Tom Dannenbaum is a Graduate Associate in the Law and Public Affairs Program at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He is author of Translating the Standard of Effective Control into a System of Effective Accountability: How Liability Should be Apportioned for Violations of Human Rights by Member State Troop Contingents Serving as United Nations Peacekeepers,  51 Harv. Int’l L.J. 113 (2010)

Introduction:

In an earlier post, I reported on the Hague Court of Appeal’s decisions in Nuhanović v. The Netherlands and Mustafić-Mujić et al v. The Netherlands regarding the wrongdoing of Dutchbat at Srebrenica. Here, I examine the Court’s holding on the attribution of that wrongdoing to the Dutch state.

The decisions provide stronger and clearer jurisprudential affirmation of the principles of “effective control” and dual attribution than does the Grand Chamber’s judgment in Al-Jedda v. United Kingdom (handed down just two days later). Moreover, the Court of Appeal’s elaboration of “effective control” establishes several key features of the concept as applied in the peacekeeping context. First, the “effective control” analysis should be applied equally to the contributing state and the receiving international organization. Second, “effective control” includes not just giving orders, but also the capacity to prevent the wrongdoing. Third, though the Court’s position on this is slightly more ambiguous, troop-contributing states may sometimes hold that “power to prevent” in virtue of their authority to discipline and criminally punish their troops for contravening U.N. orders. I would go beyond the Court’s reasoning on this third feature to add that the state’s authority with respect to selecting and training troops and contingent commanders is also relevant in this regard.

Since the decisions do not differ on any significant matters of substance, the citations below are to Nuhanović, but apply equally to Mustafić-Mujić. (more…)

Christiane Ahlborn is Ph.D. Candidate at the Amsterdam Center for International Law and member of the project on Shared Responsibility in International Law (SHARES)

On 31 October 2011, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizations (UNESCO) approved the bid of Palestine for full membership with the necessary two-thirds majority. Although 107 UNESCO States voted in favor of Palestinian membership, the approval also faced notable opposition by 14 States. The overall number of 173 votes cast included 52 abstentions. Among the States voting against the bid were the United States, Canada and several EU member States, including Germany and the Netherlands. While the diverging positions of EU member States thus reveals once again the lack of unanimity in EU external relations policy, the US disapproval of the Palestinian UNESCO membership may have more serious consequences at the level of US-UNESCO relations. For after the approval of Palestine’s membership bid, the US immediately announced that it would cut off its funds to UNESCO, which amount to 60 million USD annually. This decision is based on several US laws that prohibit the US government to provide funds to any United Nations agency or affiliated organization that “accords the Palestine Liberation Organization the same standing as member states” (see P.L. 101-246, Title IV [1990] and P.L. 103-236, Title IV [1994]).

International Responsibility for Withholding Membership Dues

Since the US is the largest contributor to the UNESCO budget with a share of 22 percent, its decision to withhold its contributions will most likely impede the effective functioning of the organization. As the Director-General of UNESCO stated on 2 November 2011, the continued withholding of dues may severely affect UNESCO’s activities in a variety of areas. UNESCO already felt the repercussions of the lack of US funding after 1984 when the United States withdrew from UNESCO due to the increasing politicization of the Organization, rejoining only in 2003 (for a discussion of the reasons for the withdrawal see Hans N. Weiler, ‘Withdrawing from UNESCO: A Decision in Search of an Argument’ (1986) Comparative Education Review 132).

Considering the potentially detrimental effects of US withholdings, this contribution seeks to examine whether the US could be held internationally responsible for its acts under the law of international responsibility. After all, Article IX of the constituent instrument of UNESCO (the UNESCO Constitution) states that member States of the organization have a “financial responsibility” towards the Organization, i.e. an obligation to provide the Organization with the necessary financial resources, as decided by the General Conference of UNESCO. Although this obligation arguably could have been formulated in more concrete terms, it is suggested that the United States would breach its obligations under the UNESCO Constitution by withholding its membership dues, and accordingly be under a secondary obligation to make reparation either in kind and/or by means of compensation.

