Source: https://www.ejiltalk.org/2009/03/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 01:13:31+00:00

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The Security Council and Human Rights: What is the role of Art. 103 of the Charter?
In the event of of a conflict between the obligations of the Members of the United Nations under the present Charter and their obligations under any other international agreement, their obligations under the present Charter shall prevail.
The House of Lords held that the Security Council authorisation to detain the appellant did indeed bring Art. 103 into play (on the theory that Art. 103 also extends to authorisations) and that rights under the ECHR were qualified to the extent that they conflicted with that authorisation. Some have criticised the ECJ in Kadi and the Human Rights Committee in Sayadi for not evening mentioning Art. 103 and for failing to take the Al Jedda approaching (for some more discussion of this issue see here and here).
Our conclusion that Avena does not by itself constitute binding federal law is confirmed by the “postratification understanding” of signatory nations. . . . [N]either Medelln nor his amici have identified a single nation that treats ICJ judgments as binding in domestic courts. … [T]he lack of any basis for supposing that any other country would treat ICJ judgments as directly enforceable as a matter of their domestic law strongly suggests that the treaty should not be so viewed in our courts.
It may well be that Chief Justice Roberts is right that no nation treats ICJ judgments as binding in domestic courts. But I wonder whether that is actually so. In particular, it seems to me that looking at the practice of those States that have been involved in territorial and boundary disputes before the ICJ (or international arbitration) would tell us much about whether States regard ICJ decisions as automatically binding in their domestic legal systems. Whenever the ICJ or a tribunal rules that a territory which was previously under the administration of one State actually belongs to another (eg Cameroon v. Nigeria or Temple of Preah Vihear), the decision will need to be implemented in domestic law. In general, there has been good compliance with ICJ decisions on territorial/boundary disputes. So, the question is how have these decisions been implemented?Have the losing States passed domestic legislation or have they just taken the necessary steps for implementation without passing such legislation. In order to have full compliance, the courts of these states will need to consider that the territory in question is no longer within the jurisdiction of their State.
Would the addition of a Genocide Charge to the Bashir Arrest Warrant Change the Position on Immunity?
The Pre-Trial Chamber of the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Bashir only with respect to war crimes and crimes against humanity and rejected the Prosecutor’s request for a charge of genocide. Marko (and Kevin Jon Heller at Opinio Juris) have (rightly, in my view) criticized the reasoning by which the majority of the Chamber held that the materials provided by the prosecution failed to provide reasonable grounds to believe that Bashir and the Government of Sudan acted with the special intent to destroy the groups being targeted in Darfur. The Prosecutor has now appealed the decision of the PTC to reject the genocide charge. If the Appeals Chamber were to add the genocide charge to the arrest warrant, the decision would have an impact on whether other States may arrest Bashir. This is because it could then be argued that the genocide charge creates an obligation arising under the Genocide Convention 1948 for parties to that treaty to cooperate with the ICC, including an obligation of arrest.
the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations. Any of the following acts, regardless of a declaration of war, shall, in accordance with United Nations General Assembly resolution 3314 (XXIX) of 14 December 1974, qualify as an act of aggression: . . .
In his post below, Marko takes the view that the Obama administration position on the authority to detain in Guantanamo in internally contradictory and based on a misinterpretation of international humanitarian law. While I agree with Marko that some of the analysis offered by the Obama administration in its recent brief is confused and confusing, I am of the view that the position taken by the current administration regarding the authority to detain is progressive.
As Marko and Deobrah Pearlstein at Opinio Juris have pointed out the substantive standard for detention adopted by the Obama Administration differs little from the standard adopted by the Bush administration. This notwithstanding, there are at least two points in the Obama Administration’s brief where the tone and use of international law is different from and better than the position taken by the previous administration. I leave aside the fact that this administration claims its authority to detain from the 2001 Authorisation for the Use of Military Force statute (AUMF) rather than from Presidential power.
The first things the Obama administration should be lauded for is that no longer uses the term enemy combatant with respect to the decision to detain. The Bush administration had tied the authority to detain persons at Guantanamo to the detainee being found to be an “enemy combatant” (see the July 2004 order establishing the Combatant Status Review Tribunal). However, IHL has never predicated detention power on whether the person is a combatant. IHL envisages and authorises the detention of enemy combatants (see the 1949 Geneva Convention (GC) III for POWs and 1949 GC IV authorising detention of civilians who are saboteurs or are otherwise unprivileged belligerents). However, IHL also envisages and authorises detention of a broader group of individuals than those who can be regarded as combatants. The Fourth Geneva Convention (GC IV) on the Protection of Civilians is quite clear on this as it allows belligerents to detain (intern) alien nationals “if the Security of the Detaining Power makes it absolutely necessary” (Art. 42) or for “imperative reasons of security” (Art. 78). The first provision relates to protected persons with the territory of the party to an armed conflict and the latter relates to situations of occupation. At this pointof the argument, it matters little whether these provisions apply on their own terms to Guantanamo. They are used here to support the claim that under IHL detention is not tied to enemy combatantcy. But if IHL allows detention of a broader group than enemy combatantcy, why is it a good thing that Obama administration no longer ties detention to whether a person is an enemy combatant?
Yesterday the Obama administration filed a brief with the US District Court for the District of Columbia regarding its detention authority of persons previously classified by the Bush administration as ‘enemy combatants.’ (Analysis by Deborah Pearlstein at OJ; more from the Lift). The brief now outlines the administration’s official position on the legal basis of the detention of suspected terrorists.
