I have admired Mark Tushnet’s work since I was a law student, so I was very disappointed to read his critique of the now-notorious letter the University of Chicago sent to first-year students about “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings.” Here is the bit that got Tushnet so riled up:

Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called trigger warnings, we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.

Most of Tushnet’s arguments involve reading the letter as uncharitably as possible — such as claiming that the University of Chicago would force a veteran to remain roommates with an anti-war activist who insisted on badgering him about the war every night. (Geoffrey Stone has already made clear that the University was not talking about dormitories.) But I was truly shocked when Tushnet made the following claim about the classroom as a safe space:

Even there, though, sometimes the university should condone the creation of a space in which there is a sharp restriction on “ideas and perspectives different from” the ones being offered in the class. Consider a course described clearly in the catalogue as a course dealing with Austrian economics, with a syllabus whose readings focus tightly on that topic. Students who want to discuss Marxist economics can, I think, properly be silenced in that class – perhaps as long as there is some other university-based venue in which they can explore Marxist economics – so that students only interested in Austrian economics can get on with their studies of that topic. Again – a safe space for the study of Austrian economics.

Really? As long as the University offers a course in Marxist economics, it’s fine for professors to “silence” a student who wants to use Marxist economics to question Austrian economics? The professor in the Austrian economics class should just say, “sorry, questioning Austrian economics is not permitted in this class. We’re here to learn what Austrian economics is about — not why it’s wrong. If you want to know why Austrian economics is wrong, go take a class with my hippie colleague”?

That strikes me as a terrible idea. Of course reasonable limits on discussion are appropriate — the Marxist student shouldn’t be able to dominate the class by questioning every assertion, nor should he or she be able to bring in Marxist ideas that have no relevance to Austrian economics. (“The proletariat will smash your bourgeois Austrian-economics state!”) But that is a far cry from saying it’s fine to “silence” the Marxist student so students “only interested in Austrian economics can get on with their studies of that topic.” That isn’t a “safe space.” It’s a propagandistic one that reduces learning to the uncritical reception of a professor’s preferred ideas. Little wonder the University of Chicago rejected the idea! Tushnet simply makes the University’s point.

PS: Given my lefty tendencies, it’s not surprising that Tushnet’s particular example got my hackles up. But the same criticism would apply to any course that wanted to create a “safe space” for learning a subject by excluding critical perspectives. I would be no less offended if the professor in an ICL course told a student who tried to challenge the value of punitive trials to shut up and go find a course on transitional justice.

[Amina Adanan is a PhD candidate at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, School of Law, NUI Galway.] 

In common law and civil law legal systems it is the responsibility of the public prosecutor to determine whether the prosecution of an international crime is pursued. The level of this discretionary power and the considerations to be taken into account in making the decision vary from state to state. As such, the prosecutor plays a significant role in the prosecution of international crimes under the universality principle. Notwithstanding the importance of universal jurisdiction, the regulation of the principle at a domestic level is of crucial significance because it dictates the parameters within which the jurisdiction operates in a particular state. In this context, the role of the national prosecutor in the exercise of universal jurisdiction should be examined at interstate forums and also by academics.

Universal jurisdiction (or the universality principle) grants all states the right to prosecute persons suspected of committing certain human rights abuses regardless of where the crime has occurred and notwithstanding the nationalities of the accused person(s) or victim(s). This right exists in both customary international law and in conventional international law. The list of offences to which the jurisdiction applies is: genocide, war crimes (committed in both international and non-international armed conflict), crimes against humanity, torture and international piracy. The right can be found in a range of sources. The Final Report of the Commission of Experts established pursuant to Security Council Resolution 780 (1992) expressly reaffirmed universal jurisdiction over the crime of genocide and crimes against humanity, as was declared in Attorney General of Israel v Eichmann. The right of states to exercise universal jurisdiction over war crimes committed in non-international armed conflict is recognised in rule number 157 of the International Committee of the Red Cross’ Customary International Humanitarian Law database.

Universal jurisdiction over torture is provided under Article 5(2) of the UN Convention Against Torture (UNCAT), while universality over international piracy is codified in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The grave breaches regime of the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol I includes an obligation on the High Contracting Parties to prosecute persons, ‘regardless of their nationality’, who are accused of committing grave breaches, so long as they are present in the territory of the forum state (the prosecuting state). Universality is also inscribed in Article 16(1) of the Second Protocol to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and in Articles 13(1) and 14 of the Convention on the Safety of United Nations and Associated Personnel. In addition, universal jurisdiction applies to some transnational offences such as the destruction of undersea water cables and currency counterfeiting.

Regardless of the existence of the principle in customary and conventional international law, it is up to each individual state as to whether it legislates for universal jurisdiction and under what conditions it is exercised. For example, some states such as Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and others have legislated for universal jurisdiction over war crimes committed in non-international armed conflict, whereas other states, such as Ireland, have not done so. What is more, some states have gone further than the parameters of international law and legislated for universal jurisdiction over additional offences. For example Belarus and Colombia can exercise universal jurisdiction over the crime of ecocide. It should also be acknowledged that where a state has enacted universal jurisdiction over a said offence, it does not necessarily mean that the law is utilised.

One such obstacle to the initiation of an investigation or trial under universal jurisdiction is prosecutorial discretion. As Judge Daniel D. Ntanda Nsereko notes, in some countries the government may direct the prosecutor, while in other countries prosecutors may act of their own accord. In deciding if an investigation or trial is to be pursued, the prosecutor must take into account a series of considerations such as whether a prosecution is in the public interest and whether evidence can be obtained easily.

An example of the gap between universal jurisdiction in international law and its exercise on a national level can be seen in states’ regulation of access to the jurisdictional principle. In some states it is possible for an individual or a group to initiate proceedings in respect of the extraterritorial crime. In fact, some of the most prominent examples of universal jurisdiction cases commenced in this manner. However, this legal mechanism is quickly becoming a thing of the past with many states closing off this means of judicial access. In Belgium, the consent of the Federal Prosecutor is required for the initation of an investigation into international crimes under Article 16 (2) of the Law on Grave Breaches of International Humanitarian Law (August 2003). Prior to 2003 it was possible for individuals to commence such proceedings. Equally, in the United Kingdom, the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions is required in order for an arrest warrant to be issued against persons accused of having committed grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions under Section 153 of the UK Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011. Prior to the enactment of the UK legislation it was possible for a judge to issue such an arrest warrant upon receipt of a petition by an individual. These legislative changes are the result of the deterioration in international relations with states whose nationals were the subject of universal jurisdiction proceedings. In some states, such as Australia and Canada, prosecutorial discretion in respect of international crimes is not a new phenomenon.

There is little doubt that the exercise of universal jurisdiction will negatively impact the forum state’s bilateral relations with the state of nationality of the accused when the latter does not support the prosecution. This reality has been noted by some states participating in the discussion on the scope and application of the principle of universal jurisdiction taking place at the Sixth Committee of the UN General Assembly. Thus, on the one hand, it is to be expected that an official linked to the executive should decide important matters that are likely to have repercussions for the forum state’s international relations. In many states, the executive has traditionally regulated foreign policy matters. Moreover, the preservation of prosecutorial discretion may provide an incentive for states to sign up to future international treaties that contain a clause providing for the exercise of universal jurisdiction over a particular crime.

