that kill American citizens have received the most attention in the press. So it’s important to emphasize that the US kills citizens of its allies, as well, such as the two Australians recently vaporized in Yemen:

TWO Australian citizens have been killed in a US airstrike in Yemen in what is the first known example of Australian extremists dying as a result of Washington’s highly controversial use of predator drones.

The Australian has been told the two men, believed to be in their 20s, were killed in a Predator drone strike on five al-Qa’ida militants travelling in a convoy of cars in Hadramout, in eastern Yemen, on November 19.

The men were Christopher Havard of Townsville and a New Zealand dual citizen who went by the name “Muslim bin John’’ and fought under the alias “Abu Suhaib al-Australi’’.

The Australian government, which insists it was given no advance warning of the strike, has positively identified the remains of the men using DNA analysis, with samples taken from families of the two men.

[snip]

A senior counter-terrorism source told The Australian the men were “foot soldiers’’ for al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Qa’ida’s regional franchise based in Yemen.

It is understood US authorities notified Australian officials about the possibility Australian citizens might have been “collateral damage’’ in the strike, part of an ongoing campaign by the US and Yemeni governments to wipe out AQAP militants.

“The Americans advised us that they had intelligence that suggested they may have been in the car and may have been collateral damage,’’ the source said.

Note that although the drone strike did not target the two Australians, the Australian government knows for a fact that the men were “foot soldiers” for AQAP. And how does it know this? What evidence does it have? Who knows — taking a page from the US, the government won’t say. And some journalists are not impressed. Here is The Guardian‘s Antony Loewenstein:

Yet, uncertainty be damned, the Australian government seems to keep on supporting the CIA killings with most of the media following without question.

Fairfax Media headlined one story “Abbott government defends drone strike that killed two Australian Al-Qaeda militants” without challenging that the two men were, indeed, militants or affiliated with Al-Qaida – they may or may not have been, but innocent civilians have been killed by drones before. The sentence “alleged militants, according to the government” never appeared in the article (this is a relatively common habit in journalism – see for example this essential take-down of a New York Times report on drone killings in Yemen).

I’ve reported independently from Pakistan and Afghanistan, and accurate journalism requires finding reliable sources on the ground (or corresponding with individuals through email, phone, encryption or Twitter) who can confirm or challenge the official version. It’s not rocket science, though definitive information can be scarce in a war zone.

In the last days I’ve reached out to various sources in Yemen (some of the best are here, here and here) and asked Sanaa-based Baraa Shiban to comment. His answer is revealing. “The lack of transparency has became a fixed strategy for the US in its drone war. The US announced recently the death of almost 30 militants in a training camp in Abyan, south of Yemen, but can’t release a single name; this tells it all.”

Taking the word of security sources and the state, when this information is so often wrong or deliberately skewed by anonymous officials whostrategically leak to justify their counter-terrorism policies, is sadly all too common. “We don’t know the facts” is not a shameful statement. To be skeptical shouldn’t be a flaw, but an asset.

Skepticism as an asset, not a flaw. What a radical idea…

Hat-Tip: Bianca Dillon.

June 16th, 2014 - 7:09 AM EDT | 1 Comment » |

Events and Announcements: June 15, 2014

by An Hertogen

Events

BIICL is organising an event on ‘Due Diligence: From Rhetoric to Practice’ on Monday June 16, 2014 from 3.00-7.45pm. The event brings together expert speakers from a variety of backgrounds, including lawyers, academics, the private sector and non-governmental organisations. Their expertise will highlight the pertinent aspects of the UN Guiding Principles as a framework for all current approaches in this area as well as their practical implementation. More information and registration is here.
The Geneva Academy is holding an events on June 16 on The Situation of Women’s Rights 20 Years after the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights. More information is here.

Announcements

Pretoria University Law Press (Pulp) has just published an original book on the highest courts of Brazil, India and South Africa (BISA countries). The book Transformative Constitutionalism: Comparing the Apex Courts of Brazil, India and South Africa, published in December 2013 and now fully available online, is the first scholarly account on how the BISA highest courts manage to implement their respective transformative constitutions, including a critical view on instances where those courts fall short of it. You can read the book here.

