Given how unpopular the UN seems to be these days in the US, the results of a recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll question about Iran are rather surprising (courtesy of Think Progress):How confident are you in the Bush administration’s ability to handle the situation in Iran? Very or Somewhat Likely: 45% Not Too Confident or Not At All Confident: 55% How...
Though the news is a couple of weeks old, it’s worth calling attention to a unanimous decision by the European Court of Human Rights Court that the Russian Federation violated the European Convention on Human Rights by allowing local police to torture a Russian citizen, Aleksey Mikheyev, and by subsequently failing to adequately investigate his allegations of mistreatment. The...
U.S. gold medalist Joey Cheek has announced he will donate all of his $25,000 award (from the U.S. Olympic Committee) to a foundation providing aid to children injured by the war in Darfur, Sudan. Cheek actually had a prepared statement, apparently drafted the night before his race. Talk about confidence! Still, his heart is obviously in the right place and...
Okay, you think the title is a stretch. But if you look behind the history of the holiday you may conclude that Valentine's Day has less to do with love than war. Legend has it that under the reign of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius Claudius Gothicus (A.D. 214-270) (not the Marcus Aurelius played by Richard Harris in Gladiator, but it's...
I completely agree with Julian's dire assessment of the UN Human Rights Commission. But before we get too carried away lauding the U.S.'s reform efforts, it's worth noting that Ambassador Bolton's most recent suggestion for "reform" is to guarantee all five permanent members of the Security Council permanent seats (presumably with veto power) on the new Human Rights Council,...
Speaking of the semi-ridiculous U.N. Human Rights Commission, I somehow missed this statement last week from the U.S. criticizing the existing proposal to reform the Commission. Talk about an easy position to develop. The U.S. is holding out for a new Human Rights Council that will have human rights standards for nations sitting on the new council. That appears to...
I am compiling a list of all the new and lateral international law professor hires for the coming academic year. If you have information please email me and I will include it in the list. (You can find my email on my profile to the right).In your email please include the new institutional affiliation, the name of the professor, specializations...
The U.S. media have done a decent job covering Serbia’s admission that hard-liners in its military are hiding war-crimes suspect General Ratko Mladic, wanted by the ICTY for allegedly orchestrating the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica. There has been relatively little coverage, however, of a particularly interesting aspect of the story: the European Union’s...
Big surprise. The U.N. Human Rights Commission's special rapporteurs investigating Guantanamo Bay has concluded that the U.S. is violating international treaties on human rights and torture in its treatment of detainees in Guantanamo Bay. This Latimes summary is not quite clear for the basis of the special rapporteurs' conclusions, although it does note that the special rapporteurs have based their...
Last week a federal district court in Virginia issued an important decision in Bell v. True, available here, holding that the Vienna Convention does not create individual rights. Here is a key excerpt:[T]he ICJ in LaGrand did not go so far as to hold that Article 36 of the Vienna Convention creates individually enforceable legal rights that a detainee...
The UN and the Cambodian government have set up an administrative office in Phnom Penh for the hybrid tribunal that will try former leaders of the Khmer Rouge, who are accused of murdering nearly 2 million people during the 1970s. The establishment of the office marks the transition from the planning stage to the actual functioning of...
In a piece on Friday, Jack Shafer at Slate echoes my criticism here and here of Nicholas Kristof's attack on Bill O'Reilly. Here is a taste:Don't get me wrong. Bill O'Reilly deserves it in the shins—or even higher—at least two times a week. His bullying, grandstanding, and modern know-nothingism make him a plump target. But Kristof doesn't want to engage...