However, on the other hand, prosecutorial discretion raises a series of significant issues concerning international criminal justice. First, it begs the question as to whether the obligation to prosecute or extradite that applies to grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol I and to torture (as provided in the respective conventions) is fulfilled. The enactment and exercise of universal jurisdiction over these offences is a fundamental element of the obligation to prosecute in both the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol I and in UNCAT. Second, concerns arise in respect of the right of victims of serious violations of international law to have access to justice as guaranteed by the Updated Set of Principles for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights Through Action to Combat Impunity.

Third, the reality is that political considerations are a factor in the decision making process of a national prosecutor and this consideration will result in the exercise of universal jurisdiction being biased in support of the interest of powerful and influential states. In practical terms, relations with powerful trading allies are likely to be taken into consideration in determining whether or not a case should proceed. In 2014, pressure placed on the Spanish Government by the Chinese authorities, after an arrest warrant was issued by a Spanish judge for alleged international crimes committed in Tibet, resulted in significant restrictions to the Spanish law on universality. An exception to this proposition is the ‘US torture case’ in Germany. Here, the German Federal Prosecutor initiated a ‘monitoring procedure’ into alleged torture committed by US officials against persons while in CIA detention and overseas facilities, following the publication of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report on CIA Detention. (The monitoring procedure is still pending). Indeed, it is often said that universal jurisdiction operates in favour of the interests of influential states, predominantly from the Global North. The recent prosecution of Hissène Habré by Senegal and the ‘Zimbabwe Torture Docket’ case in South Africa may be cited against this contention. However, the reality of realpolitik is that the nationals of certain states will not be tried under the universality principle.

Universal jurisdiction is a rationale-based jurisdiction. The rationale for the exercise of universal jurisdiction is that the offences to which the jurisdiction applies are so heinous that they impact the whole of humanity. The principle fills an important void where there is no prospect of a domestic prosecution in the territorial state or in the state of nationality of the accused (often these are the same). Nonetheless, cases where the interests of the state of nationality of the accused align with the interests of the forum state are the cases most likely to proceed. Adding foreign policy considerations into the mix eschews the original rationale for universal jurisdiction. During the discussion at the Sixth Committee, some states have called upon the creation of guidelines on the exercise of universal jurisdiction. In the event of any such guidelines being formulated, it is imperative that the role of the prosecutor be examined in the deliberations. In particular, a balance must be struck between prosecutorial discretion and the need to prevent impunity for the worst atrocities.

Here’s your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world:

Africa

• Nigeria would let Boko Haram choose a non-profit organization as an intermediary in any talks on the release of about 200 schoolgirls kidnapped from the northeastern village of Chibok in 2014, President Muhammadu Buhari said on Sunday.
• A landmine planted by Islamist group Boko Haram killed four Chadian soldiers on patrol near Chad’s border with Niger on Saturday, two security sources said.
• Japan will invest $30bn in Africa over the next three years, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has pledged at a summit in Kenya.

Middle East and Northern Africa

• Almost a year and a half into Saudi Arabia’s U.S.-backed bombing campaign in Yemen, the humanitarian toll has become so extensive that the International Committee of the Red Cross has taken the unusual step of donating entire morgue units to Yemeni hospitals.
• Iraq has asked Saudi Arabia to replace its ambassador in Baghdad after he said that Iranian-backed Shia units are aggravating tensions with Sunni Muslims in Iraq.
• The United Nations Special Envoy for Syria called for all warring sides to agree by Sunday to allow the first safe delivery of relief supplies to the divided city of Aleppo.

Asia

• A knife-wielding Indonesian teen who tried to attack a priest at a church during a Sunday service was “obsessed” with extremist group Islamic State, a senior minister said on Monday.
• China is hoping to cement its standing as a global power when it hosts leaders from the world’s biggest economies this weekend, but suspects the West and its allies will try to deny Beijing what it sees as its rightful place on the international stage.

Europe

• A bomb exploded at the Brussels Institute of Criminology in the north of the Belgian capital on Monday but the building was empty and no one was wounded, broadcaster RTL said.
• About 1,100 migrants were rescued from boats in the Strait of Sicily on Sunday as they tried to reach Europe, Italy’s coastguard said.
• A law banning the full-body “burkini” swimsuit in France would stoke tensions between communities and would be both unconstitutional and ineffective, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said in an interview published on Sunday; France’s highest administrative court, the Council of State, ruled on Friday against a decision to ban the burkini by the mayor of the resort town of Villeneuve-Loubet.
• Social media users have expressed anger after a video posted online appeared to show two Muslim women in France being told to leave a restaurant by a man, reportedly the eatery’s boss, who called all Muslims “terrorists”.
• Germany, Poland and France vowed on Sunday to reinvigorate the “Weimar Triangle” group first formed 25 years ago after the end of the Cold War to help deal with the many challenges now facing Europe, including Britain’s vote to leave the European Union.

Americas

• A ceasefire to end the 52-year-old war between the Colombian state and FARC fighters has gone into effect, with a full peace agreement expected to be signed in September.
• Eight Paraguayan soldiers have been killed by a roadside bombing, according to the government, in an attack blamed on a Marxist armed group.

Oceania

• An Australian aid worker kidnapped in Afghanistan four months ago was freed following a raid by Afghan special forces near the eastern city of Jalalabad, officials said on Monday.
• Thousands of protesters across Australia have held rallies to demand the closure of the country’s overseas refugee detention centres.

UN/World

• Air pollution caused by war may be a major factor in the numbers of birth defects and cancers being reported in Iraq and other war zones, a study has suggested.
• French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said he was pressing members of the U.N. Security Council, including Russia, to condemn the Syrian government after a report found Syrian troops had used chemical weapons.
• Debates shine only a half-light on UN Secretary General selection process.

Buzzfeed’s Chris Hamby is out today with the first installment of a promised four-part investigative report into the system of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS).  Like all such reports, it needs a spectacular headline and summary to draw clicks, and this one’s a doozy:

The Court That Rules the World

A parallel legal universe, open only to corporations and largely invisible to everyone else, helps executives convicted of crimes escape punishment.

The article itself is much more fair and thorough than this ridiculous headline teaser suggests.  It contains lots of original reporting on three ISDS cases involving Egypt, El Salvador, and Indonesia where Hamby says actual or threatened ISDS actions allowed corporate executives to escape criminal punishment.

