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The Legitimate Requirements of Justice

Published on June 30, 2015        Author: 

As readers have pointed out, the Grand Chamber in Lambert has now rectified its error, by amending paragraph 138 so that it now says in respect of Glass that: ‘in its judgment of 9 March 2004 it held that there had been a violation of Article 8 of the Convention’. The excellent blog post by Grégor Puppinck on Lambert nonetheless raises the broader question of the inherent power of international courts and tribunals to reopen their judgments.

All international courts and tribunals have the inherent power, in certain circumstances, to reopen their judgments. It has always been recognized that, as the report of the Advisory Committee of Jurists drafting the Statute of the Permanent Court of Justice, put the matter, although the principle of res judicata is underpinned by the fundamental value that ‘for the sake of international peace [a matter decided] should be considered as finally settled’, ‘[j]ustice, however, has certain legitimate requirements’ (Procès-Verbaux of the Proceedings of the Committee (Van Langenhuysen Brothers 1920) 744).

Read the rest of this entry…

Filed under: EJIL Analysis, European Convention on Human Rights, European Court of Human Rights
 

The ECHR Made a Legal Error in the Lambert Case

Published on June 29, 2015        Author: 

Man’s justice is not perfect, not even that of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). In a striking turn of events, it appears that the Court made a manifest legal error in the well known Lambert judgment (Lambert and others v. France, n°46043/14, Grand Chamber, 5 June 2014) by wrongly referring to its own case-law. In the Lambert case, that Court ruled that the French authorities could stop the artificial hydration and nutrition of Mr Lambert.

Glass v. United Kingdom judgment (n° 61827/00, Fourth Section, 9 March 2004) is one of the most important decisions the Court refers to in Lambert to support its decision. Indeed, the Court quotes Glass five times. In Glass, similarly to in Lambert, the mother of a child hospitalized for respiratory disorders complained about the the medical team’s decision to administer to her minor son, against her will, a high dose of morphine that risked causing his death. The doctors elected to not resuscitate him in the event of a respiratory crisis. Wishing to defend her son’s life, the patient’s mother brought her case to the ECtHR, as in the Lambert case.

In Glass, the Court ruled that: “the decision of the authorities to override the second applicant’s objection to the proposed treatment in the absence of authorisation by a court resulted in a breach of Article 8 of the Convention.” It “unanimously [held] that there [had] been a violation of Article 8 of the Convention.” Under this precedent, doctors should either respect the will of a patient’s parent or obtain an injunction against the parent’s decision. This precedent supports the position of Lambert’s parents. However, in the Lambert judgment the Grand Chamber stated erroneously that, in the Glass judgment, the Court “held that there had been no violation of Article 8 of the Convention.” (Paragraph 138). This error is found in the “general considerations” presenting the case law and supporting the Court’s decision. It is impossible to accurately determine the implications of this error on the Court’s reasoning, but it allows the Grand Chamber to affirm, in support of its own conclusion, that “it did not find a violation of the Convention in any of these cases.” (Paragraph 139). Read the rest of this entry…

Filed under: EJIL Analysis, European Convention on Human Rights, European Court of Human Rights
 

Announcements: Conference in Honor of Nicolas Michel (Geneva); Conference on UN at 70 (London); CfP on Law and Jurisprudence

Published on June 27, 2015        Author: 

1.  Colloque Nicolas Michel, Geneva, 29 June 2015. On 29 June a one-day conference will be organized in Geneva in honor of Mr. Nicolas Michel, former UN Under Secretary-general for Legal affairs and presently Professor at the Geneva Law Faculty and at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. Four sessions will address the following topics: UN-law; Responsibility to protect; Right to culture; International Criminal Justice. Reports by Dr. S. Villalpando, Prof. A. Peters, Dr P. Meyer-Bisch and Prof. C. Stahn will be followed by a discussion among renowned panelists and then by a general discussion. The conference will be held in French and English. Further information is here.

2.  The International Law Programme at Chatham House will be hosting a Conference on ‘United Nations at 70: International Law and the Achievement of UN Aims’ on Friday 16 October 2016 at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The Conference is being held in partnership with the UN Office of Legal Affairs. For further details and to enquire about registering see here.

