EJIL: Talk!

A War Crimes Trial That Needs More Attention

Published on November 15, 2018 Author: Vidan Hadzi-Vidanovic

Introduction

There is an ongoing landmark domestic trial for international crimes that is steadily progressing at this very moment in relative obscurity. The case is about one of the worst single-event crimes that has occurred since the Second World War and was matched in its methods and gravity only by the likes of the Nyarubuye, Gikondo, and Srebrenica Massacres of 1994 and 1995. In 3 days, 1000 people from several neighboring villages were rounded-up, imprisoned, tortured, raped and killed. More than 500 of them were children. The crime was committed during an internal armed conflict that lasted 12 years during the final decade of the Cold War. The crime was then denied, forgotten and eventually literally exhumated by Argentinian forensic experts in 1992. The crime took place between 11 and 13 December 1981 in a cluster of small villages in North-East El Salvador. The crime is remembered as the El Mozote Massacre.

It will be 37 years in December since this massacre took place. So far, nobody has been held criminally responsible for it, despite the fact that the details of the incident were well documented in the 1993 Report of the UN Truth Commission for El Salvador. This is largely because of the General Amnesty Law which was passed in 1993, shortly after the signing of the Chapultepec Peace Accord by which the Salvadoran civil war ended. However, in 2012, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights passed the Judgment in the Case of the Massacres of El Mozote and Nearby Places v. El Salvador in which it declared the Amnesty Law incompatible with the Inter-American Convention of Human Rights and with the peace accord itself.

It took some 4 years for the Salvadoran Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court to declare the Amnesty Law unconstitutional. Shortly after the law was derogated, the investigation into the El Mozote Massacre continued, and in March 2017 charges against 18 high-ranking military officers were brought before the criminal court of first instance in San Francisco Gotera, a small municipality in Morazán department. The charges were not brought by the Salvadoran Attorney General (Fiscalia), but by two NGOs – Fundacion Cristosal and Tutela Legal Maria Julia. The Attorney General initially claimed that the case was res judicata and that, therefore, it should be rejected. The trial judge, Guzman Urquilla, disagreed and let the proceedings continue. Read the rest of this entry…

Filed under: Amnesty, International Criminal Law, International Tribunals

Tags: Amnesty, Domestic Remedies, El Salvador, War Crimes

3 Comments

The Situation of the Rohingya: Is there a role for the International Court of Justice?

Published on November 14, 2018 Author: Michael A Becker

In April 2017, the UN Human Rights Council established the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar to investigate alleged human rights abuses by military and security forces. The Fact-Finding Mission issued an initial summary reportin August 2018, followed by a 444-page report of detailed findingsin September.

Among other things, the Fact-Finding Mission found that after an armed group called the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army launched a series of small-scale attacks against government military outposts on 25 August 2017, a government campaign aimed at Rohingya communities in Rakhine State resulted in at least 10,000 deaths and caused 725,000 Rohingya to flee, mainly to neighbouring Bangladesh. The Myanmar authorities termed their actions “clearance operations” meant to eliminate a terrorist threat. The Fact-Finding Mission described a campaign of indiscriminate killing and maiming, rampant sexual violence, and widespread destruction of Rohingya villages—a “human rights catastrophe”, but one long in the making because of a history of state-sanctioned discrimination against the Rohingya, a Muslim minority in a predominantly Buddhist country.

The Fact-Finding Mission (which Myanmar refused to admit into its territory) concluded that the actions of Myanmar’s forces constituted crimes against humanity and war crimes. It also found sufficient evidence to warrant the investigation and prosecution of senior officials for the crime of genocide. Among other recommendations, the Fact-Finding Mission urged the UN Security Council to refer the situation to the International Criminal Court (ICC) (Myanmar is not a party to the Rome Statute) or to establish an ad hoc international criminal tribunal. (After the Fact-Finding Mission issued its August report, a Pre-Trial Chamber of the ICC determinedthat the ICC has jurisdiction over the alleged deportation of Rohingya individuals from Myanmar to Bangladesh, and possibly over additional other crimes; ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has since announceda preliminary examination into the situation.) The Fact-Finding Mission also recommended targeted sanctions against government officials and an arms embargo. The Chair of the Fact-Finding Mission, Marzuki Darusman, addressed the Security Council last month (over the objections of China and Russia) to reiterate these conclusions. In the meantime, the UN Human Rights Council responded by establishing a mechanismto collect and preserve evidence of international law violations in Myanmar (discussed here).

