November 20th, 2008 at 11:00pm
The INS Tabar, an Indian warship, encountered three pirate vessels approximately 320 miles south-west of the Omani coast in the Gulf of Aden late Tuesday. When the pirates fired upon the Tabar, it retaliated, sinking the “mother ship” and forcing the would-be hijackers to abandon one of their two speedboats. The second speedboat escaped and there is no casualty count at this time.
At least 92 ships have been attacked in and around the Gulf of Aden so far in 2008, more than triple the number in 2007, according to the International Maritime Bureau. At least 14 of those ships are still in the control of hijackers. This includes a Ukrainian freighter loaded with tanks, artillery and other weaponry and a Saudi supertanker with two million barrels of oil valued at approximately $100 million. The pirates responsible for these attacks are mostly based in Somalia and the UN estimates between $25 to $30 million has been paid in ransom to them this year.
International anti-piracy patrols have been deployed in the area since August and international shipping organizations hope the Indian Navy’s actions set an example for addressing the hijackers. Meanwhile, the cost of increased piracy is expected to spread to consumers as shipping companies face higher insurance bills.
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November 20th, 2008 at 11:16am
On 18th November, 2008, Navi Pillay, the UN Human Rights Commissioner called for an immediate end to the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. Pointing out that the Israeli action was a flagrant violation of International Law and denied the residents of Gaza their most basic human rights, Ms. Pillay said:
“By function of this blockade, 1.5 million Palestinian men, women and children have been forcibly deprived of their most basic human rights for months”….“This is in direct contravention of international human rights and humanitarian law. It must end now”
She welcomed the Israeli decision to allow a limited number of trucks in the Gaza strip on 17th November, 2008 but stated that a full-fledged lifting of blockade was absolutely necessary to address the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation there. She pointed out that more than half of the civilian population in Gaza consists of children who are in dire need of humanitarian protection.
In a parallel development, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said that UNRWA has been unable to get supplies and was turning away mothers from food centres without powdered milk for their babies.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon telephoned the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and expressed over the deteriorating situation in the Gaza strip and called upon the Israeli Prime Minister to facilitate free movement of supplies within and UN personnel into Gaza. The Israeli Prime Minister remained non-committal regarding any specific action.
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November 13th, 2008 at 01:48pm
On Tuesday, November 11, the Rwandan President Paul Kagame declared Germany violated his country’s sovereignty when it arrested one of his aids, Rose Kabuye, and subsequently expelled the German ambassador. Germany responded by asking the Rwandan ambassador to leave Berlin.
Kabuye, chief of protocal for the Rwandan President, was arrested Sunday at Frankfurt International Airport on a French warrant. She is wanted in connection with the 1994 fatal attack on the plane of former Rwarndan President Juvenal Habyarimana. Kabuye is suspected of housing the Tutsi cammando unit blamed for shooting down the plane.
While Hutu extremist accuse the Tutsi fighters led by Kagame of shooting down the plane and killing the then President Habyarimana, a Hutu, some believe that Rwanada’s hard-line Hutus may have staged this accident, shooting down the plane to create a pretext for mass violence against Tutsis.
Kabuye’s arrest may affect Rwanda’s cooperation efforts with the European Union with respect to the recent fighting in Congo. The African Union has also expressed displeasure with the arrest.
It remains unclear whether Kabuye had diplomatic immunity in Frankfurt. Ties between Rwanda and France have been strained since the issuance of warrants for nine associates of Kagame over the plane crash. The Tutsi-led government accuse France of training and arming the Hutu militias and former government troops who led the genocide in Rwanada in April 1994. The 100-day slaughter killed over 500,000 minority Tutsis and some moderate Hutus, ending with Kagame’s forces ousting the Hutu government that orchestrated the killings.
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November 12th, 2008 at 06:27am
Ministers of Law from the ten member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) met in Brunei in late October for their seventh ASEAN Law Ministerial Meeting (ALAWMM). Topics of discussion centered around the legal implications of the November 2007 adoption of the organization’s first legally binding charter, including cooperation in criminal adjudication, extradition, counter-terrorism, and trade law. According to the group, the introduction of a formal charter creating a rules-based intergovernmental organization will necessitate a greater role for ALAWMM within ASEAN as legal cooperation between member states becomes more important. The body of law ministers had last met in 2005 and will hold its next meeting in Cambodia in 2011.