3. Call for Submissions, Volume 5, Issue 1 (March 2016). The UCL Journal of Law and Jurisprudence is a law journal run by postgraduate students of the UCL Faculty of Laws. The Journal appears twice a year and will be available open access. All submissions are assessed through double blind peer review. The Editorial Board is pleased to call for submissions for the first issue of 2016. The Board welcomes papers covering all areas of law and jurisprudence. We accept articles of between 8,000-12,000 words, case notes of 6,000-8,000 words and book reviews of 1,000-2,000 words. All submissions must comply with the Oxford University Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities (OSCOLA). Contributions that have already been published or that are under consideration for publication in other journals will not be considered. The deadline for submissions is 16th October 2015. Manuscripts must be uploaded via the submissions section on our website. For further information and guidelines for authors please visit our website.

Filed under: Announcements and Events
 
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Palestine v. Israel: 1:0? Palestine, Israel and FIFA: What Are the Laws of the Game? Part II

Published on June 25, 2015        Author: 

This is Part II of a two-part post. See Part I here.

Suspension of membership

A second category of FIFA membership issues related to international law relates to possible suspension of membership. Under Art. 14 FIFA Statute, it is the FIFA Congress that is responsible for suspending a member association, such suspension requiring a three-quarter majority of the Members present and eligible to vote. In case of a positive vote on such suspension, other FIFA member associations may for the duration of the suspension no longer entertain sporting contacts with the suspended member.

Although not constituting a suspension in the technical sense, it is worth noting that after World War II even after the German Football Association (DFB) had been refounded, it took until 1950 that its full FIFA membership rights were reinstated at the 1950 Bruxelles FIFA congress.

The first time suspension from FIFA stricto senso came up was in the 1950s vis-à-vis South Africa after a FIFA emergency committee had found in 1955 that the South African Football Association (SAFA), representing only white minority football clubs, did not constitute a national association within the meaning of relevant FIFA rules. It thereby somewhat foreshadowed the practice of the Credentials Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, which, as is well-known, ever since 1974 had considered that representatives of the white minority regime in South Africa could not represent South Africa for United Nations purposes. On 26 September 1961, at the annual FIFA conference, the South African football association was then formally suspended from FIFA, which suspension was however lifted in January 1963, albeit only for a short time. Soon thereafter, namely in 1964, and given the increased representation from African and Asian soccer associations within FIFA, the suspension of South Africa’s football association’s membership was re-imposed before South Africa was then, in 1976, formally expelled from FIFA. Finally, the South African association was re-admitted in July 1992 in the wake of the fundamental political changes then taking place in South Africa. This demonstrates how the policy of FIFA and its member associations was, if not influenced, by then at least parallel to, the concurrent development of modern international law related to the prohibition of racial discrimination.

Yet another development leading to the suspension of a national football association occurred during the Yugoslav crisis after the Security Council had, acting under Chapter VII, adopted resolution 757 (1992), and had thereby “[d]ecide[d] that all States shall (…) [t]ake the necessary steps to prevent the participation in sporting events on their territory of persons or groups representing the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro)” (see para. 8 lit. b) of the text) Read the rest of this entry…

Filed under: EJIL Analysis, Occupation, Palestine, State Succession, States and Statehood
 
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Palestine v. Israel: 1:0? Palestine, Israel and FIFA: What Are the Laws of the Game? Part I

Published on June 24, 2015        Author: 

On 12 June 1015, the FIFA Executive Committee appointed former South African government minister Tokyo Sexwale to lead a monitoring committee to oversee issues related to the development of football in Palestine, and alleged interferences, by Israel, with such development. This committee was established on the basis of the decision by the 65th FIFA Congress in May 2015 after the Palestine Football Association had withdrawn its proposal to have the Israel Football Association suspended from FIFA. While this development has largely been overshadowed by the recent developments concerning alleged instances of corruption involving FIFA officials, and the ensuing announcement by the current FIFA’s President, Sepp Blatter, to resign from his position, it sheds light on the international law underpinnings of decisions made by FIFA when it comes to the status of contested territories in which a given national soccer association is based. What is more, it demonstrates how, over the years, the practice of FIFA has changed in light of developments of international law and what impact international law has when it comes to the current dispute FIFA is confronted with.

