In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Search: extraterritorial sanctions

23 May

...veto on Syria. This prevented the referral of Syria to the ICC in May 2014 as well as the adoption of numerous resolutions calling for cease fires and delivery of humanitarian aid. On Myanmar, China’s threatened veto blocked not only a referral of Myanmar to the ICC, but even Security Council debate over an arms embargo and sanctions following the upsurge of the ethnic cleansing campaign there in August 2017. For Myanmar this has left the ICC, intended to be the centerpiece of a “system” of international justice, restricted to...
23.05.22 | and |

07 Oct

...an unnamed senior leader in the context of arrest warrants being requested for Israeli leaders that “this court is built for Africa and for thugs like Putin.” Of course, the fact that the ICC ultimately did proceed to issue arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant demonstrates that occasionally the wheels of justice move forward even in the face of resistance from key players in the West. Doing so, however, can come with a heavy price for those involved (see here, here and here regarding US sanctions on ICC...
07.10.25 | |

13 May

The U.S. Trade Representative’s Office has released some further details on its agreement with Congress to incorporate international labor standards into future U.S. free-trade agreements. Here are a couple important new institutional innovations. (1) Violations of international and local labor standards will apparently be subject to the same international dispute resolution mechanisms as the rest of the trade agreement. This is big: Panels will for the first time be empowered to determine violations of international labor standards and countries will be authorized to impose trade sanctions to punish violations. (2)...
13.05.07 | |

07 Mar

...and sanctions regimes — in relation to going further than them to actual armed intervention or not.) C. Recognition of belligerency in a civil war Perhaps the most interesting legal view on how one might undertake humanitarian intervention in Libya was that offered by international law professor Jordan Paust. He suggested that there might be a recognition of belligerency in a civil war, and that the US and others could recognize the belligerency as a legal matter and then side with the rebels as the legitimate legal government of Libya....
07.03.11 | |

05 Oct

Russia is considering offering Western companies oil licenses in its Arctic waters. Reuters has an exclusive that the European Union is ready to ban imports of Iranian gas as a part of new sanctions in order to increase the pressure over the nuclear program in the Islamic Republic. A UN representative has told the Security Council there is little time to deal with rebels in the north of Mali and international assistance is needed. The European Union and several banks will stage a DDoS cyber-attack exercise in order to find...
05.10.12 | |

24 May

...African Constitutional Court in a landmark universal jurisdiction case involving alleged crimes against humanity committed in Zimbabwe in 2007. Tyler Cullis, meanwhile, reviewed to what extent the US would be legally and politically able to ease sanctions against Iran as part of a nuclear deal. In the last guest post of the week, Gabor Rona commented on the recent Serdar Mohammed v Ministry of Defence case on detention in a non-international armed conflict. Finally, Deborah shared her views on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s hearings on the AUMF, and as...
24.05.14 | |

13 Dec

...vague. As we previously noted in HLP I, limiting the definition of the term “training” to the “imparting of skills” does not cure unconstitutional vagueness because, so defined, the term “training” could still be read to encompass speech and advocacy protected by the First Amendment. For the foregoing reasons, we reject the government’s challenge and agree with the district court that the term “training” remains impermissibly vague because it “implicates, and potentially chills, Plaintiffs’ protected expressive activities and imposes criminal sanctions of up to fifteen years imprisonment without sufficiently defining...
13.12.07 | |

29 Jun

...the countries that offer near-universal healthcare. Cyprus has denied media reports that it had briefly arrested Iran’s foreign minister for violation of an EU travel ban when he arrived at Nicosia International Airport to meet with the Cypriot President. The US has granted exemptions to China and Singapore from financial sanctions over oil trade with Iran. The EU has signed a free trade agreement with Peru and Colombia. Following difficult negotiations, the eurozone leaders have agreed on a deal to bailout banks and develop a eurozone supervisory regime for banks,...
29.06.12 | |

10 May

...genocide, which is enshrined in the Genocide Convention. He stated: States Parties confirm that genocide whether committed in time of peace or war, is a crime under international law that they undertake to prevent and punish … A State Party may choose from among a range of measures – diplomatic pressure, economic sanctions, judicial initiatives, or the use of military force – to undertake to prevent or punish genocide. But the State Party’s choice is necessarily discretionary. (Quoted in William Schabas, Genocide in International Law, p. 496) Third: The Future...
10.05.18 | |

08 Jun

...by the ICC. Ivory Coast’s former President Laurent Gbagbo seeks a delay of his trial at the ICC, claiming he is too ill. ECOWAS has urged the UN Security Council for a Chapter VII resolution authorizing intervention in Mali if talks with rebel groups fail. Jurist has a piece about Charles Taylor, Arms Dealers and Reparations. UN monitors in Syria were shot at while trying to investigate a massacre site, and Kofi Annan has said that an “all-out civil war” is imminent. Australia will lift the remaining sanctions on Myanmar...
08.06.12 | |

04 Dec

...was raised. The Foreign Minster of Saudi Arabia and one of the Princes did mention, however, that tougher sanctions against Iran could be implemented without UN’s approval, demonstrating by the same token a degree of awareness of international law and legal procedure. Furthermore, there is some more interesting preliminary quantitative evidence on the importance of law in the discourse of officials. Cable analysis prepared by Guardian shows that as a subject matter in correspondence between officials the word “law” is mentioned in 2,473 documents and occupies 92nd place, in contrast...
04.12.10 | |

03 Feb

...that ECOWAS States have surprisingly refrained from applying sanctions against the ECCJ but have instead acted to increase its independence. Weingast and Moran suggest that where control by a principal is effective, overt sanctioning is rare as the agent rationally anticipates the preferences of the principal and incorporates those preferences into their behaviour. The question then is whether the act of ignoring certain decisions of the ECOWAS Court is not a tool by which ECOWAS States control the ECCJ by forcing it to self-censor in appropriate cases such that no...
03.02.14 | |