June 15th, 2014 - 8:00 AM EDT | Comments Off |

Weekend Roundup: June 7 – 13, 2014

by An Hertogen

This week on Opinio Juris, Kevin had a chuckle at Libya’s newest excuse why it missed the deadline for filing submissions to the ICC. He also called your attention to the work of Breaking the Silence, an Israeli NGO collecting testimonials from IDF on the treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.

Deborah discussed ongoing confusion between al Qaeda and ISIS, and the wider implications of such confusion for war policy decisions.

Julian wrote about the PR battle between China and Vietnam on the South China Sea and posted a link to his and John Yoo’s Forbes piece criticizing Bond v United States as a missed opportunity. In other treaty-related news, Duncan wondered how significant a new protocol to the ILO Convention on Forced Labor would be.

Michael Ramsey wrote a guest post on the latest round over the battle between Argentina and its bondholders over the application of the FSIA, and Chris closed the week with a tribute to Andreas Lowenfeld who passed away on June 9.

Finally, Jessica listed events and announcements and wrapped up the news.

Have a nice weekend!

June 14th, 2014 - 3:00 AM EDT | Comments Off |

Andreas Lowenfeld: A Life Illuminating the Path

by Chris Borgen

photo: NYU Law School

I am sad to mark the passing of one of the giants of international law, and one of my teachers, Professor Andreas Lowenfeld of NYU Law School. His career was exemplary; Andy operated at the highest levels of practice and academia. In an era when so many scholars and practitioners become hyper-focused on one or two specific areas, Andy not only had incredible depth and precision, but also brought the panoramic view and sweeping vision of an earlier generation of international lawyers. Though perhaps best known for his work in international litigation and arbitration, that description does not capture his career. Consider this excerpt from his New York Times obituary:

Professor Lowenfeld was a towering figure in the fields of public international law, trade and economic law, private international law, and international arbitration. He served on the NYU Law faculty for 47 years, influencing generations of lawyers, and continued to teach International Litigation and Arbitration and International Monetary System among other courses until as recently as Spring 2013. Professor Lowenfeld wrote more than 18 books and authoritative legal treatises and over 115 law review articles and argued before the United States Supreme Court, the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, and the International Court of Justice in the Hague. He made landmark contributions to legal scholarship and practice on issues as varied as extraterritorial jurisdiction, international arbitration, international monetary transactions, trans-border child abduction, international monetary law, investor-state dispute settlement, economic sanctions, enforcement of foreign judgments, aviation law, sovereign immunity, international trade, and civil procedure. His most recent work was a comprehensive treatise on International Economic Law. An avid supporter of the interaction between academics and practitioners, he was frequently an arbitrator in international disputes, public and private. He served as a Reporter on two major projects of the American Law Institute and was a lecturer twice at the Hague Academy, first in 1979 and later in 1994. In the 1994 lectures, he proposed criteria for a global community free of strict legal rules and based instead upon what he termed “reasonableness, not certainty.” One of the hallmarks of his work was his commitment to eliminating what he viewed as an unnecessary divide between public and private international law. In 2007, he was awarded the Manley O. Hudson Medal of the American Society of International Law for his lifelong achievements in the field of international law.

(Read the rest of the obituary here. See also this tribute from 2009.)

And that doesn’t even cover his years in the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser during the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations where:

[h]e provided strategic counsel to those presidents during the Cuban Missile Crisis; the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; the so-called “Chicken War,” in which the U.S. and the European Common Market sparred over poultry tariffs; and the U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic.

Andy Lowenfeld’s scholarship and his career argued against the “unnecessary divide of public and private international law,” setting the stage (along with Philip Jessup) for the current focus on complex regulation, transnational law, and dispute resolution. He taught us how public and private international law interact in an interconnected system and, by his example, he showed us how diverse aspects of the international legal profession could be integrated into a coherent career.