I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of Hamby’s reporting on these cases. But I do have two initial somewhat critical reactions:

• ISDS does give foreign investors leverage with host nations like Egypt or El Salvador that they wouldn’t otherwise have.  But I think Hamby overstates the amount of leverage a real or threatened ISDS claim creates.  Foreign governments don’t immediately comply with all ISDS awards and collecting judgments against foreign sovereigns, even weak ones like Egypt or El Salvador, is no easy task given those states’ sovereign immunity legal defenses and the difficulty of seizing state-owned assets.  Moreover, research shows that ISDS shows that states win more often than investors do, or they at least prevail as often as investors do. (See Footnote 3 to this letter defending ISDS as well as this EU Commission report).  ISDS may have allowed some foreign investors to unjustly avoid liability for their actions, but it is hard to know (and Hamby’s article cannot prove) that such cases represent a majority, or even a meaningful percentage, of overall ISDS actions.
•  I don’t have a problem with Hamby reporting on these cases where it seems ISDS has been abused.  But I think it is important to keep the larger context of ISDS in mind.  What would be the impact of not having ISDS at all?  Would it make cross-border investment less common?  A lot less common?  Would the elimination of ISDS result in more corruption as foreign investors feel a need to pay protection money to host countries rather than resort to legal means?  Would the elimination of ISDS result in simply more cross-border investment among “rich” countries with well-developed domestic legal systems such as the US and Europe to the exclusion of “poor” countries with developing legal systems?  In other words, ISDS may be bad in many ways, and much abused (although I doubt the abuse is as common as Hamby intimates), but would eliminating ISDS be worse?

I am not an uncritical cheerleader for ISDS. I am doubtful, for instance, that ISDS adds much to the (now pretty much dead) proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the US.  And I have questioned the constitutionality under US law of the ICSID Convention’s requirement of automatic enforcement of ISDS awards.   But I do feel ISDS critics should eventually have to answer the question: If not ISDS, then what? And will that non-ISDS future be better or worse? Hopefully, one of Hamby’s remaining three parts will address this important policy issue.

Defense One points to a news story in the Baghdad Post that the Iraqi Security Forces may be preparing to deploy a ground-combat robot:

Loosely dubbed Alrobot — Arabic for robot — it has four cameras, an automatic machine gun, and a launcher for Russian-made Katyusha rockets, and can be operated by laptop and radio link from a kilometer away, the [Baghdad Post] story says.

One point is important to emphasize, the Alrobot is a remotely-controlled four-wheeled drone, it is not an autonomous weapon. By contrast, an autonomous weapon would be, in the words of a recent article from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, “capable of selecting and engaging targets without human intervention.”

However, while the Alrobot would not be autonomous, Defense One also notes that it will also not be the first remotely-controlled battlefield weapon deployed in Iraq:

Back in 2007, the U.S. Army deployed three armed ground robots called the Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection System, or SWORDS, from weapons maker Foster-Miller (now owned by Qinetiq). SWORDS basically consisted of a Foster-Miller TALON robot armed with a machine gun.

However, the SWORDS unmanned ground vehicles (UGV’s) were never used on patrol. A 2008 Wired article (to which Defense One linked) explained in an addendum:

Senior Army leadership, however, was not comfortable with sending them out to do combat missions due to safety reasons, and they are now placed in fixed positions, said Robert Quinn, vice president of Talon operations at Foster-Miller…

It seems to be a “chicken or the egg” situation for the Army, he said. The tactics, techniques and procedures for using armed ground robots have not been addressed.

But until there is an adequate number of SWORDS to train with, these issues can’t be worked out, he said.

.A successor weapons system, the Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System (MAARS) is currently being developed by QinetiQ. Like its predecessor, MAARS would  not be an autonomous weapon, but a remotely-controlled battlefield robot with humans making the tactical decisions. Consequently, the legal issues here would be less like the many concerns stemming from using artificial intelligence to make targeting and live-fire decisions, but rather would be similar to the legal issues arising from the use of armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV’s). Possible questions would include whether the use of the cameras and other sensors on the UGV would allow its operator to adequately discriminate between combatants and noncombatants. Does inserting an remotely-controlled armed robot make one more likely to use force? Under what situations would using such a system be disproportionate?

This may depend, in part, on how such systems are deployed. There could be different legal implications in using a UGV to, for example, “stand post” to guard the perimeter of a platoon that is out on patrol in a remote mountainous region as opposed to using a UGV in an urban combat situation where there are many civilians in close-quarters. The U.S. Marine Corps, for example, is considering when and how the use of weapons like MAARS would be appropriate.

For another recent post on robots and regulations, see my post from earlier this summer.

As regular readers know, although I’m opposed to academic BDS, I fully support its economic incarnation. Which is why I find stories like this both depressing and infuriating:

You want to know why so many people despise BDS? Because of childish, appalling actions like these — actions that make it all too easy to erase the necessary distinction between criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism. I don’t watch the Olympics, in part because I don’t find them interesting (outside of a few sports like football), but mostly because I find the rampant jingoism sickening. But I would never hold the politics that pervert the Olympics against the individual athletes who compete in the games, all of whom — to a man and a woman — have dedicated their lives to sporting excellence. There is absolutely no justification whatsoever for disrespecting an Olympic athlete simply because of the country he or she represents. None.

Here’s a thought experiment. Imagine you did not view the Olympics solely through the prism of politics. Which country do you think more highly of now that the Olympics have ended? Egypt, whose judoka wouldn’t shake an Israeli judoka’s hand? Or New Zealand, whose 5000-metre runner gave up any shot at a medal to help an injured American runner who had initially helped her?

I don’t think what the Egyptian and Saudi athletes did is anti-Semitic. But I sure as hell think what they did was stupid — and profoundly damaging to the BDS cause. If these actions are a “new milestone” for BDS, as Mondoweiss claims, BDS is in serious trouble.

Here’s your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world:

Africa

• A military court in the Democratic Republic of Congo has begun the trial of 215 members of an armed group accused of killing hundreds of civilians in and around Beni town in the country’s northeast.
• U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and counterparts from eight African nations meet in Nairobi on Monday to discuss ways to prevent South Sudan from sliding back into civil war and advance a political transition in Somalia.
• A suicide bomber on a motorbike killed three people and wounded 24 at a market in north Cameroon, where armed group Boko Haram has been waging an armed rebellion since 2009, authorities said.

Middle East and Northern Africa

• A Syrian army helicopter dropped incendiary “barrel bombs” on the only hospital in besieged, opposition-held Daraya early on Friday, putting it out of action, rebels and a war monitor said.
• Syrian government jets have continued to pound Kurdish-controlled parts of the northeastern city of Hasakah for a second day, killing at least 22 residents and forcing thousands to flee.
• Islamic State has claimed responsibility for an attack on a traffic police post outside Moscow on Wednesday in which both attackers were killed, calling it revenge for Russia’s aerial bombing campaign in Syria.
• A newly-formed governing council in Yemen could work with Russia to “fight terrorism” by allowing Moscow use of the war-torn country’s military bases, Yemen’s former president said on Sunday.

