Search: extraterritorial sanctions
07 Dec Advancing Human Rights in Pandemic Treaty Debates
...“solidarity” – that is, “national, international, multilateral, bilateral, and multisectoral collaboration, coordination and cooperation in order to achieve a fairer, more equitable and better prepared world” (art. 4). Other experts of international law and relations argue that global solidarity encompasses not only pandemic preparedness, but espouses broader obligations, including the notion of common but differentiated responsibility, the denouncing of charitable assistance, and intergenerational equity – providing for manifestations of solidarity in pandemic prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery. Aligning this clear commitment to global solidarity with extraterritorial human rights obligations of...
13 Feb The Tainted Matrix: Oil’s Substitution Logic and the Limits of “Clean” Trade
...product substitution may remain more elastic. If unlawful crude keeps domestic refineries supplied, it can stabilise domestic petrol and diesel markets, reduce product imports, and free domestic product volumes for export. The economic gain is then detached from the original crude, and “barrel policing” becomes even less responsive to how value is actually realised. A familiar illustration is the way sanctions practice has struggled with refined products made from restricted crude, including repeated efforts to close ‘transformation’ and routing loopholes in the Russia context. The relevant claim, then, is not...
27 Feb The Proposed Amendments to the International Health Regulations: An Analysis
...regional human rights treaties and the DG’s (potentially) legally binding ‘recommendations’. It could be reminiscent of the UN Security Council resolutions obliging states to impose sanctions on individuals suspected of financing and promoting terrorism after 9/11 conflicting with states’ human rights duties, some of which were later adjudicated amongst each other by the ECtHR (e.g. here and here). Indicating that recommendations ‘may work better if they are not mandatory’ (p. 26), the RC Report advises against changing the legal nature of the recommendations. 3. Extending the Scope of the WHO’s...
11 Oct Rethinking International Law After Gaza Symposium: Unlawful Occupation as Ongoing Aggression – Rethinking Legal Responses in the Context of Palestine
...the illegal aggression. Instead, the focus must be on the immediate withdrawal and the unequivocal end of the aggression and illegal occupation. Under the ICJ advisory opinion (para. 274) and the rules of the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, the unlawful use of force constitutes a violation erga omnes, signifying that states bear an obligation to act, including unilaterally and through regional groups and institutions, to prevent the continuation of aggression. This necessitates concrete measures, inter alia, the imposition of targeted sanctions, the severance of diplomatic relations, and...
27 Oct Lafarge on Trial: Cementing Accountability
[Anna Kiefer is Advocacy and Litigation Officer at Sherpa. Cannelle Lavite is Co-Director, Business and Human Rights at ECCHR. Claire Tixeire is Co-Director, Institute for Legal Intervention at ECCHR.] Starting 4 November 2025, and continuing for six weeks, a criminal court in Paris will examine whether the multinational company Lafarge and several of its former top executives should be found guilty of financing terrorism and violating EU sanctions. This comes in the wake of a scandal that surfaced in 2016 involving the company’s activities in Syria – precipitating a legal...
22 Jul The ITLOS Advisory Opinion and the Normative Future of IMO GHG Reduction Measures
...of non-party ships as well as relevant sanctions under national law or possible detention of non-compliant ships calling into ports of Parties. However, MARPOL Annex VI continues to be a work in progress to incorporate and implement measures to address GHG emission from internationally plying ships. Much of this work is being developed through Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC)—one of the five main committees of the IMO. In 2018, the MEPC was successful in developing and adopting IMO’s Initial strategy on reduction of GHG emissions from international shipping (Initial Strategy),...
29 Jul Starved into Submission: Siege Doctrine from Syria to Mariupol (Part 1)
...shielding the latter from accountability, was entirely visible at the UN Security Council. Resolutions seeking to mandate humanitarian access to besieged areas were consistently vetoed or watered down and politicised. In May 2014, Russia and China vetoed a Security Council resolution that would have referred the situation in Syria to the ICC. In February 2017, Russia and China vetoed a resolution that would have imposed sanctions over chemical weapons attacks. Having exercised its veto repeatedly and systematically for over a decade, Russia effectively insulated the Syrian regime’s conduct from accountability....
09 Sep Contemporary International Criminal Law After Critique Symposium: Carceral Internationalism in the Situation of Palestine After Critique
...Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the United Nations Commission of Inquiry) to various forms of direct action and protest (such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign and related student-led encampments around the world). These mobilisations of multiple overlapping and sometimes contradictory vocabularies as part of a broader strategic struggle is what O’Connell has termed ‘emancipatory or critical multilingualism’. In this vein, we agree with Edelbi, who argues that rather than abandoning international law, ‘we need to make use of legal tools in more creative, subversive and contrapuntal ways that...
16 Jul Argentinian Arrest Warrants for Crimes against the Rohingya: The Power of Small States
...those for who sanctions have already been imposed by the US and UK. The Argentine Prosecutor and his staff expended time, resources, and humanity because of their compulsion to act in the services of the Rohingya, a group with whom they share no common language, culture or history. This is an extraordinary act, particularly at a time where our faith as proponents of international criminal justice is being so violently tested. Lawyers in Argentina, like in The Gambia, have shown unilateral moral leadership where multilateral efforts have failed, motivated by...
31 Oct Fifth Annual Symposium on Pop Culture and International Law: “I Am Your Way Out” – Reading the Violence of Validation in International Law Through the Movie Sinners
...of joining NATO when its war with Russia broke out following Russia’s invasion of it. Generally, the international community was quick to accept that Russia was the aggressor in that case, and was deserving of punishment swiftly meted out in the form of sanctions and bans from participating in international activities. The Israel – Palestine conflict of course has a different history, with the United Nations determining that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza since October 2023. However, in this case the international community has been slow to condemn Israel’s...