Source: https://www.ejiltalk.org/2010/08/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 01:15:45+00:00

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On August 17, a US District Court handed down a fascinating piece of statutory interpretation that apparently means that unless a Somali pirate succeeds in stealing something, he cannot be charged with piracy under US law.
There have been a number of national piracy trials taking place in Western States, notably in the US and the Netherlands. (I have written on piracy trials in Kenya elsewhere.) In the Netherlands a group of Somali pirates was sentenced to five years in prison. I have not seen either the judgement in Dutch or a summary of it in any other language yet. (If you have it, do let me know). In New York, the young Somali suspect pirate Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse, sole survivor of the gang that attempted to hijack the Maersk Alabama, entered a guilty plea in a deal that removed piracy from the charges against him.
This leaves US v Said et al, the trial of 11 suspects before the US District Court in Norfolk, Virginia who were alleged to have (rather foolishly) attacked the naval vessel the USS Ashland, an amphibious landing craft transport, in April this year. The New York Times has helpful posted a copy of the interlocutory decision in this case which Justice Jackson struck out the charges of piracy against them. The decision finds that the alleged facts, which involve drawing alongside another vessel and starting a fire-fight with it, do not fall within the US statutory concept of “piracy as defined by the law of nations” (18 USC §1651). The reason for this is that the classic case, US v Smith 18 US 153 (1820), remains the governing authority and it held piracy to be “robbery at sea”. The alleged facts disclose no robbery, ergo no piracy.
Who is Party to the Geneva Convention but not a Member of the UN?
Last week (Aug 12) was the 61st anniversary of the adoption of the 1949 Geneva Conventions on the protection of victims of armed conflict. The Geneva Conventions are the most widely ratified treaties with 194 parties to each of the four conventions. The next most widely ratified treaty is the Convention on the Rights of the Child with 193 States parties and then comes the UN Charter with 192 parties. This summer I taught a course on “International Law and Armed Conflict” as part of the Oxford Masters in International Human Rights Law. I mentioned the statistics above in class and one student asked who are the two States that are parties to the Geneva Convention but not members of the UN. I thought long and hard (not too long though as the class had to go on) but couldn’t come up with an answer. The next day one student came up with one of the States but I still wasn’t able to think of the other State. So I’m now throwing the question out to readers: Which States are parties to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 but not members of the UN?
Sahib Singh is a member of the international litigation and arbitration group at Skadden and a visiting lecturer at the University of Vienna. This note was prepared before the Enron v. Argentina annulment decision became available at the beginning of August. A note on that case is forthcoming on EJIL: Talk!
On 29 June 2010, the ad hoc ICSID Annulment Committee annulled the initial award in Sempra Energy International v. Argentina, finding that the initial tribunal had exercised a manifest excess of powers. The decision is central to our understanding of necessity in international investment law, and particularly the relationship between necessity under Article XI of the Argentina-US BIT of 1991 and under customary international law. Unfortunately, the committee’s decision leaves much to be desired in terms of its interpretive methodology. The central critique of this post, is the degree of relevance the committee’s decision gives to necessity under customary international law when interpreting Article XI. It also questions the presumptive relevance of necessity under custom as an interpretive tool, when the latter can only apply if the investor does not hold substantive or procedural rights under the BIT.
Did the United Kingdom leave anything out of its declaration? What about Diego Garcia, which is part of the Chagos Archipelago in the British Indian Ocean Territory. After expelling the inhabitants of the islands, the British then essentially handed over the base to the United States, which uses it as a kind of a fixed aircraft carrier. Is the Diego Garcia military base subject to the Rome Statute because it forms part of the ‘territory’ of the United Kingdom? Or does the recent declaration attempt to confirm that it is not subject to the jurisdiction of the Court, because the United Kingdom has not made a declaration to that effect?
Aside from jurisdiction over territory, there is also the issue of responsibility for arrest and other cooperation obligations under the Rome Statute. By its declaration, was the United Kingdom suggesting that it was not previously responsible for cooperation with the Court with respect to the territories listed in the declaration?
The formulation of the UK’s declaration certainly indicated that hitherto it considered itself bound by the Rome Statute only with respect to its metropolitan territory. But was this indeed the case? Or did the UK have all of the Rome Statute obligations conditioned by territory with regard to, say, Bermuda, from the moment of ratification? And what of the territorial jurisdiction of the ICC?