Asia

• Japan aims to develop a prototype drone fighter jet in two decades with private sector help in a technology strategy that focuses on weapons communications and lasers, according to a document seen by Reuters.
• China’s navy has carried out drills in the Sea of Japan, the Chinese military’s official newspaper said on Friday, describing the exercises as routine and done in accordance with international law and practice.
• China is eyeing the use of a high level of artificial intelligence and automation for its next generation of cruise missiles, a senior designer was quoted as saying on Friday.
• The United States and South Korea kicked off annual military exercises on Monday, prompting warnings of retaliation from the North, as already-heightened tension on the peninsula has been inflamed by the defection of a Pyongyang diplomat.
• Vietnam, with its strong export-led economy and potential for growth, is tipped to significantly benefit from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Europe

• A Dutch-based lawyer for a Palestinian human rights organization has been the target of a campaign of intimidation she believes is aimed at discouraging her cooperation with the International Criminal Court, and suspects Israel as being behind the campaign.
• Germany’s interior minister has proposed a partial ban of the burqa, the full-face veil worn by some Muslim women, as a nationwide debate rages over integration.
• Nice has become the latest French resort to ban the burkini, the full-body Islamic swimsuit that has sparked heated debate in secular France.
• British Prime Minister Theresa May will not begin formal divorce talks on leaving the European Union before the end of the year, a government spokeswoman said on Friday.
• Racial inequality is getting worse in the United Kingdom, with young black people and ethnic minorities suffering “institutional racism” and “unfairness” in the fields of education, employment and the criminal justice system, a human rights watchdog has said, noting an “unprecedented spike” in incidents since the Brexit vote concluded.

Americas

• The FBI and U.S. Justice Department are investigating possible U.S. ties to alleged corruption involving the former president of Ukraine, including the work of firms headed by political operatives Paul Manafort and Tony Podesta, CNN reported on Friday, citing multiple U.S. law enforcement officials.
• The United States is looking at whether Russia has violated a U.N. Security Council resolution on military dealings with Tehran by using an Iranian air base to carry out strikes inside Syria, the State Department said on Wednesday.

Oceania

• Concerns raised by activists around negotiations for the regional trade deal called PACER PLUS have been dismissed by a spokesperson for the Pacific Island Forum countries.

UN/World

• The United Nations acknowledged on Thursday that it played a role in the 2010 Haiti cholera outbreak that has killed nearly 10,000 Haitians and infected more than 770,000.
• The Philippine is not leaving the United Nations, the foreign minister said on Monday, a day after President Rodrigo Duterte threatened to quit the body after it called for an end to the wave of killings unleashed by his war on drugs.
• Experts from the United Nations have warned that an increasing number of adept fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and al-Qaeda are using encrypted messaging and dark-web forums to covertly plan potential attacks after returning home.
• South Sudan’s former vice president and opposition leader Riek Machar “is in the care” of the authorities in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the United Nations has said, several weeks after he withdrew from the capital Juba during fierce fighting with government troops.

[Dr Myriam Feinberg is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Minerva Center for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions, University of Haifa. The topic addressed in this blog post is based on her monograph Sovereignty in the Age of Global Terrorism – The Role of International Organisations published by Brill/Martinus Nijhoff in May 2016.]

The attacks of 9/11 brought terrorism to the international stage. They raised many legal questions, both on the nature of terrorism itself and on the responses to the phenomenon. One of these questions is the role of international organisations in addressing the terrorist threat, and the ensuing question of the place of States in the international community. More generally, I contend that this can be examined in the wider context of state sovereignty, even though a number of international law analyses consider the concept of State sovereignty obsolete or in need of reform.

It is clear that the concept of sovereignty has evolved and that its validity can be challenged. Its definition was never completely clear but it definitely does not equate absolutism anymore. In fact, sovereignty is today considered to include a number of responsibilities for States. The Global Trust Project for instance, looks at sovereigns as ‘trustees of humanity’ and aims to examine the obligations that States and international organisations have towards various stakeholders, including foreign stakeholders.

However, the notion of sovereignty is also still frequently used as a narrative by States in order to impose certain domestic measures or to question territorial challenges. This is exactly why, to my mind, sovereignty is a useful frame of reference for counterterrorism, an area where issues of legitimacy and power are crucial: not as an ideal concept, not as a strict and defined notion, but rather, as the thermometer of how States consider their status, obligations and capacities in international law and their willingness to work alongside international organisations, especially in order to address security issues.

This post examines State sovereignty in the context of post-9/11 counterterrorism and focuses both on the ability of international organisations to adopt and enforce counterterrorism measures and on the practical example of terrorist asset freezing sanctions.

Terrorism challenges the sovereignty of a State because it questions the State’s ability to protect its citizens against violence and therefore, the States needs to be perceived as acting against it. After the events of 9/11, it also constitutes a challenge to the nature of the State in international law and to the international community as a whole.

In parallel, the attacks of 9/11 questioned the existing counterterrorism regimes of States because they showed that national legislation and jurisdiction were not sufficient to deal with this major issue. In other words, traditional responses appear to have failed and terrorist threats seem to have superseded territorial and nationality concepts. Yet, if terrorism constitutes a challenge to the concept of State sovereignty, any international response will also inherently challenge State sovereignty: since security is a core component of State sovereignty, the actions of international organisations in counterterrorism mean that the State is not the only actor to deal with security threats in its own territory. Instead, international and regional organisations have become fundamental actors in counterterrorism.

This tension between the two challenges to sovereignty is particularly interesting and it shows the trade-offs that States will face and the compromises they will need to adopt in order to balance the protection of their citizens and territory with their desire to retain the primary responsible actor in national security.

In practice, I argue that in the case of counterterrorism, sovereignty remains relevant for the following two reasons.

Firstly, terrorism concerns national security and States consider that they have the primary duty in this regard, with a view to protecting their citizens. This involves sensitive information, as well as political decision-making. In practice, this is a considerable obstacle to true global counterterrorism and it questions whether international organisations can truly make an impact on domestic counterterrorism legislation.

Secondly, the absence of an international definition of terrorism but more significantly, the lack of an international court with specific jurisdiction on terrorism and enforcement power further question the possibility of an international counterterrorism regime. In fact, while there is now an extensive international framework to deal with terrorism, the need for domestic implementation keeps the primary responsibility with individual States.

To further make this argument, we can look at the case of terrorist sanctions: the 2008 Kadi case of the European Court of Justice was a ground breaking decision that re-defined conflict of norms, although more recent case law, such as the 2016 Al-Dulimi case continue to develop the theme of relationships between international organisations and States, as well as between various international organisations.

These cases first show the focus of counterterrorism regimes on executive measures. The nature of terrorist threats has led to a number of emergency measures that took place without the balance of a judicial review or parliamentary oversight. In addition, the sanction regimes of the UN and the EU, as well as their domestic implementation, show the increasing cooperation, in a circular way, between the executive bodies of States and international organisations. Executive measures are the preferred way for counterterrorism for reasons of speed, secrecy and separation of powers. Moreover, the concerted way in which States and international organisations adopt these measures enables a consistency against the evolving threat of international terrorism. In this respect, the sovereignty of States is maintained in that the policy and legislation decided by domestic governments will be replicated at the international level, which is based on an intergovernmental model.

Yet, cases on terrorist sanctions, and in particular cases since Kadi, are also a testimony to the judiciary’s more recent attempt to protect human rights in the context of counterterrorism. In this respect, the main difference between regional organisations and the UN is that most of the former include a judicial enforcement mechanism within their mandate. This has been crucial in the context of counterterrorism, in particular, in order to balance human rights concerns with security needs. The various organisations have set some human rights standards for addressing terrorism within their counterterrorism regimes, but have also made a significant impact through their courts’ case law regarding human rights protection, in particular the EU and the Council of Europe. This role is fundamental given the targeting of individuals, rather than States, by the sanctions regimes.