The emphasis of the Fact-Finding Mission and the UN Human Rights Council on individual criminal accountability is unsurprising. Many other fact-finding missions and commissions of inquiry that have investigated large-scale human rights violations have been similarly focused—a reflection of the extent to which international criminal law has become the central or even dominant narrative of the international response to so many crises. Indeed, advocacy groups have long campaigned for an ICC-focused response to the Rohingya crisis, alongside the urgent need to provide humanitarian assistance to the thousands of Rohingya refugees now living in difficult conditions in camps across the border in Bangladesh. (A dealnegotiated by UNHCR and UNDP with Myanmar in May 2018 to facilitate the repatriation of the Rohingya has been widely criticizedand remains unimplemented.)

The increased focus on Myanmar in 2018 is to be welcomed. UN officials and some governments have already characterized the conduct of the Myanmar authorities as acts of genocide (see here, here, here, and here), and the reputation and credibility of Myanmar’s de facto leader, the Nobel peace laureate Aung Sung Suu Kyi, has seen a rapid and precipitous decline (see here, here, and here). Yet amidst all of these developments, the almost singular focus on an international criminal justice response to the plight of the Rohingya is striking. The idea of seeking legal accountability at the level of State responsibility has gone largely unmentioned, a further example of what Laurel Fletcher has called the “effacement of state accountability for international crimes”. In that vein, the remainder of this post will consider the prospects for a case against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Read the rest of this entry…

Filed under: Genocide, Human Rights, International Court of Justice, International Criminal Law

1 Comment

The Road Less Traveled: How Corporate Directors Could be Held Individually Liable in Sweden for Corporate Atrocity Crimes Abroad

Published on November 13, 2018 Author: Miriam Ingeson and Alexandra Lily Kather

On 18 October 2018, the Swedish Government authorized the Swedish Prosecution Authority to proceed to prosecution in a case regarding activities of two corporate directors within Swedish oil company Lundin Oil, and later within Lundin Petroleum, in Sudan (now South Sudan) between 1998 and 2003. The company’s chief executive and chairman could be charged with aiding and abetting gross crimes against international law in accordance with Chapter 22, Section 6 of the Swedish Penal Code. Charges of such kind carry a sentence of up to ten years or life imprisonment. The case has the potential of furthering accountability of corporate actors for their involvement in international crimes abroad.

Lundin’s alleged involvement in international crimes in South Sudan

Sudan was ravaged by a non-international armed conflict which lasted from 1983 until 2005, between the Government of Sudan and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) – as well as a variety of other armed groups. Meanwhile, beginning with the signing of contracts in 1997, Lundin formed a consortium which carried out oil exploration and production in an oil concession area located south of Bentiu on the West Bank of the White Nile in Western Upper Nile/Unity State called Block 5A in the southern part of the country. According to a report by the European Commission on Oil in Sudan (ECOS), the oil exploration brought exacerbated conditions while setting off a battle for control of the disputed region, leading to thousands of deaths and the forced displacement of local populations – with the Nuer people being the most affected. Additionally, reported crimes against civilians by the Sudanese army as well as associated militias of both parties, include indiscriminate attacks, unlawful killing, rape, enslavement, torture, pillage and the recruitment of child soldiers. The consortium’s interaction with local counterparts has come under criminal investigation after the ECOS report was submitted to Swedish prosecutors in 2010. The long time span of the investigation is at least in part due to on-going conflict in the region in 2013, when the International Office of the Prosecutor had scheduled its visit to South Sudan. Furthermore, the case came with some political connotations since Carl Bildt, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sweden, had served as a member of the Board of Directors of Lundin from 2000 to 2006.

In the United States, a case comprised of a similar set of facts was brought by the Presbyterian Church of Sudan against the Republic of Sudan and Talisman Energy Inc., a Canadian oil company, which commenced its activities in the area one year after Lundin. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held in a judgment of 2 October 2009 that the claimants had failed to establish that Talisman “acted with the purpose to support the Government’s offences”. Under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) the plaintiffs needed to show that “Talisman acted with the – purpose – (one could argue that such mens rea standard had been set unreasonably high) to advance the Government’s human rights abuses”. On 15 April 2010, the plaintiffs petitioned for a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court, supported by an amicus curiae submitted by Earth Rights International on 20 May 2010, asking to revert the decision of the Second Circuit. On October 2010 the Supreme Court declined to grant certiorari and respectively to hear the appeal in this case. In contrast to the rather broad universal and extraterritorial jurisdiction provided for in the Swedish Penal Code, the Supreme Court decision in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, Co. remarkably restricted the application of the ACTA in cases involving allegations of abuse – outside – the United States by finding that presumptively it does not apply extraterritorially. Read the rest of this entry…

Filed under: Alien Tort Statute, EJIL Analysis, International Criminal Law, Universal Jurisdiction

Tags: corporate liability, universal jurisdiction

2 Comments

Does the ICC Statute Remove Immunities of State Officials in National Proceedings? Some Observations from the Drafting History of Article 27(2) of the Rome Statute

Published on November 12, 2018 Author: Dapo Akande and Talita de Souza Dias

Following oral hearings held in September, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is currently deliberating in Jordan’s Appeal of the Pre-Trial Chamber’s decision holding that it had failed to cooperate with the ICC by refusing to arrest and surrender Sudan’s President, Omar Al-Bashir, when he visited Jordan. Central to the determination of whether Jordan, a party to the ICC Statute, failed to comply with its obligations of cooperation under the Statute is the issue of whether Jordan was obliged to respect the immunity ratione personae that the Sudanese President would ordinarily be entitled to as a serving head of state.

