Regions

This sounds impressive, but somehow it feels like the ICC Prosecutor is going in circles on Sudan. THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The International Criminal Court prosecutor wants judges to report Sudan to the U.N. Security Council for refusing to hand over a government minister and a militia leader accused of atrocities in Darfur. Luis Moreno Ocampo said in a written request to...

Did the ICJ ruling on Uruguay and Argentina help to resolve the dispute? Sort of.  There are some pesky protestors, though, who are not exactly convinced by the ruling. Both sides said Tuesday's decision by the International Court of Justice in the Netherlands gave them what they need to resolve their differences, with Argentina taking heart from a part of the...

Belgium and France are both considering laws to ban the wearing of full-face veils in public. According to Amnesty International, such bans would violate international human rights law. "A general ban on the wearing of full face veils would violate the rights to freedom of expression and religion of those women who choose to express their identity or beliefs in this...

During the recent "nuclear summit" in Washington, Dutch prime minister Peter Balkenende proposed the creation of a new international tribunal to enforce and punish violations of nuclear non-proliferation agreements.  Putting aside the fact that this is a blatant effort to put another international court in his hometown (the Hague), I agree with Prof. Göran Sluiter that this is a dumb...

Another day, another chance for folks in the UK to make threats about bringing legal action against the Pope during his upcoming September visit to the UK.  The latest attack comes from noted atheists Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. It looks like the focus will be on breaking down the Pope's head-of-state immunity defense, rather than trying to fit the...

The results of this new study about the ineffectiveness of international aid to certain developing countries is not surprising, but it is still depressing. For years, the international community has forked over billions in health aid, believing the donations supplemented health budgets in poor countries. It now turns out development money prompted some governments to spend on entirely different things, which...

Putting aside events in Kyrgyzstan (which certainly bear close watching), the day's big news for international lawyers was President Obama and Russian President Dmitri A. Medvedev signing two related international agreements on the reduction of nuclear armaments. The State Department has posted the originals of this new START treaty here (see here for the longer, more detailed Protocol to that...

Here's another interesting report on the ongoing battle against Somalia-based pirates.  The upshot: some progress is being made, especially with private security forces (including one which uses sound waves to push away approaching pirates).  But legal limitations continue to limit the effectiveness of both naval and private self-defense. “No commanding officer of any ship wants a situation where he used force...