On the other hand, the case law has created legal uncertainty with regards to the hierarchy between norms and conflicts between legal orders that would traditionally give precedence to the Security Council and its binding resolutions. States condemned by the European courts will want to ensure that their UN obligations do not clash with European human rights. In that respect, this might be the biggest impact on State sovereignty.

The framework of State sovereignty allows all these considerations to be brought to light. It shows that most of the measures adopted by international organisations will tend to contribute to States’ security agenda by remaining intergovernmental. Yet, it also evidences that the

concept of sovereignty as a responsibility to fulfil human rights obligations is continuing to develop, through regional courts. This is all the more significant because of the risk of sovereign abuse that often characterises counterterrorism in relation to to security measures and the focus on executive measures.

[Jenny Poon is a Doctoral Candidate at the Faculty of Law of Western University, Canada and a Barrister & Solicitor in Ontario, Canada. The topic addressed in this post is based on a paper entitled State Discretion on Asylum Claims Procedures: Violation or Adherence to Non-Refoulement? All websites were accessed on 22 July 2016. The author would like to thank Dr. Valerie Oosterveld for reviewing an earlier draft.]

Introduction

The margin of appreciation is a creation of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), in which the ECtHR grants European Union (EU) member states deference when the national authorities use their discretion to carry out duties under international law, which, it is argued, may at times be accorded so widely, that the margin of appreciation may permit member states to derogate from their international law obligations. The idea that the margin of appreciation is not yet a settled area of the law is reiterated by Greer in his paper. The doctrine first appeared in the ECtHR’s jurisprudence in the case of Cyprus Case (Greece v. the United Kingdom). Despite having an established presence in the jurisprudence of international tribunals, the extent of the doctrine is nonetheless uncertain as argued by Shany in his paper. For instance, international courts and tribunals have issued conflicting decisions on the use of the margin of appreciation. Most notably, the ECtHR applied the doctrine in the Handyside decision, stating that the doctrine applies to domestic legislators and to judicial bodies, while World Trade Organization (WTO) Dispute Settlement Body and its Appellate Body has stated in the Asbestos case that the doctrine applies only to WTO members. In the former case, both domestic legislators and judicial bodies are given a margin of appreciation when applying the law, while in the latter case, only national authorities of WTO member states are given a margin of appreciation when making discretionary determinations.

Despite the law being unsettled with regards to margin of appreciation, this doctrine is nonetheless applied by the ECtHR to show deference to EU member states when the member states use their discretion to carry out international law obligations. Consequently, this interpretation of the margin of appreciation permits the violation of international law in the context of asylum, where it allows EU member states to derogate from their duties of ensuring procedural safeguards, creates multiple and thus inconsistent interpretations, and permits state interests to be placed above the interests of asylum claimants. Clarity in the law is therefore warranted with regards to defining the extent to which “margin of appreciation” applies, and where the line must be drawn to ensure that the vulnerabilities of asylum claimants are properly addressed.

A wide margin of appreciation permits violation of international law

The first argument I wish to make is that a wide margin of appreciation permits EU member states to derogate from their duties of ensuring sufficient procedural safeguards for asylum claimants. International law obligates States to adhere to the procedural safeguards including according asylum claimants with the opportunity to be heard and the right to appeal in the context of an expulsion order pursuant to Article 32(2) and 32(3) of the Refugee Convention. Procedural safeguards come in many forms, which can include the safeguard to ensure that asylum applications are examined for their merits and not permitting instances of bias to affect the decision-making process. This is illustrated in the case of OS v. Ministry of Interior, where the Supreme Administrative Court of the Czech Republic held that the Ministry of the Interior erred in basing its asylum decision to reject an application on an inaccurate assessment of Turkey, thus giving effect to biased decision-making. The Ministry had exercised its margin of appreciation by basing its decision on a biased country of origin report. Having based its decision on a report that was political and that was not an accurate assessment of Turkey at the time, the Ministry of the Interior had biased decision-making. This case demonstrates that a wide margin of appreciation enables the EU member state to derogate from its international duty of ensuring procedural safeguards for asylum claimants, thus violating international law.

Next, I argue that a wide margin of appreciation permits EU member states to create multiple and thus inconsistent interpretations, leading to inconsistency and unpredictability of the law.

When States exercise their margin of appreciation too widely, it permits the creation of multiple and thus inconsistent interpretations of their international law obligations. The ECtHR case of Hirsi Jamaa and Others v. Italy illustrate the differences in interpretation among EU member states on their duties under international law. The ECtHR held that differences in interpretation on asylum decisions can result where there are bilateral treaties signed between the first and subsequent asylum-receiving EU member states. This case illustrates that a wide margin of appreciation permits EU member states to interpret their international law obligations differently. While differences in interpretation may be warranted in some circumstances, such as to accommodate for the unique geopolitical circumstances of different EU member states, if the margin of appreciation is too wide and thus improper, it creates too much room for EU member states to interpret their international law obligations, and result in a divergence among EU member states so wide that would not justify the doctrine’s original purpose. Another problem with a wide margin of appreciation is that it may lead to an increased likelihood of multiple and thus inconsistent interpretations, which may increase the possibility of international law being violated by EU member states.

Finally, I end with the proposition that a wide margin of appreciation permits EU member states to place their state interests above the interests of asylum claimants. EU member states exercise their margin of appreciation when they process asylum applications based on discretion which sometimes entails political considerations rather than merits. An example can be taken from the case of Ireland v. The United Kingdom, in which the ECtHR held that “national authorities are in principle in a better position than the international judge to decide [on the derogation from Article 15 of the European Convention on Human Rights…]. In this matter Art 15(1) leaves the authorities a wide margin of appreciation”. This case is used as an example to illustrate that the margin of appreciation may be accorded too widely in the case of derogation in times of emergency (Article 15), which, when the derogation is based solely upon political criteria, may permit EU member states to violate international law. For example, depending on the political agenda at the time, the EU member state may choose to interpret its duty to process asylum applications either narrowly or broadly, according to state interests at the time, leading to uncertainty and unpredictability of the law for asylum claimants. The case demonstrates that where the margin of appreciation accorded to an EU member state is too wide, the member state may utilize the doctrine to their advantage to promote their political agendas, often at the expense of asylum claimants. This motivation to accomplish state-interested goals permits the violation of international law in instances where interests of the EU member state are placed above the interests of the asylum claimant. It is argued that a wide margin of appreciation allows the EU member state to misuse the doctrine to circumvent their international law obligations. While some may argue that a flexible margin of appreciation would encourage the EU member state to sign on and support the norm, the concern is that, too much flexibility and therefore a margin of appreciation that is accorded too widely, would be detrimental to the asylum claimant given that a well-resourced member state may trump individual rights at any time where it would be in the member state’s interest to do so.

Conclusion

The purpose of this post is to consider the effects of the margin of appreciation doctrine in the context of asylum, where at times this can result in EU member states circumventing their international law obligations. I hope that illustrating the doctrine in this context can encourage the debate on proposing solutions for this perceived problem. It is important that the rights of the vulnerable such as asylum claimants are safeguarded against well-resourced mighty State powers. Therefore, the proper application of the margin of appreciation needs to be clarified in order to avoid EU member states acting outside of the permitted boundaries of the margin of appreciation at the expense of the asylum claimants. One proposed solution is to enlarge the role of the ECtHR to better define what constitutes ‘margin of appreciation’ and construct a framework within which EU member states may operate, while safeguarding the rights of the vulnerable.