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November 12th, 2008 at 06:24am
On Nov. 6, 2008, the ASEAN Secretariat and the Hubei Province of the People’s Republic of China signed a Minutes of Meeting on Strengthening of Trade and Economic Cooperation. The Minutes of Meeting affirmed the two parties’ commitment to implement the Memorandum on Cooperation, which was signed by the Secretary-General of ASEAN and the Governor of Hubei earlier this year. Under this memorandum, both parties will promote trade and economic cooperation, and the parties will explore the possibility of holding an ASEAN-Hubei Forum on Trade and Economic Cooperation in Wuhan City. Hubei was the first Chinese province to sign a Memorandum on Cooperation with the ASEAN Secretariat, with the objective of strengthening ASEAN-China relations.
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November 12th, 2008 at 06:18am
In a menacing speech broadcast live across Russia, President Dmitry Medvedev announced that he had ordered Russian missiles redeployed to the border of Poland last week. Medvedev’s remarks provoked concerns that Russia is reemerging as a threat to the U.S. and Europe.
Speaking within hours of Barack Obama’s election, Medvedev did not mention or congratulate the president-elect once, but his remarks were primarily aimed at the U.S. Medvedev claimed the missiles had been positioned in response to American plans to build an antiballistic missile defense system in Europe and lashed out at the “construction of a global missile defense system, the encirclement of Russia by military blocs, unrestrained NATO enlargement and other gifts.”
Medvedev went on to blame the U.S. for the global financial crisis, proclaim the end of American dominance in the world, and criticize the “mistaken, egotistical and sometimes simply dangerous decisions of certain members of the international community.”
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November 12th, 2008 at 06:15am
On October 20-21, 2008 the ASEAN Workshop on Domestic Violence Legislation was held in Hanoi, Vietnam in celebration of the country’s National Women’s Day. The workshop is one of the projects created under the Framework for Cooperation between ASEAN and the United Nations Fund For Women. Participants included over 60 ASEAN Member States.
The purpose of the workshop was to address the international issue of domestic violence. Representatives met to discuss ways of drafting, implementing, and monitoring domestic violence legislation as well as increase regional cooperation in order to prevent and control future domestic violence.
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November 12th, 2008 at 06:11am
Now that Americans have chosen the 44th President, international lawyers are beginning to scrutinize President-Elect Obama’s approach to foreign policy, and with that, how he perceives international law.
During the Democratic primaries Obama was quizzed by the American Society of International Law, and he emphasized the importance of international law in the conduct of American foreign policy, stating:
“Since the founding of our nation, the United States has championed international law because we benefit from it. Promoting – and respecting – clear rules that are consistent with our values allows us to hold all nations to a high standard of behavior, and to mobilize friends and allies against those nations that break the rules. Promoting strong international norms helps us advance many interests, including non-proliferation, free and fair trade, a clean environment, and protecting our troops in wartime. Respect for international legal norms also plays a vital role in fighting terrorism. Because the [George W. Bush] Administration cast aside international norms that reflect American values, such as the Geneva Conventions, we are less able to promote those values abroad.”
The ASIL survey can be accessed here.
Obama’s stance echoes Harvard Professor Noah Feldman’s discussion of international law in this recent article.
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November 10th, 2008 at 09:34pm
The General Assembly and the Security Council of the United Nations voted last week to elect five new members to the International Court of Justice. The five judges haling from Jordan, France, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and Somalia were affirmed for a nine-year term beginning in February 2009.
The International Court of Justice consists of 15 judges - three for Africa, two for Latin America, three for Asia, five for Western Europe and other States, and two for Eastern Europe and Russia. One third of the membership is renewed every three years, and no two judges may be from the same country.
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November 10th, 2008 at 11:25am
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon encouraged the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and neighboring nations (namely, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, and South Africa) to take “urgent measures to contain the present crisis created by the upsurge of fighting in eastern DRC” at a UN-backed summit hosted by the African Union on November 7. He expressed deep concern at fresh fighting in the province of North Kivu between Government forces (FARDC) and the National Congress in Defence of the People (CNDP) and stressed that the escalation of violence would be felt not only by the Congolese people but across the region. He called for efforts to broker a political solution, which would involve a ceasefire, disengagement of troops, and disarmament of armed groups. In addition, he requested that the Security Council add 3,000 troops to reinforce the 17,000-strong UN peacekeeping force in the DRC, known as MONUC. Currently, 5,000 peacekeepers are in North Kivu, trying to carry out MONUC’s mandate to protect civilians from the violence. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that the total number of internally displaced people in North Kivu since September is now estimated at 252,000, in addition to the existing 800,000 displaced from earlier hostilities.
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