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Tom Dannenbaum is a Graduate Associate in the Law and Public Affairs Program at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He is author of Translating the Standard of Effective Control into a System of Effective Accountability: How Liability Should be Apportioned for Violations of Human Rights by Member State Troop Contingents Serving as United Nations Peacekeepers, 51 Harv. Int’l L.J. 113 (2010)

Introduction:

This summer, the Dutch Court of Appeal in The Hague issued simultaneous and almost identical rulings in two crucial lawsuits regarding the actions of U.N. peacekeepers during the Srebrenica genocide – Nuhanović v. The Netherlands and Mustafić-Mujić et al v. The Netherlands. The cases involve civil claims with respect to the deaths of four Bosnian civilians in the Srebrenica genocide. The victims were killed by Bosnian Serb forces after being evicted by the Dutch battalion (Dutchbat) of UNPROFOR from the U.N. compound at Potočari on the 13th of July 1995. The Court of Appeal decided that Dutchbat acted unlawfully in evicting two of the male victims, that this triggered legal responsibility for the deaths of all three male victims (but not the sole female victim), and that the wrongs could be attributed to the Netherlands.

In this post, I provide a brief description of the procedural and factual background to the case and address the legal issue of Dutchbat’s wrongdoing. Later this week, I will address the potentially more consequential issue of the attribution of that wrongdoing to the Dutch state.

The Court’s analysis of Dutchbat’s wrongdoing has two key features. First, the Court applied human rights obligations abroad. However, it did not do so by finding the relevant treaties to have extraterritorial effect. Instead, it found (i) that the ICCPR had been incorporated into the domestic law of the host state (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and (ii) that the relevant provisions of the ICCPR and ECHR were rules of customary international law that were binding extraterritorially (whether or not the treaty obligations themselves would extend abroad). Second, the ruling characterized Dutchbat’s wrongdoing narrowly: (i) relying on the eviction of the victims from the U.N. compound, not on any responsibility to protect those already outside the compound, and (ii) noting that since the victims were the last persons to be evicted, the judgment provided no indication of whether earlier evictions would have been unlawful (the probable consequences of eviction having become more apparent to Dutchbat over time). (more…)

Vidan Hadzi-Vidanovic is a doctoral candidate at the University of Nottingham School of Law.

At a press conference held in Nairobi on 15 October 2011, the Kenyan ministers of defence and interior announced that Kenyan security forces will engage in military operations against the Al-Shabaab militants in Somali territory. They invoked Article 51 of the UN Charter as a legal basis for these actions and pledged that all measures taken in the exercise of the right of self-defence will be reported to the Security Council. Additionally, they invoked the right to hot pursuit, although it is not clear whether it was regarded as a part of the right to self-defence or as a self-standing right. The announcement comes after a number of incidents which involved the incursions of Al-Shabaab elements as deep as 120km inside Kenyan territory, and abductions of several foreign nationals.

At the time of the writing of this post, reports indicate that the border between Kenya and Somalia has been closed and that Kenyan troops are gathering in the border area, preparing to invade Somali territory. It has also been reported that Kenyan troops have already entered 100km deep into Somali territory by Monday evening seizing two Al-Shabaab controlled towns. The Somali representative at the UN suggested that the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) would see the incursion as a violation of Somali sovereignty while expressing some understanding for the Kenyan legitimate concerns.

Some Problems with the Kenyan Invocation of the Right to Self-Defence

According to Article 51, every state has an inherent right to defend itself by employing military means if it has been subjected to an armed attack. The traditional view—which still has a significant support—is that an armed attack must be attributable to a state.