Here’s your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world:

Africa

• At least 64 people have been killed in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in an attack carried out by suspected rebels.
• Nigerian militant group Boko Haram has published a video apparently showing recent footage of dozens of school girls kidnapped two years ago, and saying some of them have been killed in air strikes.
• South Sudan said on Sunday it would consider the U.N.’s decision to authorize sending extra troops to the country following an eruption of fierce fighting, softening its stance after initially rejecting the initiative.

Middle East and Northern Africa

• Hundreds of civilians have been killed in both Syrian government and rebel attacks across the war-torn country in recent days, according to local activist groups.
• A suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest on a bus in Syria near the Atmeh border crossing into Turkey late on Sunday, killing at least 15 people and injuring 25 others, some critically, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
• Thousands of displaced residents streamed back into the northern Syrian town of Manbij on Saturday after U.S.-backed fighters ousted the last Islamic State militants from their former stronghold, residents and U.S. allies said.
• The Turkish government has hosted Iran’s top diplomat, in a move seen as a shift in foreign policy after last month’s failed coup attempt.

Asia

• Thai authorities have reportedly asked for help from Malaysia in tracking down the owner of a mobile phone used to detonate one of the explosives in the recent wave of bombings that targeted some of Thailand’s best-known tourist destinations.
• Nepal’s Maoist Prime Minister Prachanda sent one of his trusted lieutenants from the insurgency period as a special envoy to China on Monday, seeking to clear confusion over the future of agreements signed by his predecessor.

Europe

• Britain’s exit from the European Union could be delayed until at least late 2019 because the government was too “chaotic” to start the two-year process early next year, the Sunday Times reported, citing sources it said were briefed by ministers.
• The European Union should grant Turks visa-free travel in October or the migrant deal that involves Turkey stemming the flow of illegal migrants to the bloc should put be put aside, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told a German newspaper.

Americas

• Days after police foiled what they called a terrorist plot, a Canadian law enforcement body was preparing to make the case for reopening the federal bomb analysis center, which was shut in April for budget reasons.
• Thousands of Venezuelans were welcomed to Colombia by a military band early on Saturday morning as the two countries’ borders were officially reopened after being closed by Venezuela a year ago.

Oceania

• The devastating trauma and abuse inflicted on children held by Australia in offshore detention has been laid bare in the largest cache of leaked documents released from inside its immigration regime.

UN/World

• The United Nations today sounded the alarm over a spike in violence in crisis-torn Yemen, as the world body’s human rights wing reported the number of civilian casualties in the conflict has been “steadily mounting,” with some 815 casualties since April alone.

[John Coyle is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law.]

On June 14, 2016, the Islamic Republic of Iran initiated proceedings against the United States before the International Court of Justice (“ICJ”), alleging that the United States had violated the 1955 Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations, and Consular Rights (“Treaty”) between the two nations.  Iran claimed, inter alia, that the United States had discriminated against Iranian companies, failed to accord these companies the most constant protection and security, and expropriated their property without compensation.  In support of its claim, Iran noted that the ICJ had jurisdiction to hear the dispute pursuant to Article XXI(2) of the Treaty, which provides that “[a]ny dispute . . . as to the interpretation or application of the present Treaty . . . shall be submitted to the International Court of Justice.”

Similar treaty provisions can be found in more than a dozen other treaties of friendship, commerce, and navigation (“FCNs”) negotiated by the United States in the two decades following the Second World War.  At the time, these agreements to submit to the jurisdiction of the ICJ was viewed as a significant milestone in the peaceful resolution of international investment disputes.  In the decades that followed, however, nations increasingly turned to bilateral investment treaties (“BITs”) and investor-state arbitration to resolve such disputes.  It is today common in the academic literature for authors to identify two—and only two—fora whereby the rights granted to foreign investors under FCNs or BITs may be enforced.  The first is the ICJ.  The second is an international arbitral panel.

In a recent paper, Jason Yackee and I argue that this account overlooks a third possible forum—the courts of the United States.  We argue that the FCNs negotiated by the United States in the 1940s and 1950s, most of which remain in force, provide foreign investors with domestically enforceable rights. These FCNs contain promises of favorable substantive treatment that are quite similar to the rights commonly extended to investors through BITs and investment chapters in free trade agreements such as NAFTA and CAFTA.  Unlike NAFTA and CAFTA, however, the FCNs are self-executing and give rise to a private right of action. This means that their provisions may be directly enforced in U.S. courts by private litigants.

This ability to access substantive international investment law through domestic litigation rather than international arbitration is of significant practical and theoretical importance.  It could lead foreign companies to rethink their approach to asserting indirect or regulatory takings claims against governmental entities within the United States.  The choice available to foreign investors who believe that they have suffered a regulatory taking has long been viewed as binary. The investor may either bring a constitutional takings claim before a U.S. court or a treaty-based expropriation claim before an international arbitral tribunal. There was no way—or so conventional wisdom held—for a foreign investor to invoke the enhanced protections afforded by the treaty in domestic litigation. The FCNs make it possible, at least in principle, for foreign investors to litigate takings claims in U.S. courts under international investment law standards rather than constitutional ones.

The ability to access the substance of international investment law through the FCNs also suggests that foreign investors may in some cases enjoy domestically enforceable rights under those treaties that are superior to those accorded to citizens under the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court held in Penn Central that courts must balance three factors in determining whether a regulatory taking has occurred under the Takings Clause: (1) the economic impact of the regulation on the claimant, (2) the extent to which the regulation interferes with investment-backed expectations, and (3) the character of the government action. In theory, the test constitutes a neutral attempt to balance the interests of the government against the interests of private property owners. In practice, the test typically results in a finding that no taking has occurred and that no compensation is owed to the property owner.  The standard of protection for regulatory expropriations under international investment treaties, by contrast, is generally viewed as more demanding than the standard of protection set forth in the Takings Clause. Indeed, when the U.S. Congress became aware of this divergence in 2002, it enacted a law directing U.S. trade negotiators to “[e]nsur[e] that foreign investors in the United States are not accorded greater substantive rights with respect to investment protections than United States investors in the United States.”  The treaty negotiators subsequently modified the text of the U.S. Model BIT to effectuate this goal for future agreements.  However, these textual modifications do not affect treaties that were then in existence, a list that includes all of the FCNs.

We acknowledge that there are a number of practical obstacles that would need to be overcome before the FCN revival could successfully occur.  The first is the well-documented reluctance on the part of U.S. judges to directly enforce rules of international law in the absence of a statute expressly directing them to do so.  The second is the fact that FCNs couch their promises to investors in language that is sometimes different from the domestic-law analogues with which U.S. judges are familiar. Judicial unfamiliarity with the language of international investment law may make it more likely for judges to restrict private access to the treaties.  The third obstacle is that U.S. courts have, at least historically, been reluctant to grant rights to foreign nationals while denying these same rights to U.S. citizens. Under our argument, foreign investors would be asking the courts to enforce a treaty provision granting rights to foreign companies that are arguably superior to those enjoyed by U.S. citizens.  While there are scattered precedents in which U.S. courts have recognized such rights in the past, contemporary judges may prove resistant to the idea in practice.

