October 31st, 2008 at 08:40am
Dr. Maxwell Mkwezalamba, the African Union Commissioner for Economic Affairs, announced on October 29 that the African Union (AU) is organizing a conference with the African Development Bank in Tunis next month. Various AU ministers of finance and central bank governors will meet to discuss the impact of the global crisis on Africa and come up with a common African position on how to address its challenges and mitigate its effects. A subsequent meeting is planned for January of next year.
To download the AU press release, please click here.
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October 30th, 2008 at 04:49pm
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attacks in Northern Somalia on October 29, 2008. These attacks included a suicide car bombing at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) compound in Hargeisa which killed two UN staff and injured six others. Mr. Ban’s spokesperson states the Secretary-General “stresses the neutrality of the United Nations as well as humanitarian personnel, and urges all parties to support and facilitate the delivery of assistance to the Somali population.” Other explosions in the Hergaisa area and in Putland did not involve UN premises.
Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991. Despite the signing of a UN-brokered peace deal to end the fighting between the Transnational Federal Government (TFG) and the rebel Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS), recent months have been filled with violence
The UN assists peace efforts in this area through the UN Political office for Somalia (UNPOS), which is lead by the Secretary-General’s Special Representative, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah. A Deputy Special Representative, Charles Petrie, was appointed to assist these efforts.
For further information, please click here.
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October 30th, 2008 at 04:45pm
On 29 October, 2008, Pascal Lamy, the Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), in a lecture at the University of California, Berkley, emphasized the need for enhancing international trade under the WTO, particularly during the current international financial crisis. Mr. Lamy advocated for changing domestic policies rather than trade protectionism as the answer to the present recessionary trend.
Urging his audience to learn from history, Mr. Lamy referred to the enactment of Smoot-Hawley Act (Act) in 1930, as a response to crash of 1929. The Act, which was intended to protect US farming and other industries from imports, caused a chain reaction of retaliation and counter retaliation from countries across the world, that led to a global surge in import tariffs. In the process, global trade contracted sharply, increasing unemployment, depressing growth and substantially worsening the already bad economic situation. Mr. Lamy stated that imports have always been and continue to be good for the US.
He pointed out that since the establishment of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947, the share of international trade in the US GDP has increased manifold. According to him, the primary cause of job losses in the US is not international trade but an increase in industrial efficiency, which has in turn decreased the demand for labor. He admits that while international trade does reduce some jobs in the US, this effect is more than offset by the economic activity in the form of increased GDP that results from international trade.
He further argued that WTO cannot fix issues of domestic inequality, or poor health and pension systems as these lie completely outside the domain of international trade. These must be improved through domestic policies of taxation etc.
Mr. Lamy characterized the growing trend of bilateral and regional trade agreements as useful but not an alternative to the multilateral process at the WTO. He said that none of these agreements could address the major problems of global trade, such as trade distorting farm subsidies, fishery subsidies, etc.
For further information, please click here
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October 28th, 2008 at 08:17pm
At the seventh annual Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), leaders of European and Asian nations called for international participation in a global summit on the financial crisis. The summit is scheduled to take place on November 15 in Washington, DC.
The 16 Asian and 27 EU leaders issued a joint statement saying that “long-term stability of the global and regional financial markets is key to sustainable economic growth of both regions.” They urged the international community to “take effective and available economic and financial measures in a comprehensive way to restore market confidence, stabilize global financial markets and promote global economic growth.”
President Sarkozy, who currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, said that a pointed discussion and decisive action were needed on financial issues, including the global currency markets.
“Europe, Asia, and the US and other major financial partners need to work together to define and agree responses to the regulatory challenges,” said European Commission President Barroso at the ASEM opening. Mr. Barroso also cautioned against nations “closing the door and simply looking after our own house,” and called on member nations to “firmly resist calls for protectionism, isolation and economic nationalism.”
At a press conference, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said that all nations, “especially the developing ones, need to take decisive measures to stabilize their financial markets” through the development of “confidence, cooperation, and responsibility.”
For further information, please click here.
To read President of the European Commission José Barroso’s address at the ASEM convention, please click here.
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October 28th, 2008 at 08:08pm
On October 23, the Court of First Instance of the European Communities annulled the December 2007 renewal of an order of the EU Council freezing the assets of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI). The Court found that there was insufficient legal justification for the order. It doing so, it relied on a 2007 British decision removing the PMOI from a list of organizations concerned with terrorism. According to the Court, the Council had failed to provide additional evidence to justify keeping the PMOI’s funds frozen.
Under the authority of a December 2001 regulation, the Council can freeze the funds of organizations involved in terrorism. Since May 2002, the Council has identified the PMOI as one such organization. The PMOI, a pro-democracy movement founded in 1965, claims to have ceased military operations in 2001. It has repeatedly litigated the Council’s decision to freeze its assets. In December 2006, the organization won an annulment of the Council’s decision on the basis of procedural and evidentiary defects. The Council renewed the freeze order and remedied these defects.
Although the Court approved of the Council’s procedural remedies, it still invalidated the December 2007 freeze order. The Court cited an November 2007 British Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission (POAC) decision ordering the Home Secretary to remove the PMOI from its list of proscribed organizations concerned with terrorism. POAC called classifying the PMOI as a terrorist organization “perverse” and “unreasonable.” Given this forceful declaration by a competent national authority on the same evidence before the Council, the Court reasoned, the Council’s assertion that the Home Secretary intended to appeal the decision did not constitute sufficient grounds to maintain the freeze order. The Court also noted that the Home Secretary cannot appeal POAC’s findings of fact, thus requiring the Council to submit additional evidence beyond what POAC considered in order to justify continuing to freeze the PMOI’s assets.