Membership in FIFA

During its early years, the FIFA Statute had simply provided that the organization consisted of “the Associations recognized by FIFA as the Associations controlling Association Football in their respective countries, provided that only one Association be recognized in each country” (see FIFA Handbook, 1st ed. 1927, p. 15; see also H. Homburg, FIFA and the ‘Chinese question’ 1954 – 1980: an Exercise of Statutes, Historical Social Research 2006, p. 69 et seq. (71)). Since 1937, FIFA had however already admitted “associations in a colony or dominion” which could then opt for directly joining FIFA whenever the “national football association of the mother country” [sic!] had signaled its consent (ibid., p. 71), thus being implicit evidence of the limited international personality of such dependent territories at the time. In the same vein, the FIFA 1937 Statutes had also provided that “[f]or countries placed under the protectorate of another country, the same principles as for dominions for colonies will be in force.” (ibid.).

As of today, Membership in FIFA is governed by its ‘Regulations Governing the Admission of Associations to FIFA’, Principle 1 of which currently provides that “[a]ny association that is seeking admission to FIFA must put forward an application that contains detailed information on its organisation, its sporting infrastructure and its territory”. Accordingly, each and every membership organization must provide data on the underlying scope ratione loci of its sphere of activities, which in case of territories, the status of which under international law is subject to dispute, might prove difficult. At the same time, Principle 3, para. 1, lit. a) thereof, dealing with the ‘Contents of application’, provides, apart from formalities, that any application for membership must include “[d]ocuments that show that the applicant represents a country in accordance with article 10 of the FIFA Statutes.” Art. 10 FIFA Statutes in turn, dealing with the admission of nationals soccer associations to FIFA, provides in its para. 1 that “[s]ubject to par. 5 and par. 6 below, only one Association shall be recognised in each Country”. For historical reasons, para 5 then provides that “[e]ach of the four British Associations [i.e. England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland] is recognised as a separate Member of FIFA”, which thereby by the same token e contrario shows that these regions would otherwise not qualify as ‘countries’ for FIFA purposes. What is more is that Art. 10 para. 6 FIA Statute further provides that “[a]n Association in a region which has not yet gained independence may, with the authorisation of the Association in the Country on which it is dependent, also apply for admission to FIFA.” It is in light of these statutory provisions that football associations from ‘territories’ as divergent as Aruba, the British Virgin Islands, ‘Chinese Taipei’, Hong Kong, the Faroe Islands, as well as New Caledonia, are as of today all members of FIFA, the lack of statehood of the respective underlying ‘territory’ notwithstanding. Read the rest of this entry…

Filed under: EJIL Analysis, Occupation, Palestine, States and Statehood
 
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The Nagorno-Karabakh Cases

Published on June 23, 2015        Author: 

Last week I wrote about one particular aspect of the recent Grand Chamber judgments of the European Court of Human Rights in two cases dealing with the aftermath of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict: Chiragov and Others v. Armenia, no. 13216/05 and Sargsyan v. Azerbaijan, no. 40167/06, namely the Court’s conclusion that belligerent occupation necessarily requires troops on the ground. I also promised a more comprehensive look at the two (very important) judgments, and here it is. The two cases concerned the aftermath in the conflict, in the sense that they dealt with the right of persons displaced by the conflict to access their property (under Article 1 of Protocol 1 to the Convention), rather than with the conflict itself, which was outside the Court’s temporal jurisdiction. That said, there are numerous noteworthy aspects of these two judgments.

First, there is the cases’ basic structure. Both cases were brought by individuals, but there are more than a thousand other applications pending before the Court with essentially the same issues. While these are formally not pilot judgments in the sense the Court uses the term, they are in fact test cases on the basis of which the Court is set to resolve all of the other pending cases, unless the parties choose to settle them first. And while the cases were brought by individuals, they have a strong interstate dimension, not only because of their politically controversial subject-matter, but because Armenia and Azerbaijan both intervened as third parties in the case in which the other state was the respondent (i.e. Armenia intervened in Sargasyan and Azerbaijan in Chiragov). These were, if you will, interstate cases by proxy.