There is also at least one significant doctrinal obstacle that would need to be overcome—sovereign immunity.  In the United States, the state and federal governments generally enjoy sovereign immunity unless they have waived this immunity or consented to suit.  The Supreme Court has stated that the Takings Clause amounts to a de facto waiver of federal sovereign immunity for suits in which a taking is alleged.  Some scholars have argued that the Takings Clause also abrogates state sovereign immunity for constitutional takings claims.  If the takings claim were to be framed as a treaty violation, rather than a constitutional one, then it is unclear whether the state and federal governments could invoke sovereign immunity as a defense.  On the one hand, the Fifth Amendment could be read as a waiver of sovereign immunity with respect to treaty-based takings claims as well as constitutional ones.  This argument derives support from (1) the fact that the text of the standard treaty provision relating to takings closely tracks the text of the Fifth Amendment, and (2) the fact that foreign sovereigns generally do not enjoy immunity in U.S. courts when they take property in violation of international law.  On the other hand, the Fifth Amendment could be read to waive sovereign immunity only with respect to constitutional claims.  This argument derives support from the Supreme Court’s repeated admonition that waivers of federal sovereign immunity must be “unequivocally expressed” and the Court’s consistent practice of “construing waivers of sovereign immunity narrowly in favor of the sovereign.”  To date, there is a dearth of case law on this issue.

It is important to note, however, that sovereign immunity only presents an obstacle with respect to suits against the United States or one of the several States; counties and municipalities do not enjoy sovereign immunity.  Even if a court were to conclude that the state and federal governments could assert sovereign immunity as a defense, FCNs could still serve as a useful check on any regulatory takings conducted by U.S. counties and municipalities.

In summary, the FCNs are not historical relics. They remain in force, and they provide doctrinally meaningful legal guarantees to foreign investment in the United States due to their self-executing character and the fact that they give rise to a private right of action. While the FCNs have not played a prominent role in domestic litigation over the past half-century, it is easy to imagine how they might be relevant in future years. The U.S. government and its sub-federal counterparts interact with FCN-covered investors all of the time. To the extent that the government thinks in advance about the consequences of its actions toward foreign investors, it should at least consider the possibility that an FCN treaty might impose legally enforceable limitations on its freedom of action. Investors who feel mistreated by the government, moreover, should consider the availability of FCN-based causes of action when planning their legal responses.

[Andrea Bowdren (LLM (LSE), BCL International (NUI)) is a trainee solicitor at Arthur Cox in Dublin, Ireland. All views are the author’s own.]

The trial of Ahmed Al Faqi Al Mahdi before the International Criminal Court represents a series of firsts for international law and justice. Al Mahdi is the first individual from Mali brought before the International Criminal Court, the first Islamic extremist to face charges at the International Criminal Court, the first individual to be prosecuted solely for cultural destruction as a war crime, and the first individual who has indicated an intention to plead guilty to a charge of the International Criminal Court.

Ansar Dine, a militant Islamist group associated with al-Qaeda, aimed to enforce an extreme interpretation of Sharia law throughout Mali. In the territories under its control, Ansar Dine banned alcohol, smoking and Friday visits to cemeteries, among many other restrictions. Al Mahdi’s role in the group was head of the “hisbah,” or morality brigade, enforcing sharia and “preventing vice” among the population.

In June and July 2012, Ansar Dine destroyed nine mausoleums of Muslim saints and the door of Timbuktu’s famous Sidi Yahia mosque, a UNESCO world heritage site dating back to the 15th and 16th centuries. Al Mahdi stands accused of jointly ordering or carrying out the attacks against the historical monuments, which UNESCO have described as “places of pilgrimage for the people of Mali and neighbouring West African countries.”

On 24 March 2016, the International Criminal Court judges ruled they would commit Al Mahdi to trial for one charge of the war crime of attacking “buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals or places where the sick and wounded are collected, which were not military objectives” under Article 8(2)(e)(iv) of the Rome Statute. In this confirmation of charges hearing, it was stated Al Mahdi is criminally responsible:

1. as a direct co-perpetrator under Article 25(3)(a) of the Rome Statute;
2. for inducing the commission of such a crime under Article 25(3)(b) of the Rome Statute;
3. for facilitating the commission of such a crime by aiding, abetting or otherwise assisting in its commission under Article 25(3)(c) of the Rome Statute; and
4. for contrinuting in any other way to the commission of uch a crime by a group acting with a common purpose under Article 15(3)(d) of the Rome Statute.

The prosecution showed video extracts of interviews with Al Mahdi at the time of the attacks, where he explains the Islamic jurisprudence informing his actions.

On 1 March 2016, in an unprecedented move, Al Mahdi explicitly expressed his wish to plead guilty to the war crime charge. Defence counsel Mohamed Aouini has stated that Al Madhi “wants to be truthful to himself and he wants to admit the acts that he has committed. And he wants to ask at the same time for pardon from the people of Timbuktu and the Malian people.” This guilty plea has been described as a  “milestone in the history of the International Criminal Court” by chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda. It provides both the prosecution and judges with an opportunity to reflect on how best to develop an institutional practice conducive to guilty pleas while advancing the interests of the International Criminal Court and justice.

What is the role of international law in this area? Why is the protection of cultural property important? What could this trial mean for the future interpretation of war crimes and the future of combatting terrorism?

Although the International Criminal Court has previously focused on attacks against people causing physical injury, the Rome Statute clearly provides that intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes or historic monuments is a war crime, provided they are not military objectives. Thus the Rome Statute envisages prosecutions of people like Al Madhi and recognises the effect that the destruction of cultural and religious monuments has on the psyche of the communities subjected to these attacks.

“A community’s cultural heritage reflects its life, history and identity. Its preservation helps to rebuild broken communities, re-establish their identities, and link their past with their present and future,” said Vibeke Jensen, UNESCO. Cultural heritage destruction is a powerful tool used to weaken morale and reinforce the authority of a new regime, which may have won control through violence or other criminal acts. In deciding to prosecute Al Madhi, the International Criminal Court underscored the seriousness of the destruction of cultural property and consequential psychological harm to the Malian population and highlighted the importance of accountability for perpetrators.

International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told the court:

“The charges we have brought against Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi involve most serious crimes. They are about the destruction of irreplaceable historic monuments and they are about a callous assault on the dignity and identity of entire populations and their religion and historical roots.”

Similarly, the Minister of Culture of Mali summarised these feelings aptly on 25 February 2013, when he called the destruction “an attack on the lifeblood of our souls, on the very quintessence of our cultural values. Their purpose was to destroy our past … our identity and, indeed, our dignity …”

Pursuing and prosecuting those responsible for cultural destruction and resultant harm could yield important changes in the way the international community approaches violent extremism and terrorism. This approach by the International Criminal Court corresponds with former chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo’s contention that combating terrorism would be more effective and humane if terrorists were treated as criminals to prosecute rather than enemies to bomb.

