Secretary General Kofi Annan today announced the adoption of a whistleblower protection policy for the U.N. The policy, which goes into effect next month, is intended to protect U.N. employees who report misconduct and/or who cooperate with investigations:It is the duty of staff members to report any breach of the organization's regulations and rules to the officials whose responsibility it...
The ICJ yesterday handed down a decision in Democratic Republic of Congo v. Uganda, ruling that Uganda violated the principles of non-intervention under Art 2(4) of the UN Charter and further violated international human rights and humanitarian law when it launched military operations in the DRC between 1998 and 2003. The Court explicitly rejected Uganda's claim of self defense in...
The government of Sudan has announced it will not cooperate with the International Criminal Court investigation into atrocities in Darfur. No one should be surprised, since the Sudanese government is itself complicit in the very acts being investigated. In a report released last week, Human Rights Watch lays out in great detail the responsibility of the Sudanese government:Since July 2003,...
Dick Marty, the Council of Europe Rapporteur to the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights announced today that there is credible evidence of secret detention centers and of detainees being transported through Council member states without required judicial involvement. No detainees are currently being held by the United States in Europe, though Poland and Romania are believed to...
In very welcome news on the humanitarian law front, the signatory states of the Geneva Conventions voted yesterday (98 in favor, 27 against, 10 abstentions) to adopt a Third Optional Protocol, adding the red crystal symbol to the red cross and red crescent as a permissible emblem. This clears the way for membership into the movement of Isreali relief...
There are weeks when the irony level in the news is almost too much to bear. This is one of those weeks. In the city where the U.S. led and won the long battles against fascism and communist totalitarianism, a city that is now a vibrant center of democracy, the capital of one of the world’s largest economies...
The LA Times recently carried this op-ed by former Australian FM Gareth Evans on the successes of preventive diplomacy and peacekeeping (perhaps better described as peacemaking) missions around the world. He cites the Human Security Report 2005 for evidence that the incidence of war is on the decline, and that third-party interventions (diplomatic, sanctions, military deployments) play a large role...
Syria has agreed to comply with the demands of Security Council resolution 1636 and will cooperate with the Hariri investigation by allowing five Syrian government officials to be interviewed in UN offices in Vienna. This ends, for now, the Syrian stalemate with the Council, and avoids a follow on resolution that would likely have slapped sanctions against Syria. The...
It is hard to believe that a decade has passed since the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords that brought an end to the war in Bosnia. The peace in Bosnia certainly came too late for many (260,000 lost their lives in the war, over a million were displaced), but it did finally end the bloodshed. The implementation force for...
Ken Anderson is the first member of the blogosphere to read every page of the 5,000 page ICRC study on Customary International Humanitarian Law (which we discussed here when it was published last spring). His thoughtful analysis is here. So why pay attention to the study?What does the Study mean in practical terms for matters of international humanitarian law?...
The EU Commission has announced an investigation into the CIA "black" detention centers. (Chris discussed the sites here.) The earlier Washington Post article by Dana Priest exposing these CIA black sites did not name names, but noted that several of the CIA facilities are in Eastern Europe. According to the BBC news, the EU inquiry is beginning with official requests...
Professor Bobby Chesney of Wake Forest University School of Law will be guest blogging at Opinio Juris all month. Professor Chesney is an expert on U.S. national security law and his recent scholarship has focused on legal responses to terrorism. One of his recent papers tackles the transfer of detainees at Guantanamo to their home countries, a practice that,...