I have the great fortune of having been one of Andy’s students. My second year at NYU, I took the general course in international law, which was then team-taught by Andy Lowenfeld and Theodor Meron. Learning international law from “Ted and Andy” as we affectionately referred to them (behind their backs, that is) was everything you would expect from such lawyers: a lively dialogue interweaving law, history, politics, and economics. I was also Andy’ s student in what was perhaps his signature course, his International Litigation and Arbitration seminar. Here he paired each JD student with a foreign LL.M. to brief and argue an issue in a case, before a bench made up of 3 of our classmates. It was a wonderful bit of experiential learning that has stayed with me and taught me as much about how to be a good teacher as to how to be a good litigator.

In the years since I graduated from law school, Andy Lowenfeld remained generous with his time and wise counsel. I may have become a professor, but he never stopped being my teacher.

But perhaps my favorite memory of Andy was from when I was the Director of Research and Outreach at the ASIL. Andy was a panelist on an international arbitration panel we organized for a Fifth Circuit judicial conference in San Antonio. After the panel, he told me we should go visit the Alamo. So, one hot summer afternoon we toured the Alamo together; I will always remember his enthusiasm in examining the exhibits, especially anything having to do with the deeds, land grants, and international agreements concerning the disposition of territory. He interspersed our conversation about the history of the U.S.-Mexico border with reminiscences from the State Department, career advice, some thoughts on scholarly projects I was considering, and anecdotes from his incredible career. At one point there was a boy, who was maybe seven years old, standing near us and holding a large faux-parchment facsimile of a document, probably recently acquired from the gift shop. Andy started questioning the boy about the topic of the text on his souvenir, whether or not the reproduction was accurate, and so on. (The boy stared, then shrugged; Andy walked on.) It made me smile watching Andy attempting a Socratic dialogue with a first grader. Even while walking around the Alamo, Andy Lowenfeld was first and foremost an educator and a mentor.

I want to close with a few of Andy’s own words, taken from his magisterial International Economic Law (Oxford, 2d. ed 2008). In the preface, he argues against the skeptics and describes (with perhaps a wink to Louis Henkin) a realistic appreciation of international economic law:

This book is not founded on a claim that all states and all economic enterprises behave at all times according to all the rules, nor that the rules are clear and universally agreed at all levels. But one would not say that there is no criminal law because crimes continue to be committed and are not always punished, or that there is no family law because marriages break up, husbands beat their wives, and children are abused. In fact international conventions, collaborative arrangements, roughly uniform national laws, and customary laws apply to much of the international economy; while there is no global sheriff, and the system of remedies does not reach as far as the system of rules, there are a surprising number of consequences of deviant behavior, and a growing number of fora for resolving disputes among states and between states and private participants in the international economy.

Almost 1,000 pages later, the closing passage puts more than his treatise into perspective: :

It is evident that this book has made more use of narrative and illustration, and less of flat normative statements than might have been expected from a treatise. This approach reflects my belief that the answers cannot be understood without the question, and that abstract statements cannot be comprehended without awareness of the underlying facts and continuing controversies.

This is not to deny the normative character of international economic law. But international economic law—like all law but perhaps more so—is a process. Any attempt to define the law as of a given moment cannot help but distort. The process continues, and the hope is that this book has illuminated the path.

[Emphasis added.]

It has. And so has Andreas Lowenfeld’s life.

June 12th, 2014 - 3:03 PM EDT | 3 Comments » |

The Supreme Court Misses an Opportunity to Place Constitutional Limits on the Treaty Power in Bond v. United States

by Julian Ku

My co-author John Yoo and I have a piece up on Forbes today arguing that the U.S. Supreme Court missed a grand opportunity in Bond v. U.S. to place constitutional limits on the treaty power. We take aim at Missouri v. Holland head-on. We criticize the interpretation of the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act adopted by the opinion for the Court of Chief Justice Roberts and argue this decision has echoes of his opinion in Sebelius on the Affordable Care Act. Here is an excerpt:

Holmes was wrong in 1920, however, and the Obama administration is wrong today. The Founders’ original understanding supports a federalism limitation on the treaty power, and this is especially compelling in light of today’s far-reaching and ambitious modern treaties. Unfortunately, the Court’s opinion refused to directly reject Missouri’s mistaken approach.

June 12th, 2014 - 5:02 AM EDT | 5 Comments » |