Search: extraterritorial sanctions

For Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad it’s all about Israel. The cartoons were not an act of freedom, they were a desperate act of hostages. This week Ahmadinejad used the cartoon controversy to blame the United States and Europe for “being hostages of the Zionists.” He then criticized the double-standard of the freedom to insult the prophet while imposing criminal sanctions on those who deny the Holocaust. “I ask everybody in the world not to let a group of Zionists who failed in Palestine … to insult the prophet. Now in...

...of systematic human rights abuses”, including Sudan, subject to UN Security Council sanctions, as well as Azerbaijan, the DRC, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Kazakhstan, Mali, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan and Vietnam, as noted in the UN Special Rapporteur’s position paper. As such it looks the UN CT Travel programme is falling short of the requirements of the UN Human Rights Due Diligence Policy. Specifically, in the context of border security, the consequences of the travellers’ data surveillance supported by the UN CT Travel programme can be serious and wide-ranging, affecting the right...

...and Commonwealth Office. He warned that a UNGA-created non-consensual hybrid tribunal on Syria could backfire against the US, and raised two problems with the polling questions of a recent study of Pakistani attitudes towards drone strikes. Kristen updated us on the new briefs filed in the Haiti Cholera case, and on the launch of a high level sanctions review at the UN, while Chris discussed the many hurdles in the path of the Eurasian Economic Union. As always, Jessica wrapped up the news (1, 2) and we listed events and...

...the Senate as a treaty. Much depends on exactly what the agreement purports to do. If the agreement actually contains a commitment by the U.S. to “not be the first to use cyberweapons to cripple the other’s critical infrastructure”, than it is much closer to the traditional kinds of arms control agreements that have usually been approved under the U.S. system as treaties. Unlike the Iran Nuclear Deal (which is mostly about lifting economic sanctions), the U.S. would be committing to refraining from using certain weapons or from exercising its...

...Colombia and Fixes a Single Maritime Boundary between Colombia and Nicaragua (.pdf). Senator Ron Wyden, a Democratic member of the Senate Intelligence Committee demanded in a letter (.pdf) to President Obama’s counterterrorism advisor John Brennan that he and other committee members be allowed to review secret Justice Department legal opinions justifying the killing of American citizens in counterterrorism operations. The United States is pushing for more sanctions against North Korea at the UN. China is planning a geographical survey of the contested Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. The...

...it has built. A senior U.S. defense official said on Thursday that additional sanctions were a possible response to any North Korea missile launch and the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific said he favored deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system in South Korea. Europe With a troubled peace plan for the Ukrainian conflict nearing its deadline, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg will attempt a balancing act to reassure Kiev of the West’s support without antagonizing Moscow when he visits Ukraine on Monday. Bitterly-divided European leaders will seek to find...

...weekend. Relatives of approximately 90 Yeminis held at the US Guantanamo Bay prison are protesting their “very poor” conditions at Gitmo and demanding their release. Arms Control Blog points to a new report about the effectiveness of sanctions against Iran. The UNGA is set to vote today on the Arms Trade Treaty, a week after Iran, Syria and North Korea blocked the adoption by consensus. Following the return of the two Italian marines to India, India’s Supreme Court has removed the order barring the Italian envoy from leaving the country....

...criminals of this order of importance. It does not expect that you can make war impossible. It does expect that your juridical action will put the forces of international law, its precepts, its prohibitions and, most of all, its sanctions, on the side of peace, so that men and women of good will, in all countries, may have “leave to live by no man’s leave, underneath the law.” The full text of the speech is here. More on the Nuremberg Trials is available through Yale Law School’s Avalon Project here....

...they said were killed in U.S. air strikes on Wednesday night which Washington said targeted an al Qaeda-linked militant faction. Oceania Australia said on Saturday it was pleased with progress on a long-planned free trade agreement with China and that it would be happy to conclude it by next week when Chinese President Xi Jinping visits. UN/World The UN Security Council has imposed sanctions on Yemen’s former president Ali Abdullah Saleh and two allied rebel commanders for threatening the peace and stability of the country and obstructing the political process....

...contrast, the notion of grey zones refers to settings where the very possibility and relevance of accountability is called into question. This piece therefore understands accountability to refer to criminal sanctions and adjudication mechanisms, as well as to the more normative and foundational idea that actors –especially those in positions of power—must bear consequences for their actions and omissions regarding both negative and positive human rights obligations. Accountability can take place in various forums, not just legal ones, with political arenas also playing a crucial role. This broader understanding foregrounds...

...the international rule of law, sanctions against the International Criminal Court and UN individuals, combined with the resources crisis facing multilateral institutions, are very concerning. The resource crisis makes child-specific expertise incredibly precarious. An OHCHR representative explained that investigative bodies are operating at a maximum of 60% of their mandated capacity. Within this scarcity, specialized roles related to child rights are often the first to disappear. Child rights expertise remains vested in individual positions rather than embedded in institutional practice – when experts leave, their knowledge disappears with them. Participants...

...the agreements If the FARC-Government agreements end up being international treaties, they may still be open to criticism and legal challenges. This is due to several factors. Firstly, there is the issue of jus cogens and impunity. Why so? Some political actors and NGOs as Human Rights Watch have expressed concern that the agreements on justice and victims may lead to impunity of serious violations, including international crimes. While the idea of alternative sanctions is not questioned as such, since States may decide to use them in exceptional case to...