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From time to time we have had discussions on this blog about the classification of extraterritorial or transnational conflicts between States and non-State groups. In other words, when States use force abroad against non-State groups, does this lead to an armed conflict between the State and the non-State group? If so, what law applies to that armed conflict, the law of international armed conflict or that of non-international armed conflicts. In most cases, when we’ve had this discussion the focus has been the situation between the US and Al Qaeda.  Earlier discussions of this issue can be found in comments to Marko’s post of May 2010 on What Exactly Internationalizes an Internal Armed Conflict?; to Constantin von der Groeben’s post of April 2010 and to my post of March 2009 on the Obama’s Administrations Interpretation of the Authority to Detain At Guantanamo: Some Areas of Progress. As readers will have seen there was renewed discussion of this issue in the comments on Alon Margalit’s recent post on the killing of Bin Laden .

I have given quite a lot of thought to this issue and have recently set out my thoughts on the issue as part of a chapter I am writing on the classification of armed conflicts. The chapter is part of a project on Classification of Conflicts being undertaken under the auspices of the International Law Programme at Chatham House. The project is led by Elizabeth Wilmhurst and includes distinguished academics and practitioners of  international humanitarian law (mainly on this side of the Atlantic). Members of the group include Michael Schmitt (now at the US Naval War College), Jelena Pejic at the ICRC, Professor Francoise Hampson (Essex University), Professor Iain Scobbie (SOAS) and Dr Noam Lubell (now also at Essex). I am a member of the group. Each of us is tasked with writing a chapter and most chapters deal with issues relating to the classification of particular conflicts (eg Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza, Lebanon, Colombia, DRC, Al Qaeda). However, some of the chapters deal with general conceptual issues. We have had several delightful meetings at Chatham House to discuss and revise our chapters. Earlier this year, we also held a weekend workshop in Oxford (hosted by the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict).  My own chapter seeks to provide a general overview of the legal concepts relevant to classification. The chapter (and indeed the result of the entire project) are not yet published but should be soon. We expect the essays to be collected in a book on Classification of Conflicts. In my chapter, I deal with the history of the distinction between international and non-international armed  conflict, the consequences of the distinction and whether it still has validity.  The chapter then discusses legal concepts relevant to the two categories, including the differences between a non-international conflict and other  violence and conflicts in which UN ‘blue helmets’ are engaged. I conclude with a discussion of extraterritorial conflicts between States and non-State groups.

Those who have read our earlier discussions will know that my view is that where a State uses force against a non-State group on the territory of another State, without the consent of that latter State, the State using force is bound by the law applicable in international armed conflicts. In summary, the use of force by one State on the territory of another, without the consent of the latter leads to an international armd conflict between the two States. Also that conflict is inextricably linked with any conflict with the non-State actor such that the State using force will have to follow the law applicable in international armed conflicts. In my draft, I provide a sustained defence of this position and how it accords with international practice. I also show how the position has the support of most international tribunals. The relevant section of my draft chapter now follows. I invite your comments. (more…)

Michael Waibel is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cambridge.

On 7 September 2011, the German Federal Constitutional Court gave judgment in three joined cases regarding the constitutionality of German financial assistance to Greece and of its guarantees to the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). The Eurozone rescue efforts are widely seen to stand (or fall) with the government in Berlin. Germany is the largest contributor to the Greek rescue and the EFSF with more than 27 percent, or 119 billion €, of the 440 billion € in guarantees and one of only six AAA-rated sovereigns remaining in the Eurozone (alongside Austria, France, Finland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands).

Financial markets breathed a collective sigh of relief once the court upheld the rescue measures, even though few had expected the Court to strike down the laws authorizing the German guarantees. They had waited for word from Germany’s highest court with a mix of anxiety and hope. The decision removed an important source of uncertainty that had weighted on financial markets over the summer of 2011. At the same time, the judgment also raises several questions with regard to German participation in future rescue efforts, and in particular, how far fiscal integration in the European Union may go without infringing the German constitution.

The threat of constitutional review limited the German government’s room for manoeuvre in the Eurozone crisis, slowed down the policy response and explains some features of the ongoing rescue efforts, such as the structure of the EFSF and the requirement of strict conditionality attached to financial assistance to struggling Eurozone economies. The Constitutional Court has been a central player in the drama surrounding the efforts to resolve the Greek debt crisis. In a telling sign of the court’s importance, Chancellor Merkel postponed her intervention in the general budgetary debate on 7 September in the German Parliament to await the court’s ruling.