The brief has already made headlines because the Obama administration decided to scrap the rightfully much maligned term ‘enemy combatant.’ The one other notable legal development is that the administration also rejected the Bush position that it had inherent constitutional authority to detain these persons, but based its authority solely in a statute, the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF).
As explained by Deborah, the only difference is that the Obama administration requires persons to have substantially supported Taliban or Al-Qaida, while for the Bush administration support alone sufficed. This change is obviously nothing more than cosmetic.
Who is Obliged to Arrest Bashir?
The answer to these questions depend on the extent to which international law accords immunity to Heads of States and on the legal nature of Security Council referrals of situations to the ICC. Many have noted the significance of an international tribunal issuing an arrest warrant for a serving Head of State. Of course, this is not the first time that this has happened. The ICTY issued a warrant for Milosevic while he was head of the State of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Special Court for Sierra Leone indicted Charles Taylor while he was President of Liberia. Christine Chung notes in her post below that there has been no hand-wringing by other States about Bashir’s immunity and suggest that this is a matter of interest only to academics. States may not have commented on this issue but this is only because States have not as yet been faced with the question. States will only be faced with the question if Bashir travels abroad and they are called upon to arrest him. In that scenario, States will have to consider not only this particular case but also the precedents that they wish to set. They will also have to consider what obligations they may have under the ICC Statute, under other treaties (including the UN Charter) and under customary international law.
the current position of Omar Al Bashir as Head of a state which is not a party to the Statute, has no effect on the Court’s jurisdiction over the present case.
The PTC reached this decision based on four considerations the most important of which are that: (i) Art. 27 of the ICC provides that the Statute applies equally to all persons without distinction based on official capacity and that immunities which may attach to official capacity under national or international law shall not bar the Court from exercising jurisdiction; and (ii) the Security Council by referring the Darfur situation to the Court has accepted that the investigation and prosecution shall take place in accordance with the framework set out in the Statute.
Implied in the Court’s statement is the view, that the Security Council has implicitly adopted Art. 27 and thus implicitly sanctioned the exercise of jurisdiction by the Court over a serving head of State who would otherwise be immune from jurisdiction. I do not disagree with this. Any other view would leave Article 27 without effect.
Antonios Tzanakopoulos is a DPhil Candidate at St Anne’s College, Oxford. He has an LLM from New York University Law School. During the 57th session of the International Law Commission (2005), he was research assistant to Professor Giorgio Gaja, Special Rapporteur on the Responsibility of International Organizations. His Oxford thesis is on the responsibility of United Nations for wrongful non-forcible measures by the Security Council.
The conduct of an organ or agent of an international organization in the performance of functions of that organ or agent shall be considered as an act of that organization under international law whatever position the organ or agent holds in respect of the organization.
This being the case, attribution of conduct by a PMSC hired by an IO to the IO is, ostensibly, automatic and thus much easier than attribution of PMSC conduct to a State. In the latter case one would have to argue basically either that the PMSC exercises elements of governmental authority or that it is directed or (effectively) controlled by that State (see the discussion here, here, here, and here). Could it in fact be so, and how can this difference be explained?
Justice for Bashir: What’s Different Today?
Christine Chung is a Senior Fellow at the Schell Center for International Human Rights, Yale Law School where she teaches “The International Criminal Court: Prospects for Global Justice.” Ms. Chung was the first senior trial attorney appointed at the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and worked in The Hague from 2004 to 2007.
If you’re looking for the justification for the front-page media headlines about the ICC warrant naming Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, there are two, to my mind. First, the world’s permanent international criminal court has charged a sitting head of State, and sister States aren’t close to hand-wringing over immunity. (My academic colleagues are a different matter – read, for example, Marko and Dapo). Yesterday’s decision might be the nail in the coffin of the era in which heads of State escaped being called to account for perpetrating atrocities.
Second, the decision of Pre-Trial Chamber I to decline to include the charge of genocide requested by Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo (by a 2-1 vote) reinforced that pursuing a genocide charge is, for an international prosecutor, fraught with peril. The old legal issues of how to define an “ethnic” group and where to find the specific intent to destroy a group (in the usual case, where there is no direct evidence) were very much in evidence in the Chamber’s split opinions. On top of those, the Judges wrestled with questions about the degree to which the ICC should adopt or follow genocide jurisprudence from the ICJ and the ad hoc tribunals, the proper interpretation of the “reasonable grounds” standard applicable at the stage of evaluating a request for an ICC arrest warrant, and how to reconcile the Rome Statute provisions with the ICC Elements of Crimes. Bottom line: the need to settle the law of this new Court, if anything, further complicates the already extremely difficult business of proving genocide.
Comments Off on Justice for Bashir: What’s Different Today?
Today the International Criminal Court issues an arrest warrant for Omar al Bashir, the serving President of Sudan, for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur. (The decision is now available here). The news were expected after a leak a few weeks ago. What came as a pretty big surprise, however, is that the Pre-Trial Chamber rejected the genocide charges against Bashir. Though many commentators, including myself, have expressed skepticism that the prosecution would be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the existence of genocide in Darfur at trial, the test for the issuance of an arrest warrant is much lower. Under Article 58(1) of the Rome Statute, all the prosecution had to prove to obtain an arrest warrant was that there were reasonable grounds for believing that the person in question committed the crimes charged.

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