Search: unwilling or unable
22 Mar Do Not Trust Facebook to Enforce Human Rights
...on Myanmar, in 2018 the IIFFMM reported, “The Mission regrets that Facebook has been unable to provide country-specific data about the spread of hate speech on its platform.” To date, it is unclear whether any national government has been able to access complete information from Facebook regarding its involvement in Myanmar. Facebook once said that it was a “myth” that Internet.org was about company growth or new revenue opportunities. But in 2018, the same year the IIFFMM noted Facebook’s connection to ethnic violence in Myanmar, Mr. Zuckerberg pitched Internet.org as...
19 Nov A Procedural Win in Palestine’s Quest to Seek Justice for Israel’s Apartheid Regime before the CERD
...earlier) and acknowledges the practical relevance of the different enforcement mechanisms under the ICERD. These three pronouncements -singularly but even more so cumulatively- must be considered a second ‘procedural win’ for Palestine in 2021 after the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber decision. They mark one of the rare occasions in which Israel was unable to prevent a decision on the merits regarding its Apartheid regime in the OPT for procedural maneuvers, albeit acknowledging that this procedure is merely of a conciliatory, non-binding as opposed to an adversary, binding nature. The next procedural step...31 Jan Coalition Provisional Authority Fails the Accountability Test
It was reported today that the Coalition Provisional Authority for Iraq was unable to account for $8.8 billion — yes, that’s BILLION — in assistance money spent in the first year following the US invasion. To put the dollar amounts in perspective, that’s more than twice the annual operating budget for the UN and almost $2 billion more than the annual operating budget of the State Department. And while we don’t yet know the full extent of the money unaccounted for in the UN Iraq oil-for-food investigation, early reports put...09 Feb A Response to Kevin Jon Heller by Gabriella Blum
...unjust wars, this concern becomes especially grave. On the flip side, we must also consider the possibility that under the existing model of equal application, weaker parties who do have a just cause for war are deterred from pursuing it because they are unable to face their stronger aggressor. If our main goal, therefore, is reducing the overall incidence of wars, CDRs might be too risky. If, however, our goal is to prevent unjust wars, but to allow for just ones to be waged, the case against CDRs becomes ambiguous....13 Nov A Fair-minded Critique of the Goldstone Report
Richard Goldstone is getting lots of flak for his recent report on the conflict in Gaza. Much of this flak is either undeserved or way over the top. But the unreasonableness of some of his critics does not mean his report was actually good and wise and fair. The basic problem, as I see it, was that Goldstone and his team was unable to determine crucial but contested facts with an even minimally acceptable level of reliability. Yet the Report (and Goldstone should have known this) made a variety of...07 Jul Where’s the Joint Understanding for the START Follow-on Treaty?
...include effective verification measures drawn from the experience of the Parties in implementing START . . . . The U.S. and Russian negotiating teams met in April, May, June, and July, and will continue their work toward finalizing an agreement for signature and ratification at the earliest possible date. But where’s the Joint Understanding itself? I’ve been unable to locate a copy (and would welcome readers pointing one out to me if I’ve overlooked it). As summarized, the fact sheet suggests that yesterday’s Joint Understanding might itself constitute a legally...05 Sep Mauritania Extradites Al-Senussi to Libya
...he was not authorized to speak on the matter, said that al-Senoussi boarded a special flight at 9 a.m. local time (0900 GMT) and was headed to Tripoli. This development makes it far more likely that Libya’s admissibility challenge to the ICC’s case against al-Senussi will succeed. Libya is obviously no longer “unable to obtain the accused” for purposes of Article 17(3) of the Rome Statute. Libya’s ridiculous stall tactics regarding its admissibility challenge appear to have paid off. The big losers are France, which also wanted to prosecute al-Senussi,...08 Aug The Problem with Peru’s Armed Conflict Debate: Some Comments On My Recently Published Book
...not need to choose between terrorism or armed conflict, one can have terrorism during armed conflict. After decades of politicized misinformation by apologists of Peru’s human rights violations, however, Peruvians are trapped in a senseless debate, unable to move forward and heal the wounds of their past. The object of my book is to shed light into this debate by introducing key aspects of international humanitarian law into the mix. It explains why the Peruvian experience meets the Tadic standard and what that means in practice, dealing with notions of...
31 Mar COVID-19 Symposium: The Declaration of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in International Law
...public health emergency of international concern’. There is no scope within Article 48 for the EC to take into consideration anything other than the legal criteria for a PHEIC. First meeting of the EC The EC first considered if the coronavirus outbreak met the criteria to be declared a PHEIC on 22 January 2020. The EC were unable to reach a conclusion at that stage – even holding a vote, which resulted in a tie, the first time this is known to have occurred (the EC process has been criticised...