The Council reaffirmed the decision to freeze the PMOI’s funds in July 2008, citing the availability of new information. A PMOI challenge to that decision is still pending.
For further information, please click here.
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October 28th, 2008 at 12:27pm
The WTO Secretariat reported a 39 percent increase in new anti-dumping investigations initiated during Janurary 1 to June 30, 2008 as compared to the 2007 corresponding period. 16 WTO Members initiated a total of 85 new investigations, 31 of which were by developed Members applying 13 of the 54 new final anti-dumping measures.
Turkey reported the highest number of new initiations at 13, followed by the United states reporting 12, and India reporting 11. The products most affected were base metals (21 initiations), the textiles sector (20 initiations), followed by the chemical sector (10 initiations). China was the subject of 37 of all new initiations reported, a 76 percent increase from the 2007 corresponding period.
India applied 16 of the new final anti-dumping measures while European Communities applied the second most with 8 new measures. China’s product exports are the most frequent subject of the new measures, accounting for 13 of the 54 new measures. Chinese Taipei exports are second with six new measures applied. The sectors most affected by new measures applied during the first half of 2008 are the chemical sector (subject to 16 of the 54 new measures reported), the base metals sector (subject to 14), and the plastics sector (subject to 13).
The semi-annual reports of WTO Members to the ADP Commitee can be found here .
For further information, please click here .
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October 17th, 2008 at 09:06am
On Wednesday Serbia won a bid in the United Nations General Assembly to have the International Court of Justice review Kosovo’s recent declaration of independence. Serbia considers Kosovo to be a “breakaway province” which unilaterally declared independence and thus wants a ruling on the legality of the region’s actions.
Although the ICJ is often called upon to resolves border disputes, it is rarely asked to make legal rulings of this nature. Kosovo is a particularly difficult case because there are no guidelines to follow in international law for secessions within Europe. Former colonies in regions such as Africa or Latin America have formal steps to follow in order to declare independence, but such steps cannot easily be applied to regions that are more established.
77 countries in the General Assembly voted in favor of Serbia’s request, with six countries voting against it and 76 countries abstaining. The United States and Albania, which has strong ties to Kosovo, are among those voting against the measure, asserting that Kosovo’s independence is irreversible and that Serbia’s request is merely “dragging its domestic disputes into the international arena.” Most European states refrained from voting. However, a number of European countries with separatist factions of their own, such as Spain and Cyprus, voted in favor of letting the ICJ review the issue. These nations are interested in hearing how the court rules in order to determine how it may impact secessionist movements in their own states in the future.
For further information, please click here and here
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October 16th, 2008 at 09:22pm
Former president of Finland, Martti Ahtisaari, won the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize for his work as an international mediator in conflict resolution efforts around the globe. The Norwegian Nobel Committee particularly recognized Ahtisaari’s work in Namibia, Indonesia, Kosovo, and Iraq, praising his dedication to “peace and reconciliation” in those areas.
Ahtisaari was seen as a conservative choice by some, especially following last year’s controversial award of the prize to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. International mediators rarely win the Nobel Peace Prize, which is often awarded to inspirational figures or even to a conflict’s principal actors. Ahtisaari joins only six other laureates chosen for their role in conflict mediation, including Theodore Roosevelt (1906), for mediating peace between Russia and Japan, and Jimmy Carter (2002), for brokering the Camp David Accords, among other achievements. In comparison with these laureates, Ahtisaari’s choice is unusual because it comes in recognition of a decades-long career in international mediation, as opposed to any particular high-profile success, a selection regarded by some as reaffirming “the original vision of Alfred Nobel.”
For further information, please click here.
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October 9th, 2008 at 09:15pm
In an editorial published Wednesday by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, former German president Roman Herzog vehemently attacked the current state of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Herzog believes that the ECJ has lost the trust of the EU member states by its “astonishing” rationales for interfering in national legal systems and member state competencies.
His remarks come on the eve of the German Federal Constitutional Court’s decision regarding the ECJ’s 2003 Mangold judgment. In the Mangold case, the ECJ determined that German labor policy violated an EU directive on non-discrimination. The German legislation expressly prohibited age discrimination, while the EU directive permitted it in certain circumstances. As in the famous Solange II judgment, the FCC is again being asked to address the question of EU law’s fundamental supremacy.
Herzog maintains that the ECJ has overreached as both labor market and social policies remain state competencies. As age discrimination in the labor market does not cross borders, he believes that the ECJ has overstepped the boundaries of the principle of subsidiarity. He wrote that past cases have shown that “the ECJ deliberately and systematically ignores fundamental principles of the Western interpretation of law, that its decisions are based on sloppy argumentation, that it ignores the will of the legislator, or even turns it into its opposite, and invents legal principles serving as grounds for later judgments. They show that the ECJ undermines the competences of the Member States even in the core fields of national powers.”
For further information, please click here.
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October 9th, 2008 at 08:22am
The U.S. Congress passed legislation granting India access to nuclear technology on October 1. The move comes more than three decades after India tested its first nuclear weapon.
On September 28, the bill passed in the House of Representatives. Shortly afterward, the Senate approved the measure by a vote of 86 to 13. It will now go to President Bush, who says he looks forward “to signing this bill into law and continuing to strengthen the U.S.-India strategic partnership.”
Under the agreement, India will gain access to U.S. nuclear technology, material, and equipment, as well as components for nuclear research. Both countries hope that India will now be better equipped to meet its rapidly growing energy needs. According to President Bush, the legislation also brings India’s nuclear programs under international inspections and strengthens nuclear non-proliferation efforts.
For further information, please click here.
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