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Sarah Fulton is International Legal Officer at REDRESS.

The trial and sentencing of 20 medical professionals in Bahrain in the past two weeks has again turned the spotlight on the small Gulf Kingdom’s unfinished ‘Arab Spring’ and the repressive methods used to contain it.

The sentencing of doctors, nurses and paramedics who treated injured protesters to imprisonment of five to fifteen years has grabbed the world’s attention in a way that trials of others involved in protests in Bahrain – including human rights activists, bloggers, and teachers – has not.  Imprisoning doctors, it seems, is a step too far – a signal taken on board by the government, which announced last week that the 20 will be retried in a civilian court.

The strong international reaction that the case has provoked focuses attention on the value placed on respect for medical neutrality in times of conflict and civil unrest.

In the wake of popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, Bahrain too saw mass protests in February and March from citizens demanding constitutional change.  Although initially tolerated by the regime, the protesters quickly faced a sharp crackdown, as security forces backed by tanks and helicopters drove them out of Pearl Roundabout where they had gathered.  In the aftermath and over the following weeks injured protesters were taken to Bahrain’s main hospital for treatment.  Medical staff gave interviews to the international media describing the casualties and the injuries that they were seeing, with some of them accusing the government of atrocities.  At the same time the grounds of the hospital became a refuge and rallying point for protesters, including some medical staff.

This became a pretext for the regime to treat the hospital as a legitimate military target and on 16 March – the day after a state of emergency had been declared – security forces stormed it.  Credible reports tell of security forces setting up checkpoints and stationing military officers to search and check the identity of all those entering the hospital, diverting and attacking ambulances carrying the wounded, beating medical staff, and segregating those with protest-related injuries into one ward where they were beaten. According to Human Rights Watch, this was part of “what appear[ed] to be a systematic campaign … aimed at punishing and intimidating medical professionals suspected of sympathies with protesters and hindering access to health care facilities for persons wounded by security forces”.

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Alon Margalit is Research Associate, Hotung Programme for Law, Human Rights and Peace Building in the Middle East, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. The author wishes to thank the editors of EJIL:Talk! for their helpful comments on an earlier draft.

It has been almost six months since Osama Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan by a US commando team.  It is now worth reviewing some of the legal questions arising from the incident as the heat of the moment has passed.  The May 2011 killing of Bin Laden marked an operational apex in the US ‘War on Terror’ and was favourably received by the overwhelming majority of States.  Shortly after the raid on a residential compound in Abbottabad was concluded, and before its exact details were disclosed, a statement by the President of the Security Council welcomed “the news on 1 May 2011 that Osama Bin Laden will never again be able to perpetrate such acts of terrorism” and urged all States to intensify their fight against terrorism in compliance with international law.  UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared that “justice has been done to such a mastermind of international terrorism”.

Similar statements were made by the EU which described the American operation as “a major achievement”.  Afghan President Karzai said Bin Laden “had paid for his actions”, and Saudi Arabia, the national State of Bin Laden, expressed the hope that his killing “would be a step toward supporting international efforts aimed at fighting terrorism“.  In Pakistan, where the operation took place presumably without its consent, President Zardari chose to stress the “satisfaction that the source of the greatest evil of the new millennium has been silenced, and his victims given justice.”

If the question of where this operation stood in terms of international law were to be answered according to States’ responses, the killing of Bin Laden apparently did not raise any legal concerns.  States hailed the American operation, did not question its legality, and thus signalled that they saw no violation of international law.  Within this almost universal favourable discourse, two independent experts of the UN Human Rights Council, the Special Rapporteurs on summary executions and on human rights and counter-terrorism, issued an exceptional statement.  They urged the US to disclose the facts supporting the use of deadly force against Bin Laden in order “to allow an assessment in terms of international human rights law standards”.  They emphasised that “the norm should be that terrorists be dealt with as criminals, through legal processes of arrest, trial and judicially decided punishment”.

