Search: extraterritorial sanctions

...for going after terrorists themselves. But even as the administration wants to expand the reach of the strategy, the legal space for it threatens to shrink. And it is not especially clear that the administration understands that acceptance of certain things that parts of its foreign policy advisors would like to do – accept extraterritorial application of the ICCPR, for example – would have potentially grave effects on the legal rationales it offers for its targeted killing strategies. I see it as a potential clash within the Obama administration’s foreign...

...actors (BVerfG, 2 BvE 2/16, paras. 50–51). At any rate, such extraterritorial operations may constitute a violation of the sovereignty of the State of sojourn. If this State – for example, Afghanistan (now represented by the Taliban) – did not consent to such an attack, the strike would constitute a violation of the principle of non-intervention derived from the principle of the sovereign equality of States (Article 2(1) UN Charter) (cf. ICJ, Nicaragua Judg. 1986, para. 202); it could also amount to a violation of the prohibition of the use...

...the plaintiffs. But the court isn’t buying it. It finds that the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) doesn’t protect foreign harms, including Mexican seepage wetlands just south of the border. Statutes don’t normally have extraterritorial application and there’s nothing in NEPA to suggest Congress wanted to protect these foreign environmental harms. Okay, that argument didn’t hold water, so the plaintiffs try for trans-boundary harm. Harms in Mexico will have trans-boundary harms in the United States. Like what? Well, the loss of seepage in Mexico will reduce crop importation to the...

...world states violate human rights, rule-of-law-abiding weapons manufacturers in the first world respond to the conscience of humanity by adhering to their extraterritorial human rights obligations (see, EU Criterion Two). However, when benevolent and civilised states commit atrocities, these actions are often dismissed as the unfortunate consequences of war. The suspension of arms trade is not even considered until the scale of the atrocities becomes too significant to ignore. When it’s raining bombs, trade becomes a passive factor against carnages and barbarisms of weapon-yielding entities, states or non-state entities or...

...international efforts focus primarily on preventing the effects of such threats, rather than on addressing the threats themselves or sanctioning them. There may be an implicit understanding that deviates from the stricter conclusions of the Nuclear Weapons Advisory Opinion. Specifically, the threat of force in response to the extrajudicial and extraterritorial killing of a high-ranking individual within domestic settings (even if they are considered leaders of terrorist organizations, such as Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the US and the EU) might be viewed as a proportionate...

...aggression by Germany and Japan. Israel’s obligations in the law of occupation and international human rights law (applicable extraterritorially), which govern how it exercises its military authority in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, oblige it to secure public order and protect human rights. However, even if these obligations, especially those in occupation law (specifically, Article 43 of the Hague Regulations, part of occupation law) can be understood as a general matter to encompass an obligation to use force in occupied territory to neutralize threats emanating from there to...

Last week the Ninth Circuit issued a controversial opinion in Mujica v. Airscan, Inc., that sharply limits the scope of human rights litigation. The claims in Mujica arose in Colombia and allegedly implicate corporate collusion with the Colombian military. Following Kiobel the common consensus was that Alien Tort Statute litigation would be severely curtailed based on the presumption against extraterritoriality. Not surprisingly, the Ninth Circuit rejected the Plaintiffs’ claims, finding that where the only connection to the United States was the Defendants’ nationality, the claims do not “touch and concern”...

...as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s efforts to obtain full membership at the UN) is “pure diplomatic terrorism” peaceful Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) efforts are economic terrorism; legal work and engagement with international mechanisms is legal terrorism; and those who do such work are “Terrorists in Suits.” Perhaps, for Israel, even writing this article or any similar intellectual exercise is intellectual terrorism. Moreover, for Israel, any criticism of its human rights violations is antisemitism. Even calling Israel’s regime by its name and the accurate legal characterization, i.e., “apartheid,” is antisemitic. Likewise,...

...Conclusion President Trump represents an existential threat to the international legal order. In facing such challenges, small States–who lack the economic weight to exert countermeasures and reprisals against potential sanctions, as is the case of Panama– must resort to international law and multilateral diplomacy, particularly when dealing with threats against their own territorial integrity and political independence. In situations such as this, time is of the essence. Photo attribution: “ In the Panama Canal, 1994 ” from Family collection of Infrogmation of New Orleans is licenced under CC BY-SA 4.0...

As readers no doubt know, Fatou Bensouda announced yesterday that the OTP is opening a formal investigation into the situation in Palestine. Doing so was a foregone conclusion, given the Pre-Trial Chamber’s recent decision that the ICC has jurisdiction over crimes committed in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Regardless, even if the bulk of the work will fall to her successor, Karim Khan, Bensouda deserves credit for not being cowed by Israel’s ridiculous allegations of anti-semitism or by the US’s indefensible sanctions against her, which the Biden administration...

...58] Operation Enduring Freedom, which began in Afghanistan shortly after the 9/11 attacks, was a mission to kill and capture “high value” al Qaeda and Taliban members and destroy the safe havens from which al Qaeda planned and directed the 9/11 attacks. The interrogation techniques were approved in the context of an armed conflict with Afghanistan, which the United States government saw as (at least initially) the main front of the so-called “War on Terror.” For instance, the 1 August 2002 “Bybee Memo” legally sanctions “enhanced interrogation techniques” “in the...

...landscape of international criminal law in Africa. For example, the Annex suggests the creation of an AU – ICC liason office and AU hybrid courts with jurisdiction over crimes within the Rome Statue and Geneva Conventions. If implemented these recommendations would be a significant step towards a stronger AU. I’ve blogged here about the AU’s increasing use of sanctions, and have watched with interest the growing (but not always harmonious) relationship between the AU’s Peace and Security Council and the UN Security Council, as illustrated by differences of opinion on...