Organizations

[Spencer Zifcak is Allan Myers Professor of Law and Director of the Institute of Legal Studies at the Australian Catholic University.] This post is part of the MJIL 13(1) Symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. My article on this subject attempts to encapsulate the standing of coercive (Pillar 3) intervention within the framework...

The Melbourne Journal of International Law is delighted to continue our partnership with Opinio Juris. This week will feature three articles from Issue 13(1) of the Journal. The full issue is available for download here. Today, our discussion commences with Spencer Zifcak’s article ‘The Responsibility to Protect after Libya and Syria’. Professor Zifcak draws on the disparate responses to the humanitarian...

The article, which is available in draft form on SSRN, is entitled "'One Hell of a Killing Machine': Signature Strikes and International Law."  It is forthcoming in the Journal of International Criminal Justice as part of a mini-symposium on targeted killing edited by Cornell's Jens Ohlin.  Here is the abstract: The vast majority of drone attacks conducted by the U.S. have...

Two years ago this month, an unprecedented cholera outbreak in Haiti left more than 7,500 Haitians dead.   As the New York Times reported in a front page article in May 2012, Lightning fast and virulent, it spread from here through every Haitian state, erupting into the world’s largest cholera epidemic despite a huge international mobilization still dealing with the effects of...

Children and armed conflict or “CAAC” (as the unharmonious acronym goes), has become a controversial area of activity for the UN Security Council.   Although the Security Council has adopted a series of important resolutions on the topic since 2005, its most recent foray into the fray led to four abstentions to Resolution 2068.   Azerbaijan, China, Pakistan and Russia declined to support...

As Peter's post yesterday noted, there's a growing push to fundamentally re-align cyberspace governance via amendments to the ITU Regulations, which are set to be negotiated in December in Dubai.  I'm not sure that the ITU is up to the task.  But I do agree that the time is ripe for States and other stakeholders to agree on first principles...

Julian beat me to Eric Posner's new Slate article on the legality of drone strikes.  I don't agree with everything in it, but I think it's notable that Posner -- echoing his sometime co-author Jack Goldsmith -- rejects the idea that international law permits self-defense against a non-state actor whenever a state is "unable or unwilling" to prevent the NSA...

In his latest Slate article,  Professor Eric Posner highlights (for non-specialist readers) the  questionable international legal foundation of the Obama Administration's "drone war on terror" in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere (e.g. Libya). The whole idea that the U.S. can infer Pakistan's consent to the strikes due to Pakistan's refusal to object to CIA faxes is not terribly persuasive.  I am...

With UN meetings underway, here are a couple of links discussing leading issues on the table.  Everyone agrees that Syria leads the list, but pretty much everyone also agrees that it leads the list of things unlikely to be resolved or pushed materially to a resolution.  Neal MacFarquhar, the NYT UN correspondent, puts it this way in today's Times, quoting...

Mark Kersten has the scoop at Justice in Conflict: So why, then, did Mauritania do it or, perhaps more accurately, how did Libya convince Mauritania to change its tune? Having reached out to various contacts to see whether anyone knew what had changed Mauritania’s mind, a number of individuals quickly responded that there was only one possible motivation: money. While certainly not...

[Dr Melanie O'Brien is a Research Fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. She attended the CEDAW session as a delegate of the American Society of International Law.] The 52nd session of the Committee on the Elimination of the Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) celebrated 30 years of the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (the Convention). During the session, CEDAW considered the state reports of the Bahamas, Bulgaria, Guyana, Indonesia, Jamaica, New Zealand, Mexico, and Samoa. The Committee addressed many issues including access to healthcare, access to justice, abortion, education, LGBT concerns, marital and divorce rights, migrant and domestic workers, minority groups (e.g. Roma; rural women), prostitution, and violence against women. However, two issues in particular were emphasised: participation of women in politics, and trafficking of women and girls. The former was the focus of the introductory event commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Convention, as well as considered in the state reporting. Trafficking in women and girls received attention through the state reporting, but was also the topic of a special event held on the final day of the public part of the session. Trafficking is of serious concern to CEDAW, as nearly 80% of trafficking victims are women and girls. The majority of perpetrators are male. Sexual exploitation (79%) is by far the most commonly identified form of trafficking in persons, followed by forced labor (18%). [All statistics from the UNODC 2009 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons.] Due to the bias against women as victims, CEDAW identifies trafficking in persons (TIP) as a form of gender-based violence. TIP also amounts to organised crime and is a violation of human rights. CEDAW is at the forefront of combating TIP through Article 6 of the Convention, which requires States Parties to “take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to suppress all forms of traffic in women and exploitation of prostitution of women”. Through this, the Committee is keen to inform states and the UN on national law, implementation of national activities and plan, the existence of shelters for victims, measures to address root causes of TIP, numbers of prosecutions, and training/awareness raising of law enforcement personnel and the judiciary. CEDAW also interacts with civil society, through non-governmental and other organisations, to explore ways and means of helping states address TIP concerns.