The news that Jan Pronk, the UN Special Envoy for Sudan, was no longer welcome in Sudan raises important issues about the authority and wisdom of diplomats who give public expressions of their personal views. Jan Pronk's blog is quite good, and offers frank, personal insights about the ongoing crisis in Sudan. But on October 14, 2006 Pronk got...
Sticking with the munitions theme, Israel reversed course today and admitted that the Israeli Defense Forces have used white phosphorus against Hezbollah military targets. Previously, Israel had claimed that the IDF had used the weapon only to mark targets or territory, uses generally pemitted by international humanitarian law (IHL). Israel continues to deny allegations — made repeatedly...
Human Rights Watch continues to investigate war crimes committed by both Israel and Hezbollah. In July, the organization reported on Israel's indiscrimate use of cluster munitions in Southern Lebanon. Now HRW has released a report detailing Hezbollah's use of similar munitions against Israel — attacks that are, according to the organization, "at best indiscriminate, i.e., they violated the...
The government of Sudan has announced that it will expel Jan Pronk, the senior United Nations official there, for what he has written on his blog. My first reaction was “UN officials have blogs?” (Actually, I am struck by this—it used to be that diplomats shunned attention, now public diplomacy is becoming a crucial part of modern diplomatic strategy.) But...
A few days ago I had a very lively discussion with a senior disarmament specialist, someone involved for quite a long time with efforts to stop nuclear proliferation. Of course, the North Korean nuclear test was the spark. It was the classical discussion where one sees the glass half-full and the other half-empty. He claimed that the North Korean blast...
Today is the deadline for the Bush administration to respond to a federal magistrate judge's recommendation that Luis Posada Carriles be freed. Amazingly enough, a mainstream media outlet — the Washington Post — has actually bothered to publish an article about Posada's case. The article is something of a mixed bag; although it discusses Posada's CIA training,...
The much-ballyhooed U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718 against North Korea continues to amount to pretty much nothing. This article , for instance, suggests that Japan is not sure that it has the legal authority under the U.N. Resolution to stop and inspect North Korean vessels suspected of carrying illicit weapons or materials. It is a bit murky, I have...
I will abuse of the posting privileges I was given on Opinio Juris for two weeks to make sure everyone has a chance to see this comment that was posted by Peter Prows to my posting "Shallow International Law can't Protect the Deep Sea" For the record, I never quite bought the disctinction between academia and activism. We are all...
The cold war ended fifteen years ago. However, in the case of international human rights law it looks like it never did. The International Bill of Human Rights still bears allover the marks of the struggle between liberalism and communism. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is, in many regards, an extraordinary document. It was the first, and unfortunately the...
The D.C. Circuit this week rendered an interesting decision defining what constitutes a foreign terrorist organization. The case is Chai v. Department of State, and involved the State Department's designation of three Israeli right-wing extremist groups--Kahane Chai, Kach, and Kahane.org--as foreign terrorist organizations. If you want to get a sense of the organization, you can check out their...
Elaine Cassel has an excellent editorial in FindLaw today about the Bush administration's war on attorneys who have the temerity to defend alleged terrorists. In addition to Lynne Stewart and Lt. Commander Swift, she also discusses the government's investigation of Clive Stafford Smith, who defended the three GITMO prisoners who committed suicide last June -- an act described by...
Back in July, I wrote about U.S. treaty-making trends, noting that the Bush Administration was lagging when compared to previous administrations in terms of concluding treaties. Well, they’ve obviously been reading Opinio Juris, and now appear to be making up for lost time. In September 2006 alone, the President submitted 8 treaty packages to the Senate for advice...