This statement reflected – contrary to what seemed to be the consensus shared by States – the ‘legal buzz’ among international lawyers, triggered by the American operation and concerned with its legality: was the US allowed to plan and execute a shoot-to-kill operation, or were its troops obliged to try and capture Bin Laden and give him an opportunity to surrender before turning to lethal force?  A significant discussion on this question emerged immediately after the incident, debating the applicable law and whether the operation had adhered to the required standards.  Different, at times opposite, views were expressed including on EJIL:Talk!, here and here.

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To my shame, I’ve only just noticed that Ken Gallant in his excellent book The Principle of Legality in International and Comparative Criminal Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) – recently reviewed in the JICJ here – addresses the difficult problem of applying the substantive law of the Rome Statute to situations in which the Court acquires jurisdiction over an individual only ex post facto, i.e. after the commission of the alleged crime, for example under a UNSC referral or on the basis of an Art. 12(3) declaration (pp. 337-343).  If, for instance, Gaddafi were to be put on trial before the ICC, and bearing in mind that Libya was never a party to the Rome Statute, can he be prosecuted for crimes or under theories of liability that are specific to the Rome Statute, such as indirect perpetration, which do not reflect customary law? I’ve written about this problem in my JICJ articles on whether the Rome Statute is binding on individuals and on aggression and legality. Ken argues (pp. 342-343), and I fully agree, that:

The possible retroactive application of non-customary international criminal law, especially after a Security Council referral, is not an imaginary problem. Many of the framers of the ICC Statute sought a progressive development of international criminal law and procedure. Therefore, they did not necessarily limit their drafting of the criminal law of the statute to that which was customary international law. It is not self-evident that all of the crimes listed in the statute are customary international law crimes.

Some respected commentators have suggested that all of the crimes set forth in the ICC Statute automatically apply when the Security Council has referred a situation to the ICC. This would be inconsistent with the legality analysis both of the statute and of international human rights law and with fundamental rules of treaty law.

Schabas, for example, claims that such an application would be permissible because it is “foreseeable” that the court would attempt to apply the statute to such people. The problem with this argument is that the states adopting the ICC Statute have no authority to prescribe new criminal law either for non-ICC states or for persons with no relevant connection to any ICC state. The ICC Statute can apply to a national of a non-ICC state who commits a criminal act in, or with effect in, an ICC state, as an instance of territorial jurisdiction. The states adopting the ICC Statute could not make law to apply to someone who is wholly unconnected with any ICC state party, and whose allegedly criminal acts are unconnected with such a state party, unless the crime were a customary international law crime over which there is universal jurisdiction (which, by hypothesis, the crime here is not). Foreseeability in the sense of legality can include a development in the law of a jurisdiction with legitimate authority over a person. It cannot mean foreseeability that an international organization will later attempt to impose its prescriptive jurisdiction on a person over whom it has no legitimate authority.

Schabas argues that the application of new, non-customary crimes in the ICC Statute to such persons is acceptable by pointing out that aggressive war was effectively a new crime at Nuremberg. The problem with this argument is that international human rights law has changed since that time. The claim by the Nuremberg Tribunal that nullum crimen sine lege was, in international law, merely a principle of justice was true then but is not so now. Now it is a rule of customary international law and perhaps a jus cogens rule at that.

Read Gallant!

The official application submitted by Palestine for UN membership is now available here, UN Doc. S/2011/592 (h/t Diane Marie Amann). It is of interest not the least because it has been carefully drafted and with the benefit of substantial legal advice. Note, first, how Mahmoud Abbas is not titled President of the Palestinian National Authority, but as President of the State of Palestine (he was appointed as such some years ago by the PLO). Note also how for good reason the letter does not say when exactly Palestine became a state, nor does it declare Palestine’s independence anew; rather, it refers to the 15 November 1988 DoI.