Up until the end of its empire after the Second World War the UK had a rather stringent policy of including so-called colonial clauses in the multilateral treaties to which it was a party. Thus, for example, it had the negotiating power to have such clauses included in the ECHR and the Genocide Convention. The UK was motivated in this partially by a policy desire to avoid assuming burdensome obligations for territories in which it did not want to apply them, and partially by a constitutional convention that it needed the assent of its dependencies for the extension of treaties to them. The UK’s efforts were resisted, however, in respect of other treaties, such as the ICCPR. With regard to those treaties, the UK employed the practice of filing a declaration that would specify the territories to which the the treaty would apply – as with the ICCPR, and now the Rome Statute.
As explained by the ILC in its Draft Articles on the Law of Treaties, the ‘entire territory’ bit encompasses all territories over which a state has title, and not just its metropolitan territory. Art. 29 thus creates a rebuttable presumption that a treaty applies to all of the territories that belong to a state party.
One Government [I imagine the UK, but I haven’t checked] proposed that a second paragraph should be added to the article providing specifically that a State, which is composed of distinct autonomous parts, should have the right to declare to which of the constituent parts of the State a treaty is to apply. Under this proposal the declaration was not to be considered a reservation but a limitation of the consent to certain parts only of the State. The Commission was of the opinion that such a provision, however formulated, might raise as many problems as it would solve. It further considered that the words “unless a different intention appears from the treaty or is otherwise established” in the text now proposed give the necessary flexibility to the rule to cover all legitimate requirements in regard to the application of treaties to territory.
So what are then we to do with the UK’s declarations? First, it does not regard them as reservations, but as ‘limitations on its consent’ only to parts of its territory. But isn’t a reservation precisely a limitation on state consent? A mere interpretative declaration cannot as such have direct effect on state obligations, as this territorial declaration purports to. Second, Art. 120 of the Rome Statute explicitly forbids any reservations. Third, whatever their nature, they might reflect the UK’s intention, but they certainly do not reflect that of the other parties, which is the Art. 29 VCLT criterion. Finally, and quite oddly, unless I am mistaken from my quick skim of the UN treaty collection, the UK made the ICC declaration only some 12 years after it ratified the Statute. How can this affect the consent that it had already given? It is only if a general rule existed to the effect that states can vary the territorial scope of their obligations via declarations – but as we have seen the ILC was quite explicitly opposed to such a rule, and the instability it potentially brings seems very much undesirable, and unsupported by state practice.
Then again, Denmark also made a similar declaration with respect to the Faroe Islands and Greenland, which it later withdrew, as did the Netherlands. No state objected to such declarations in principle, which might be taken as a inference that they are permissible, and would thus serve to rebut the Art. 29 VCLT presumption. This is, in short, quite a vexing little problem – and one that I doubt the Court will ever have the opportunity to resolve.
I was asked by the organizers of the 2010 ILA Conference in the Hague to put up this notice, and do so with pleasure. The Conference starts in a couple of days, and I’m sure it’ll be a wonderful event.
The 15th – 20th of August 2010 marks a historic moment for the Netherlands Society of International Law as it brings together over 600 lawyers from all over the world to discuss how international law and institutions can and should contribute to solving global problems.
The event – the 74th Biennial Conference of the International Law Association – is being hosted in the Hague by the Netherlands Society of International Law as part of the events marking the 100th year of its existence. The wide range of topics to be discussed at the panels of the conference include the international accountability of government lawyers for advice that leads their governments to violate international law, the tensions between peace/reconciliation and justice before the International Criminal Court (ICC), the International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion in the Kosovo Case, current international law on piracy and the argument that Somali pirates are freedom fighters, the role of international law in global economic governance and financial supervision after the financial crisis, the ICC as either a court of last resort or simply a means for guaranteeing domestic proceedings are exactly like the ICC’s, the enforceability or otherwise of the Millennium Development Goals and the role of international law in realizing those goals, the interplay between international human rights and national law in domestic litigation (plaintiffs’ and defendant’s perspectives), access to justice at the domestic level and the tension between local/national and international ideas of justice, the necessity or otherwise of an Organisation for the Prohibition of Biological Weapons (OPBW), the Sudan Abyei Arbitration as an example of international law arbitration as conflict prevention, Islamic finance and in general the role of religion in the making and practicing of law, forum based limitations to parties’ freedom of choice of applicable law in arbitration and a-national or transnational law as a possible solution thereto, and the relationship between the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and the use or non-use of force in international law.
