Environmental Law

For those interested in exploring international environmental law in a little more depth, a starting point would be the website for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. There are details there as well on the next conference, which is in Lima Peru next month. The next important Summit is in Paris next year. For more background on the science of climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has produced some of the most authoritative reports, the latest of which (AR5, published earlier this year), is profoundly disturbing. Finally, you can find more information on the UN Environmental Program (UNEP) website.

British Court Allows Human Rights Claim

You may find interesting a case decided this week in which the High Court in the U.K. allowed the claim of an Pakistani detainee in Iraq to proceed against the British government for abuse by the British forces followed by torture by U.S. forces in Camp Nama and at Abu-Grahib. The cases raises immunity and jurisdiction issues as well as human rights and torture issues.

Nuclear Security or Standing Up to Aggression?

There is an interesting debate in The New York Times over the dilemma that the U.S. faces in how to deal with Russia - should it play down the response to Russian aggression in the Ukraine in the interest of advancing talks on disarmament and nuclear security? Or should it sacrifice those talks and possibly create instability in the nuclear equilibrium in order to confront Russia's unlawful use of force in Ukraine?

Where do you come down on the issue?

North Korea's Efforts to Avoid UN Censure on Human Rights

As The New York Times reports in today's paper, the North Korean government has been acting feverishly on a number of fronts to try to avoid censure by the UN General Assembly committee that oversees human rights. The resolution, if passed, could lead the UN Security Counsel to pass a resolution calling for the ICC to investigate specific allegations of abuse. Does this provide evidence that even pariah states with limited concern for reputation are nonetheless influenced by international law?

UPDATE: The UN committee that oversees human rights issues resoundingly approved the resolution condemning North Korea's human rights record, which will make the approval of a similar resolution by the General Assembly later this month a forgone conclusion. Now the question is whether the UN Security Council will refer the matter to the ICC.

The Definition of Aggression

As we take up the question of the definition of aggression today, for those interested in reading more about the issue, there is a good article on the subject at EJIL: Talk! on the definition the purposes of the Rome Statute of the ICC, which was decided upon at the international conference at Kampala two years ago. As discussed in the blog post, the new definition and associated "understandings" raise many interesting issues involving treaty interpretation.

The Kampala definition itself is as follows:For the purpose of this Statute, “crime of aggression” means the planning, preparation, initiation or execution, by a person in a position effectively to exercise control over or to direct the political or military action of a State, of an act of aggression which, by its character, gravity and scale, constitutes a manifest violation of the Charter of the United Nations.

You may also want to look at the full text of UN General Assembly Resolutions 2626 (Declaration on Friendly Relations), and 3314 (Definition of Aggression), that we will discuss in class and are only excerpted in the text.

The US Changes Its Interpretation of Convention Against Torture!!

As we discussed in class last week, the US had to make submissions this month on its position regarding the US interpretation of the extraterritorial obligations under the CAT. The Obama administration has altered the US position so as to accept the more widely understood interpretation, that the CAT obligations regarding both torture and CID apply to state agents operating outside of the territory of the state. Bravo! Full story here.

Derogation and Threats to the Life of the Nation

In the Loveless case which we examine this week, which was an early case considering the latitude for states to derogate from rights obligations during times of national emergency, when the life of the nation is threatened, the Court was quite deferential to the state's interests. In thinking about this, you might be interested in looking at how the House of Lords more recently considered the issue of derogation from rights due to threats to the life of the nation, in A(F.C.) v. the Home Secretary [2004].

The case (you can find the full judgment here) involved the "certification" of the applicants under the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act, 2001, which permitted the government to detain persons so certified for an indefinite period. The government of the U.K. argued that the law constituted a permitted derogation from its obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights.

As part of the decision, Lord Hoffman considered what "the life of the nation" meant in Art. 15 of the Convention, and wrote as follows (continued below the fold):

Human Rights Committee and the United States

Above is another example of a Human Rights Committee observations in response to a state's periodic report, which each state submits pursuant to its obligations under the ICCPR. This is the Concluding Observations in response, issued earlier this year, to the most recent Periodic Report of the United States. The Fourth Periodic Report of the United States of America, submitted by the U.S. in 2011, to which this document is a response, can be found here.

You may also review here the submissions of the American NGO Human Rights Watch to the Human Rights Committee, criticizing the compliance record of the United States.

Consider whether such reporting, and resulting response from the Human Rights Committee, is effective as a mechanism for mobilizing compliance with state obligations.