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Filed under: Armed Conflict, EJIL Analysis, European Convention on Human Rights, European Court of Human Rights, Extraterritorial Application, Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, Occupation, State Responsibility
 

The Use of Force Against People Smugglers: Conflicts with Refugee Law and Human Rights Law

Published on June 22, 2015        Author: 

On 18 May, EU ministers agreed on a military operation (EU NAVFOR Med) that could comprise, in its final phase, the boarding, seizure and destruction of suspected migrant smuggling vessels, subject to approval by the UN Security Council. Negotiations before the Security Council appear to have halted until both the Libyan government in Tobruk and the ruling authorities in Tripoli give consent. Meanwhile, a diplomatic source involved in the EU internal talks on the matter stated that a military operation could be decided on 22 June at the Foreign Affairs Council in Luxembourg.

In earlier EJIL talk! posts, Melanie Fink and Sergo Mananashvili argued that a Security Council Resolution would be questionable under the law of the use of force. But a resolution would also raise issues of compliance with refugee and human rights law and thus would produce a norm conflict between a Security Council Resolution and other international law.

The Likely Need to Have Forces Close to the Libyan Shore

Let’s look at the most likely scenarios around the use of force, were the EU move forward and the UN Security Council to approve of the plans.

An earlier EU strategy paper had foreseen ‘intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; boarding teams; patrol units (air and maritime); amphibious assets; destruction air, land and sea, including special forces units.’ Since then, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, has pointed out that the operation would not include ‘boots on the ground’ in Libya. At the same time, it is clear that EU diplomats seek more than approval to destroy vessels intercepted at sea, and from which all migrants have disembarked. The EU seeks a UN resolution for destroy smuggling vessels before they have departed.

Identifying smuggling vessels before they have departed will be challenging without deploying people on the ground in Libya. Smuggling vessels can clearly be identified as such only at or shortly before the time they are being used for smuggling. Read the rest of this entry…

Filed under: EJIL Analysis, European Convention on Human Rights, Extraterritorial Application, Human Rights, Human Rights Council, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Libya, Migration, Refugee Law, Right to Life, Security Council, Syria, United Nations, Use of Force
 
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Announcements: Conference on EU Accession to ECHR & Free Movement of Students (Leiden & London); Event on Human Bondage (London); Conference on Palestine Mandate & Int’l Law (Jerusalem); Conference on the Work of the ILC (Paris); Conference on Transnational Law & Social Justice (London)

Published on June 20, 2015        Author: 

1.  54th Annual London-Leiden Meeting: EU Accession to the ECHR and Free Movement of Students. One-day Conference, 27 June 2015. Confirmed speakers: Professor Johan Callewaert, European Court of Human Rights; Denis Crowley, Head of the Policy and Interinstitutional Coordination Unit in the Directorate General for Education and Culture, European Commission; Professor Sionaidh Douglas-Scott, Professor of European and Human Rights Law, University of Oxford; Professor Sir David Edward KCMG QC, Vice President, BIICL and former Judge at the Court of Justice of the EU; Judge Nicholas Forwood QC, General Court of the European Union; Professor Laurence Gormley, Professor of European Law, University of Groningen; President of the European Law Faculties Association; Judge Paul Mahoney, European Court of Human Rights; Jacqueline Minor, Head of Representation in the UK, European Commission. Session Chairs: Alison McDonnell, Europa Institute, University of Leiden; Mark Powell, Executive Partner, White & Case (Brussels). Download the Programme. Download the Event Flyer.

2.  The International Law Programme at Chatham House will be hosting a meeting, ‘Of Human Bondage: Combating Human Trafficking and People Smuggling’,  with Parosha Chandran (1 Pump Court) and Aidan McQuade (Anti-Slavery International) on Friday 10 July 2015, 17:30 to 19:00, at Chatham House in St James’s Square, London. This event is held in association with Doughty Street Chambers and will be followed by a drinks reception. Register here.

