International Anti-Corruption Day is sanctioned by the UN as a day to increase awareness of corruption and its effects upon governance and public life. I realize that today's events in Chicago raise the possibilities of some heavy-handed irony - but actually, I'm pleased in a quite un-ironic way. If one has to have the phenomenon of this day for this,...
Douglas Burgess, Jr., has an editorial in today's New York Times arguing that piracy should be considered terrorism in order to facilitate its prosecution. It's an interesting piece, but I have to take issue with the basic premise of his argument: Are pirates a species of terrorist? In short, yes. The same definition of pirates as hostis humani generis could also...
An association of 15 human-rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, and the Save Darfur Coalition, released a devastating report today on the Sudanese government's cynical -- and mendacious -- PR campaign to convince the international community that it is committed to bringing peace to Darfur. Here is a snippet of the executive summary: This report focuses on four...
The Institute for War & Peace Reporting has a must-read article today about how ordinary Darfuris view the OTP's decision to seek arrest warrants for the rebel leaders allegedly responsible for killing 12 peacekeepers in 2007. According to the article -- and all the usual caveats about anecdotal evidence apply -- the response is uniformly negative: Yasir, an IDP (internally displaced...
Violence in Kenya following the disputed 2007 elections left more than 1,300 people dead and more than 500,000 internally displaced. Last month, Kenya's Commission of Inquiry into Post-Election Violence released a 527-page report -- the Waki Report -- that concluded much of the violence was planned and organized by members of Kenya's security agencies, business leaders, politicians, and government officials. ...
(Professor Martin Scheinin, whose mission and report on the US and counterterrorism and human rights I discussed below, was kind enough to post a substantive response to my earlier post, "Try or Release." Particularly since I was quite critical of that report, let me move Professor's Scheinin's response up to its own post. Apologies for not noticing it earlier -...
Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has been criticized by some as being invisible, at least compared with his rock-star predecessor, Kofi Annan. However, he has emerged as UN frontman for a new campaign from the UN for a plan for a simultaneous global jobs and economic recovery program together with green program. The SG's program is outlined in op-ed form...
Thanks to Deborah for that thoughtful response re the administrative detention debate ongoing now ...
In the Wall Street Journal editorial Ken mentions below, Goldsmith and Posner argue -- in defense of their thesis that Europeans ignore international law if it is not in their interest to obey it -- that "when nations led by Europe created the International Criminal Court (ICC), they purported to limit the Security Council's power to delay or halt ICC...
Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner have an interesting op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal (November 25, 2008), "Does Europe Believe in International Law?" I believe it is behind the subscriber wall, but it offers a series of instances in which, in effect, Europe says one thing and does another. In fact, Europe's commitment to international law is largely rhetorical. Like the...
My congratulations to Professor Hakimi on a very intelligent article, with which I am largely in sympathy, and also to Matt Waxman for his response. I'm on the fly, without access to documents or the ability to search the web, so forgive the broad brush nature of this comment and question, but let me put it anyway (I'm depending on...
Anyone who still doubts that the ICC's pursuit of Bashir is unnerving the Sudanese government should take a gander at this article: An interview with published by Sudan official news agency (SUNA) with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband yesterday is fabricated, according to a statement by the British embassy in Khartoum. “The statements that SUNA news agency attributed to the Foreign Secretary...
