Search: extraterritorial sanctions

[Mona Ali Khalil is an internationally recognized public international lawyer with 25 years of UN and other experience dealing with the rule of law and international peace and security efforts including peacekeeping, sanctions, disarmament and counterterrorism.] In the face of a veto by any permanent member of the UN Security Council blocking enforcement action against the mass atrocities in Palestine, Myanmar, Syria and Yemen and elsewhere, is the international community helpless to help – failing to fulfill its responsibility to protect? Proponents of the use of force for purposes of...

...as special adviser on public international law for the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. That court, as is well known, has issued indictments against high level officials of the government of Sudan, including its chief of state. The Security Council has, to date, ducked all pleas by the ICC Prosecutor to assist the Court in enforcing these indictments, even though the Council could easily do so under its Chapter VII authority, including its existing sanctions regime for the Sudan under Security Council Resolution 1591 (2005). What would TWAILERs’ advice...

South Sudan’s Parliament has ratified a border and oil deal with Sudan, which includes a demilitarized zone between the two states. The EU has placed new sanctions on Iranian oil, gas and tanker companies, the effects of which Iran calls futile. In related news, A NYTimes article describes the impact of European sanctions on Iran’s ability to keep the money printing presses going. Invoking humanitarian reasons, the UK government has blocked the extradition of Gary McKinnon to the United States where he is wanted for hacking into military computers in...

...what might satisfy this due diligence obligation. Dormann and Serralvo offer examples of states enforcing sanctions against other states not in compliance (an approach that might also arguably be applied to nonstate actors), or the panoply of regulations and restrictions attached to arms export. Domestic and international frameworks governing arms export, trade, and assistance tend to be at least partly motivated by the responsibilities invoked under Common article 1 as well as other treaty obligations to prevent weapons transfers that might contribute to serious violations of IHL or human rights...

...the IAEA refused to recognize in 1982 the credentials of Israeli delegates in the aftermath of the raid on the Osiraq reactor; Myanmar was deprived of ILO technical cooperation in 1999 as a result of its practice of forced labor; the OAS suspended Cuba from membership in 1962; Egypt was suspended from the Organization from the Islamic Conference in 1979. (These examples are cited as the kind of countermeasures anticipated by the ILC’s articles by Frédéric Dopagne, “Sanctions and Countermeasures by International Organizations: diverging Lessons for the Idea of Autonomy,”...

...a matter of intense bilateral concern. When President Barack Obama and Argentine President Christine Fernandez met for the first time in November 2011, the two heads of state spent the majority of their time discussing Argentina’s obligation to pay the arbitration awards, and the consequences that would flow from its failure to do so. The United States is clearly calculating that such trade sanctions will alter Argentina’s cost-benefit analysis. Buenos Aires is set to pay approximately $18 million annually in increased duties as a result of the GSP suspension, far...

...dispute between China and the Philippines? And why exactly wouldn’t this cause a trade war with China and why wouldn’t it violate the WTO Agreement? And when exactly did the International Court of Justice get involved given that China has not consented to that court’s compulsory jurisdiction? Not only is this not a plausible mechanism for sanctions against China (the world’s second largest economy), but it is not a plausible mechanism for sanctions against almost any country in the world. It has never been done before outside of the trade...

...joint report, “Regulating Irregular Actors: Can Due Diligence Checks Mitigate the Risks of Working with Nonstate and Substate Forces?” The study explores due diligence and risk mitigation mechanisms in seven US partnerships with nonstate or substate armed groups in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria (from 2009 to the present), including provision of training, regular monitoring, establishing rules and standards, threatening or applying sanctions, and other mechanisms. There are a few important caveats to make up-front. Despite their legal-esque tenor, most of these measures were adopted by the US on a policy...

...producing changes in state behavior. For example, states may not trust information produced by other states or international institutions. Epistemic institutions can take steps to increase the perceived legitimacy of information, but in some instances credible commitments may be more effective. Second, even with improved information, states may still lack an incentive to coordinate their behavior in the absence of the threat of sanctions. Certain public goods problems, like fisheries, raise this issue. Knowing what constitutes a sustainable fish catch does not by itself provide an incentive for a state...

...of a regime of classified information that is at once far too sweeping but, for precisely that reason, largely incapable of having the teeth necessary to keep secrets. It is a classification regime that serves as nip for the cat, and a marker of access rather than a lockbox for necessary secrets. A better system – not likely in our lifetimes, presumably – would be far less ability to classify things, including a classification system clearly tied to a range of sanctions from loss of job to prison. But the...

...motion calling for condemnation and recognition in respect of Nagorno-Karabakh. Similar resolutions calling for varying degrees of action, from sanctions to recognition, have begun to surface before governments around the world since a “Ceasefire Statement” brokered by Russia between Armenia and Azerbaijan came into effect on 10 November 2020, bringing a fragile end to renewed hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh that raged since 27 September 2020. The Ceasefire Statement, which allows Azerbaijan to hold on to areas of Nagorno-Karabakh that it seized during the conflict and requires Armenia to withdraw from several...

...enjoy in ‘safe havens’ around the world.  To remedy such blatant injustice, States, victim groups and practitioners are increasingly exploring opportunities to recover assets of perpetrators to be repurposed for reparations – an endeavour which has gathered increased momentum since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For example, in 2022 Canada introduced legal reforms to enable the confiscation of funds frozen under sanctions, and their repurposing for the benefit of victims.  The EU has contemplated imposing a levy on interest made from frozen Russian assets to raise an estimated three billion...