Search: extraterritorial sanctions
23 Sep Statehood and Resistance: Scholars Reflect on the West’s Recognition of Palestine(‘s Existence)
...unlawful occupation of Palestinian lands since 1967 also needs to end, as the International Court of Justice reminded the world in an advisory opinion last year. Concerted pressure is needed beyond civil society. States need to support boycotts, divestments and full-spectrum sanctions, until the occupation ends, and the Palestinian state is independent. The UK has a special responsibility towards the Palestinian people given its colonial past. As a British citizen of Palestinian heritage, I was proud to have been asked to hand deliver a 433-page petition to HMG at 10...
23 Oct Failing the Institution? The Assembly of States Parties’ Management of the Investigation into the Prosecutor
...when powerful States have decidedly taken action to end the work of the Court, States Parties seem unfussed by the degree of institutional turmoil this situation has created. Not only is the Office of the Prosecutor’s main administrator on leave of absence, the whole leadership is under sanctions from the Trump administration. More so, the stream of media articles linking or questioning the relationship between the arrest warrants in the Situation of Palestine case and the chief Prosecutor’s alleged misconduct should prompt States Parties to seek clarity, transparency and finality...
14 Apr Not All Aggression is Equal: Why Force for Regime Change is the Graver Breach
...Security Council action. Russia and China drew the explicit lesson from Libya when they blocked Council resolutions on Syria: a civilian protection mandate would be used for regime change. The systemic resonance was immediate and durable. Venezuela (2019-2026) The Venezuela situation traces the full arc of regime-change aggression, from coercive pressure to its logical conclusion. Beginning in 2019, the United States recognized Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s “interim president,” imposed sweeping sanctions designed to collapse the Maduro government’s finances, and made explicit that “all options are on the table,” the standard...
15 May The Legality of Uganda’s Military Intervention in South Sudan
...of arms and related materiel as well as ‘technical assistance, training, financial or other assistance, related to military activities or the provision, maintenance or use of any arms and related materiel, including the provision of armed mercenary personnel’ (para 4). The Resolution also provides for a limited exemption regime. States that desire to offer military assistance must apply for exemptions from the Sanctions Committee (paras 5-6). In Resolution 2683 (2023), the UNSC removed the exemption requirement only for the provision of non-lethal military equipment or assistance solely in support of...
23 Jun Symposium on the Global Sumud Flotilla: The Legal Architecture of Maritime Abduction – The Global Sumud Flotilla and Israel’s Legal Fictions
...of state sovereignty and resource efficiency. Consequently, instead of initiating protracted and costly criminal proceedings under Section 12, the state defaulted to Section 13, issuing administrative deportation orders and temporary custody mandates to expedite removal. The penal sanctions of Section 12 are thus reserved as an exceptional measure, applied almost exclusively to repeat offenders or cases involving compounded domestic crimes. Still, the legal fiction of illegal entry is a crime malum prohibitum. According to Penal Law 5737-1977 of Israel, section 31 criminalises any individual who contributes in any manner to...
29 Jul Starved into Submission: Siege Doctrine from Syria to Mariupol (Part 1)
...shielding the latter from accountability, was entirely visible at the UN Security Council. Resolutions seeking to mandate humanitarian access to besieged areas were consistently vetoed or watered down and politicised. In May 2014, Russia and China vetoed a Security Council resolution that would have referred the situation in Syria to the ICC. In February 2017, Russia and China vetoed a resolution that would have imposed sanctions over chemical weapons attacks. Having exercised its veto repeatedly and systematically for over a decade, Russia effectively insulated the Syrian regime’s conduct from accountability....
09 Sep Contemporary International Criminal Law After Critique Symposium: Carceral Internationalism in the Situation of Palestine After Critique
...Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the United Nations Commission of Inquiry) to various forms of direct action and protest (such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign and related student-led encampments around the world). These mobilisations of multiple overlapping and sometimes contradictory vocabularies as part of a broader strategic struggle is what O’Connell has termed ‘emancipatory or critical multilingualism’. In this vein, we agree with Edelbi, who argues that rather than abandoning international law, ‘we need to make use of legal tools in more creative, subversive and contrapuntal ways that...
16 Jul Argentinian Arrest Warrants for Crimes against the Rohingya: The Power of Small States
...those for who sanctions have already been imposed by the US and UK. The Argentine Prosecutor and his staff expended time, resources, and humanity because of their compulsion to act in the services of the Rohingya, a group with whom they share no common language, culture or history. This is an extraordinary act, particularly at a time where our faith as proponents of international criminal justice is being so violently tested. Lawyers in Argentina, like in The Gambia, have shown unilateral moral leadership where multilateral efforts have failed, motivated by...
31 Oct Fifth Annual Symposium on Pop Culture and International Law: “I Am Your Way Out” – Reading the Violence of Validation in International Law Through the Movie Sinners
...of joining NATO when its war with Russia broke out following Russia’s invasion of it. Generally, the international community was quick to accept that Russia was the aggressor in that case, and was deserving of punishment swiftly meted out in the form of sanctions and bans from participating in international activities. The Israel – Palestine conflict of course has a different history, with the United Nations determining that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza since October 2023. However, in this case the international community has been slow to condemn Israel’s...
10 Apr Judge Them by Their Actions, Not Their Words: Legal and Political Recognition of Governments and the Prospective CEDAW Case Against Afghanistan Before the ICJ
...be affected. For example, the US does not recognise the Taliban partly to keep them from accessing assets by the Afghan Central Bank held by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (though the surrounding circumstances are more complex). But this goal could be achieved without recourse to the (de-)recognition of governments. While the law on (third-party) countermeasures and unilateral sanctions is deeply contested, the practice by many Western states to freeze Russian central bank assets at least shows that these states consider such a freeze legally possible without de-recognising...