3. An international conference on the Palestine Mandate and International Law: Legalities and Legacies: The Past, Present, and Future of the Palestine Mandate in International Law. The conference, convened by The Faculty of Law of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Columbia Law School, will be held in Jerusalem on 21-22 June 2015, in Jerusalem. Here is the full program.

4.  On 22 June 2015,  University Paris 8 Research Centre “Forces du droit” organizes a one-day conference entitled “Forms of International Law – Insight into the Outcomes of the Work of the International Law Commission”. Read the rest of this entry…

Filed under: Announcements and Events
 
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European Court Decides that Israel Is Not Occupying Gaza

Published on June 17, 2015        Author: 

Yesterday the Grand Chamber of  the European Court of Human Rights delivered judgments in two blockbuster cases regarding the aftermath of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan: Chiragov and Others v. Armenia and Sargsyan v. Azerbaijan. These are very rich judgments raising many important issues, and I will be writing up more detailed comments shortly. But I first had to share one particular little nugget: the Court has (implicitly!) decided that Israel is not the occupying power in Gaza. How so, you ask?

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Filed under: Armed Conflict, EJIL Analysis, European Convention on Human Rights, European Court of Human Rights, Extraterritorial Application, International Humanitarian Law, Israel, Occupation, Palestine
 

Protection of UN Facilities During Israeli-Palestinian Hostilities: A Brief Assessment of the UN Board of Inquiry Findings

Published on June 17, 2015        Author: 

The release of United Nations (UN) documents on Israeli conduct always seems to give rise to controversy and heated debates. However, the latest publication of an UN Board of Inquiry investigating selected actions carried out during the 2014 Israeli and Palestinian hostilities has brought a relatively mild media storm. Israeli‘s acknowledgement of the investigation had already been shown through their active cooperation during the process. The Board’s findings show progress both in terms of quality and approach taken compared to an earlier 2009 investigation into selected incidents during the 2008-09 clashes between the same adversaries. Most importantly, the 2015 Board came up with several recommendations aimed at improving the internal security measures aiding the protection of UN facilities during hostilities. If implemented consistently, these recommendations should limit the abuse of such facilities for military purposes and thus reduce the risk of anyone located there from suffering the consequences of a potential, possibly entirely legitimate, attack.

A summary of the new Board’s report was made public by the UN Secretary General only last April and, like in 2009, the full document was not publicly released. The Board of Inquiry was tasked with investigating incidents which affected or involved UN personnel, premises and operations. The Board was specifically mandated to look into 10 incidents ‘in which death or injuries occurred at, or damage was done to, UN premises or in which the presence of weaponry was reported at those premises’ between 8 July and 26 August 2014. These incidents involved schools of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

Of the 10 incidents, three involved schools where weapons were allegedly stored. None of these had been designated or was being used as an emergency shelter at the time. All three schools were in summer recess and, in principle, free of pupils. But in one of them, a schoolyard had been made available for children’s use. The school gate remained unlocked, allowing unrestricted access. The Board subsequently established that weapons were found on all three premises, as previously reported, and in two cases the weaponry was then removed by unidentified individuals in somewhat mysterious circumstances. The Board suggested that one school might also have been used by members of a Palestinian armed group to launch mortar attacks. The Inquiry further concluded that in the remaining seven cases the damaged schools served as emergency shelters and all these attacks were attributed to the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). Currently, all but one of these incidents are being investigated separately by the Israeli authorities.

The 2009 Board of Inquiry investigated only four incidents involving UNRWA schools. It attributed the attacks to the IDF in three of these. It is possible that two schools were not directly targeted, and that the resulting damage and casualties occurred as a side effect of an attack on another target. No military activity at the premises was established. The 2009 Board’s recommendations appeared almost entirely directed at the UN’s requests to the Government of Israel and did not include any recommendations about the UN’s own due diligence. The 2015 Board’s report was in stark contrast to this earlier report. It looked into the UNRWA internal security practices and arrangements and proposed a number of improvements to them. These included recommendations to enhance security at premises, such as by employing additional skilled security guards, and developing and implementing standard operating procedures for reporting security incidents. Read the rest of this entry…

Filed under: Armed Conflict, EJIL Analysis, International Humanitarian Law, Israel, Palestine
 
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