As is well known, when the ICC seeks to exercise its jurisdiction over a state official who ordinarily possesses immunity under international law from foreign criminal jurisdiction, the question of immunity may, potentially, arise at two levels. First, the issue of international law immunity with respect to the ICC may possibly arise at the so-called ‘vertical level’, i.e in the relations between the ICC, on the one hand, and the accused person and his or her state, on the other. The question that arises here is whether the accused person (as a state official entitled to international law immunities) or his or her state, may plead those immunities before the ICC itself, such as to prevent the Court from exercising jurisdiction over him or her. Second, and more commonly, the issue of immunity will arise at the so-called ‘horizontal level’, i.e in the relations between a state that is requested by the ICC to effect an arrest or surrender, on the one hand, and the state of the accused person, on the other. Here, the question is whether a state that is requested by the ICC, to arrest or surrender the official of another state, may do so, where to do so would require the requested state to violate the immunities that the foreign state official ordinarily possesses under international law. In particular, the question at this horizontal level is whether there is something about the ICC’s request for cooperation that would mean that the obligations which a state ordinarily owes to another to consider inviolable the person of a serving foreign head of state no longer apply. This is the main question that the Appeals Chamber is called upon to resolve in the Bashir case. In this post, we do not propose to examine the range of arguments put to the Chamber on this question. Rather this post will consider one specific question that is critical to the Court’s assessment and to the more general question of how the ICC Statute affects the immunity of state officials.

The post considers whether the provision of the Rome Statute that removes immunity – Art. 27(2) – only removes immunity at the ‘vertical level’ (before the Court itself) or whether it does so at the ‘horizontal level’ (before national authorities) as well. In particular, the post throws new light on this question through an examination of the drafting history of that provision. Consideration of the drafting history shows that the drafters of the provision considered, throughout the period of elaboration of the Statute, that what would become Art. 27 was to have effect not just in proceedings before the ICC itself but also in national proceedings related to the ICC’s exercise of jurisdiction. Read the rest of this entry…

Filed under: International Criminal Court, International Criminal Law, State Immunity, Treaty Law

Tags: Bashir, Head of State Immunity, Jordan

2 Comments

Dulce et Decorum Est

Published on November 11, 2018 Author: Marko Milanovic

Wilfred Owen (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori

Filed under: Armed Conflict, EJIL Analysis

No Comments

Announcements: CfP The Legacy of the League of Nations Conference

Published on November 11, 2018 Author: Mary Guest

Call for Papers: The Legacy of the League of Nations Conference. We invite proposals of early career researchers for papers to the conference on ‘The Legacy of the League of Nations’ to be held at Leicester Law School on 31 January 2019. The aim of the conference is to critically assess the legacy of the League of Nations and the role of its successor, the United Nations, as a driving force for the development of international law. Deadline for submissions is 30 November 2018. Abstracts of 500 words should be sent via email to Dr Rossana Deplano (rossana.deplano {at} le.ac(.)uk). Abstracts must include the institutional affiliation of the author. For more information, please check our website.

Filed under: Announcements and Events

Tags: Announcements

No Comments

New Issue of EJIL (Vol. 29 (2018) No. 3) Published

Published on November 9, 2018 Author: Mary Guest

The latest issue of the European Journal of International Law (Vol. 29, No. 3) is out today. As usual, the table of contents of the new issue is available at EJIL’s own website, where readers can access those articles that are freely available without subscription. The free access article in this issue is Frédéric Mégret’s International Criminal Justice as a Peace Project. EJIL subscribers have full access to the latest issue of the journal at EJIL’s Oxford University Press site. Apart from articles published in the last 12 months, EJIL articles are freely available on the EJIL website.

Filed under: Announcements and Events, EJIL

Tags: Announcements, EJIL

No Comments

UNCITRAL and ISDS Reforms: Moving to Reform Options … the Politics

Published on November 8, 2018 Author: Anthea Roberts

In the last blog, I provided an update on the UNCITRAL process, including the consensus decision from Vienna last week to move forward to consider possible reforms of investor-state arbitration. This decision is very significant. But to get a sense of how this decision was reached and where the process might be heading, I thought it would be helpful to provide my sense of the politics of the process as well as some projections about how it might move forward.