Alongside the panel discussions, there will be Open Working Sessions of the Committees and Study Groups of the ILA at which the various Committees and Study Groups will discuss the reports of their research on a variety of contemporary issues of international law. Committees which will be discussing their work include the Committees on Feminism and International Law, Islamic Law and International Law, Space Law, Non State Actors, Reparation for Victims of Armed Conflict, International Securities Regulation, International Law on Sustainable Development, Rights of Indigenous People, Legal Principles Relating to Climate Change, the Teaching of International Law, International Civil Litigation and the interests of the public, Cultural Heritage Law, International Commercial Arbitration, International Criminal Court, International Family Law, International Human Rights Law, International Law on Biotechnology, International Protection of Consumers, International Securities Regulation, International Trade Law, Outer Continental Shelf, Recognition/Non-recognition in International Law and Responsibility of International Organizations. Most of the Committee and Study Group reports are already available on the ILA website and can be downloaded via http://www.ila-hq.org/en/committees/draft-committee-reports-the-hague-2010.cfm.
Updates on the conference will be available on the conference blog which can be accessed from the website of the conference (http://www.ila2010.org). Reports and resolutions adopted at the conference will be available later.
Formal Opening: Monday, 16th August at 9 a.m.
So far, the blogging concerning The Constitutionalization of International Law The has been fairly sedate. Of course, it is summertime; of course, there was a soccer tournament to focus on; of course, the ICJ’s opinion on Kosovo occupies the international legal community; and perhaps there is a certain idleness and lethargy to be associated with constitutionalism these days, as Jeff Dunoff and Joel Trachtman merrily suggest. But it may also be the case that the approach we espouse gives rise to some unease on the part of readers and therewith elicits few responses, for our approach is difficult to pigeonhole. The kind and generous comments published on EJIL: Talk! suggest as much: they display a certain puzzlement at what it is we aim to do, and some seem to have difficulties in identifying the genre we work in.
Comments Off on The Genre of Constitutionalization?
Ruth Wedgwood is Edward B. Burling Professor of International Law and Diplomacy; and Director of the International Law and Organizations Program at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, John Hopkins University, Washington DC. She is also a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the UN Human Rights Committee.
If you’re a betting person, here’s a safe bet: On August 9, the balloting in the east African state of Rwanda will give world-famous military leader Paul Kagame yet another seven-year term as president. The astonishing margin of victory will impress even the modern grand viziers of Central Asia. The outcome is quite easy to predict, when no other candidates are allowed to campaign.
Given this and much else besides, it’s time Washington began to create some distance from a man who has earned his reputation as a de facto despot who terrorizes critics and does not shrink from political violence.
For the last 15 years, Kagame has at every turn invoked these memories to shoehorn the West into a nearly reflexive support for his government. Even Bill Clinton came back to apologize. Kagame has become a fixture at the United Nations in New York, regaling delegations in the Indonesian Lounge, extolling his vision of benevolent autocracy, claiming to admire Singapore as his model for economic growth and insisting that he and only he can keep Rwanda’s torn society knitted together.
Christian J. Tams is Professor of International Law at the Univeristy of Glasgow. His publications include Enforcing Obligations Erga Omnes in International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2005).
The International Court of Justice’s Kosovo opinion of 22 July had been much expected. It was one of the not so frequent instances which the world (as opposed to State parties, or a small group of international lawyers) was waiting for the world court to speak. Great expectations can lead to great disappointment. And judging from the first round of reactions and responses on this blog and in other fora, there is indeed a feeling of disappointment: of course among those who expected a different outcome, but also among those who would have hoped for a fuller discussion of the legal issues raised by the unilateral declaration of independence of 17 February 2008.
I share many of the points made in the posts by Dapo and Zoran in their posts on this blog, notably their surprise at the Court’s strained conclusion on the identity of the authors of the declaration of independence – a readjustment of the request that is rightly criticised by Vice-President Tomka in his declaration. Instead of reiterating my agreement with other criticisms, I will use this comment to make two broader points on the scope of the opinion. The first comes back to the “minimalist” focus of the opinion, and essentially is an attempt to shift some of the blame away from the Court. The second is a reflection on what seems to be the crucial substantive statement of the opinion – namely that general international law does not prohibit declarations of independence.

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