As readers probably know by now, the ICC convicted Jean-Pierre Bemba yesterday of various war crimes and crimes against humanity, including rape as both a war crime and crime against humanity. Commentators are praising the conviction as landmark with regard to sexual violence -- against both women and men. Here, for example, is Niamh Hayes: Today is a very good day...
Over the years a few of us have written issues concerning battlefield robots. (See, for example: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.) Sometimes, we had links to remarkable videos of quadruped robots stomping through forests. Those robots and videos were made by Boston Dynamics, a company that started from an MIT research group. Besides its designing quadruped robots, Boston Dynamics gained further...
Where a State not party to this Statute, which has entered into an ad hoc arrangement or an agreement with the Court, fails to cooperate with requests pursuant to any such arrangement or agreement, the Court may so inform the Assembly of States Parties or, where the Security Council referred the matter to the Court, the Security Council.I should admit that I posted my comment without giving the precise implications of Article 87(5)(b) much thought at this point (I planned to consider them in a later journal article). I simply recalled Article 87(5) from writing an earlier post on a non-cooperation finding against Sudan. Like Sudan, Russia is a non-party, but the situation in Darfur was referred to the ICC by the SC whereas the Georgia situation is not. So the SC option in 87(5)(b) is irrelevant to questions of Russian non-cooperation. As Heller points out, "the most the Court can do is complain about Russian non-cooperation to the Assembly of States Parties." But what about my suggestion that Russia can face other steps under Article 87(5)(b) for its non-cooperation if it fails to cooperate after agreeing to do so? In the follow-up post Article 87(5) of the Rome Statute – Bizarre and Possibly Counterproductive, Heller comments:
I am much less sure than Kwast that Art. 87(5) would apply if Russia cooperated with the ICC and then stopped cooperating. The article seems to contemplate some kind of formal relationship between the Court and a non-party State — an “arrangement” or an “agreement” or something similar (ejusdem generis). After all, Art. 87(5)(b) addresses non-cooperation when a State “enters into” such an arrangement or agreement with the Court, language that we would normally associate with the law of contract. So I think the best reading of Art. 87(5) is that it applies only when a non-party State makes a formal commitment to cooperate with the Court and then breaks that commitment. I don’t think it applies any time a non-party State voluntarily provides the Court with information and then decides to stop providing it. After all, if Art. 87(5) does apply in such situations, it is profoundly counterproductive. Why would any non-party State ever voluntarily cooperate with the Court if doing so means that it cannot stop cooperating? I think the drafters of the Rome Statute were smart enough not to provide non-party States with such a powerful incentive to avoid the Court like the plague.My first impulse is to agree entirely with the suggestion that Article 87(5)(b) should be read to apply “only when a non-party-State makes a formal commitment to cooperate with the Court and then breaks that commitment.” A formal commitment was the scenario of initial Russian cooperation that I had in mind, at least in so far as the phrase “or any other appropriate basis” – i.e. other than agreements and ad hoc arrangements – of 87(5)(a) is omitted from 87(5)(b). However,
In 1958, Air Force Chief of Staff Thomas D. White wrote: “For all practical purposes air and space merge, form a continuous and indivisible field of operations.” White later coined the term “aerospace” and used it in a Congressional hearing. Later it was used in policy papers to explain why the U.S. Air Force would also have the responsibility for...
[Tilman Rodenhäuser is a PhD candidate at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. He worked with different international and non-governmental organizations on the implementation of international humanitarian and human rights law.] It is uncontroversial that international law prohibits and criminalizes appalling crimes such as summary executions, torture, or rape and other forms of sexual violence. An understudied but increasingly relevant issue is...
[Abdollah Abedini is an Assistant Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Law, Farabi College at the University of Tehran.] On December 19, 2015, John Kerry, the United States Secretary of State, sent a letter to Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Foreign Minister of Iran, on the US government’s firm intention to implement the JCPOA. The letter was issued pursuant to...
It's been a rough U.S. presidential campaign season for free traders. Very few of the candidates are willing to voice broad support for free trade and free trade agreements. Populist candidates like Senator Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have made some pretty ugly noises about either violating or withdrawing from existing trade agreements. Although Donald Trump's proposal for 45% tariffs on China...
In a recent post, I noted my puzzlement at Russia's recent announcement that it will not cooperate with the ICC's investigation in Georgia. Noting that "Russia has very little to fear" from the investigation, I asked why it would not "milk a little goodwill by at least pretending to cooperate with the ICC" -- especially as Russia could simply stop...
In a tumultuous U.S. presidential campaign season, it is easy to conclude that the U.S. is hopelessly polarized between a proto-fascism and a proto-communism. But while there may be some truth to that observation with respect to immigration and economic policy, it is worth noting that the presidential candidates of both parties agree on many issues of foreign policy, even...
[Liora Lazarus, BA (UCT), LLB (LSE), DPhil (Oxon), is an Associate Professor in Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of St. Anne's College. Her primary research interests are in comparative human rights, security and human rights, comparative theory and comparative criminal justice.] The UN WGAD Assange decision was initially met with incredulity and general ridicule from British...
Things are not going well for Ukraine. It has lost Crimea, effective control over eastern parts of its territory, its divided government is hampered by corruption which is sparking more internal violence, and its economy is doing poorly. Russia is the cause of many (though not all) of its problems, so it is not surprising that Ukraine is looking to try...