As stated previously, I am a member of the Australian delegation but I am included in that delegation in my independent academic capacity, so nothing in my writings or talks should be taken to reflect Australia’s views. My academic views are exactly that: mine and academic. Nevertheless, I hope that these views are informed. These blogs are based on official interventions during the UNCITRAL plenary sessions as well as discussions with a diverse range of actors from the process.

Read the rest of this entry…

Filed under: Bilateral Investment Treaties, EJIL Article Discussion, European Union, Inter-State Arbitration, International Economic Law, Investor-State Arbitration Tribunals

Tags: dispute resolution, institutional reform, UNCITRAL

1 Comment

Publish and Perish: A Plea to Deans, Faculty Chairpersons, University Authorities

Published on November 8, 2018 Author: Joseph Weiler

Item: EJIL and I.CON, like most of their peers, used to classify article submissions into three categories: Accept, Revise and Resubmit, and Reject. In recent times, a good few years now, we have added what we call ‘Category 4’. It happens increasingly that on the first screening of an article we come to seemingly contradictory conclusions. On the one hand, the piece may be striking in any number of ways: the choice of topic, the originality of the principal argument, the novel empirical data therein. On the other hand, our accumulated experience tells us that it will never pass peer review, not even the Revise and Resubmit threshold. It is simply too rushed and hence too raw. That’s why the Category 4 was invented. An encouraging letter is sent to the author indicating that we believe there is much promise in the piece but it requires a general overhaul before the specific road map, which is the hallmark of a good Revise and Resubmit peer report, can take place: more research, more depth in developing arguments, more attention to counter arguments, more care in expressing them, etc.

Item: In preparing a tenure review report, or assisting in an entry-level appointment process I read the file – a dozen articles or so. One is strikingly good. A handful, truly mediocre. One or two, real garbage. From the same hand, from the same mind. How so uneven? We cannot be at our best in everything we put out, but I am talking discrepancies that go beyond that standard distribution.

Item: I’m a commentator in our post-doc workshop. I later meet with the young scholar to give detailed comments and suggestions for the work. You’ll need, I say, a good few months, maybe half a year’s more work to produce what could become a splendid piece. The post-doc looks at me forgivingly: ‘It won’t happen. My dean expects us to publish seven pieces (!) in two years. I have to move on.’ This ‘quota’ may be at the higher end but is not atypical. I later see the piece, in its original form, on SSRN and eventually in some journal. Read the rest of this entry…

Filed under: Editorials, EJIL

Tags: EJIL

12 Comments

UNCITRAL and ISDS Reforms: Moving to Reform Options … the Process

Published on November 7, 2018 Author: Anthea Roberts

Last week has been described as a watershed moment for ISDS reform. During a meeting in Vienna, states decided by consensus on the desirability of developing reforms in UNCITRAL with respect to investor-state arbitration. States now have an opportunity to make proposals for a work plan about what reforms to consider and how to go about considering them. To the extent that the tide has turned on traditional investor-state arbitration, it is now up to states to tell us where they want to sail.

As you might imagine, reaching a decision like this involved quite a process, along with a lot of politics. In this blog, I set out the process in terms of what was decided in Vienna, what was not decided, and what the next steps will be for moving forward in 2019. In the next blog, I will provide some context to this development, giving some insights into the politics of the process as well as some projections about how this process might develop.

This reform process will be long and its ultimate outcome remains unknowable. But the momentum for and direction of reforms are becoming increasingly clear. The calls for systemic reform are rising, though different states may mean different things by “systemic.”

Read the rest of this entry…

Filed under: Bilateral Investment Treaties, EJIL Analysis, European Union, Inter-State Arbitration, International Economic Law, Investor-State Arbitration Tribunals

Tags: dispute resolution, institutional reform, UNCITRAL

No Comments

Page 1 of 24812 3 4 5 Next ›Last »

A War Crimes Trial That Needs More Attention

The Situation of the Rohingya: Is there a role for the International Court of Justice?

The Road Less Traveled: How Corporate Directors Could be Held Individually Liable in Sweden for Corporate Atrocity Crimes Abroad

Does the ICC Statute Remove Immunities of State Officials in National Proceedings? Some Observations from the Drafting History of Article 27(2) of the Rome Statute

Dulce et Decorum Est

Announcements: CfP The Legacy of the League of Nations Conference

New Issue of EJIL (Vol. 29 (2018) No. 3) Published

UNCITRAL and ISDS Reforms: Moving to Reform Options … the Politics

Publish and Perish: A Plea to Deans, Faculty Chairpersons, University Authorities

UNCITRAL and ISDS Reforms: Moving to Reform Options … the Process

About EJIL:Talk!

I·CONnect

From the archives

Subscribe to EJIL: Talk! for email updates

Recent Comments

Archives

Authors

Categories