The trial is set to proceed on 22 August 2016 and the Chamber aims to complete the trial in a single week. This case breaks new ground for the protection of humanity’s shared cultural heritage and for the procedural future of the International Criminal Court, as it affords the Chamber an opportunity to reflect on what is best for the advancement of the interests of the International Criminal Court and international justice.

Here’s your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world:

Africa

• The United States has recommended that the United Nations Security Council authorise a force of 4,000 peacekeepers for South Sudan’s capital Juba after a recent outbreak of violence.
• A United Nations peacekeeper was killed and four others wounded on Sunday when their vehicle hit a mine in Mali’s restive north, the U.N. mission (MINUSMA) said.
• Somali Islamist group al Shabaab on Saturday shelled residential areas in the town of Baidoa, west of the capital Mogadishu, hitting a hospital and likely causing casualties, the African Union (AU) peace keeping force AMISOM said in a Twitter post.

Middle East and Northern Africa

• Islamic State suicide bombers on Sunday attacked a military base for U.S.-backed fighters near the Syrian-Iraqi border, leaving several dead before blowing themselves up, rebel sources and the militants said on Sunday.
• Iran intends to purchase 20 regional jets from a unit of Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, according to Asghar Fakhrieh Kashan, deputy minister for international affairs at the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development.
• Authorities in the United Arab Emirates have warned the public that “criminal groups propagating radical ideologies” could spread violent ideas and rebellious behavior among young people through video gaming.

Asia

• Japan marked the 71st anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Saturday as its mayor urged world leaders to follow in U.S. President Barack Obama’s footsteps and visit, and ultimately rid the world of nuclear arms.
• Former Philippine President Fidel Ramos on Monday departed on a five-day trip to Hong Kong to meet “old friends” and rekindle ties with China soured by a maritime dispute in the South China Sea.
• Indonesian authorities said on Monday that several suspected radicals arrested on Batam island last week were part of a group that has “dozens of members” and has been active for two years; anti-terror forces arrested six men on Friday on suspicion of planning a rocket attack on neighboring Singapore.
• A bomb blast at a Pakistani hospital killed at least 30 people and wounded dozens on Monday in Quetta, the capital of the violence-plagued southwestern province of Baluchistan, police said.
• For the second time in two days, Japan has protested to Beijing over Chinese coastguard ships and fishing vessels sailing into waters close to disputed islands in the East China Sea.
• Militants linked to Islamic State have released photos that purport to show weapons and equipment that belonged to American soldiers and were captured by the group in eastern Afghanistan.

Europe

• Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz has threatened to block the expansion of negotiations with Turkey on its accession to the European Union, which could scupper a landmark migration deal between Brussels and Ankara.
• Most Germans think the European Union should scrap a landmark migration deal with Turkey and scupper negotiations on its accession to the bloc, according to a poll published on Sunday.
• Islamic State claimed responsibility on Sunday for an attack by a machete-wielding man in Belgium that left two female police officers seriously injured, the group’s Amaq news agency said on Twitter.
• More than 100 migrants broke through police barriers at the Italian border town of Ventimiglia and made their way into France on Friday, the local Italian police chief said.

Americas

• Cuba has blamed the United States for encouraging illegal and unsafe immigration by tens of thousands of Cubans who have left the country in the past two years.
• The U.S. Coast Guard has repatriated 97 Cuban migrants picked up at sea, part of a surge in attempts to reach the United States from the Communist-run island, the service said on Saturday.
• A Philippine lawmaker is seeking to permanently ban U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump from visiting the Southeast Asian nation after the billionaire called it one of the “terrorist nations.”

Oceania

• A member of an Australian anti-immigration group accused of planning an attack may face additional charges in what the government said was the first time federal terrorism laws had been used to target such right-wing groups.

UN/World

• Former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres is still the front-runner to become the next United Nations Secretary-General after a second U.N. Security Council secret ballot on Friday, said diplomats.

[Wolfgang Alschner (PhD in International Law, JSM (Stanford)) is a post-doctoral researcher at the World Trade Institute in Bern and the Graduate Institute in Geneva specializing in text as data analysis of international law.]

As international law scholars we are overwhelmed with information. The United Nations Treaty Series alone contains more than 50,000 treaties. Add to that the many thousand decisions by international courts and organizations that grow day by day. Just keeping abreast with a sub-field of international law is a full-time job. Not only academics but also beneficiaries of international law are affected by this information overkill. A recent UNCTAD report pointedly concluded that international investment law has become “too big and complex to handle for governments and investors alike”. Lest we are to drown in the rising tides of information and complexity, we need to find novel ways to digest and analyze international law materials.

Computational analysis of international law promises such a new way. Not only do computers not grow tired or grumpy when reading through thousands of documents, but they also find patterns in data that humans would not be able to spot. To be sure, robot lawyers are not going to replace human researchers any time soon – nor should they. But the interaction between computers crunching numbers and scholars interpreting results does provide new and exciting opportunities to tackle international law’s big data problems. In this post, I will highlight four examples derived from computational international investment law research that I did together with Dmitriy Skougarevskiy, which showcases some of the insights revealed through computer-assisted approaches that would have been difficult or impossible to gain using traditional human-led research.

Dmitriy and I have investigated over 2,100 International Investment Agreements (IIAs) and their 24,000 constituent articles. Using a computational approach similar to what is being employed in plagiarism detection software, we were able to empirically demonstrate four hitherto unknown or only anecdotally presumed aspects of the IIA universe relating to asymmetry in negotiations, the evolution of national investment treaty programs, the diffusion of treaty design and the innovations achieved in recent mega-regional agreements. To allow researchers and other stakeholders to engage with our findings directly and interactively, we have created the open-access website www.mappinginvestmenttreaties.com.

The simple, yet powerful text-as-data procedure we employ in our research consists of four steps. First, we collect treaty full texts and split them into their constituent articles. Second, we represent each treaty and article based on its consecutive 5-character components. The phrase “shall be permitted” is thus represented as “shall”, “hall_”, “all_b”, “ll_be”, “l_be_”, “_be_p”, “be_pe”, “e_per”, “_perm”, “permi”, “ermit”, “rmitt”, “mitte”, “itted” (“_” signifies space). Third, we compare the textual similarity between two treaties or articles based on the 5-character components they have in common calculating what is formally known as a Jaccard distance – a measure of dissimilarity ranging from 0 (100% similarity) to 1 (0% similarity). The phrase “shall be permitted” and a second phrase “shall not be permitted”, for instance, are identical, except for the 5-character components “all_n”, “ll_no”, “l_not”, “_not_”, “not_b”, “ot_be”, “t_be_” due to the word “not” in the second phrase, which yields a Jaccard distance of 0.48. Finally, since Jaccard distances by themselves do not tell us much, we compare Jaccard scores across sets of documents. Such comparison allows us to see where treaty language convergences or diverges uncovering latent patterns in our data – four of which we will present here.

First of all, our metric revealed a stark asymmetry in investment treaty making. While rich countries achieve highly consistent treaty networks whose design closely corresponds to the model template they employ, poorer states are party to patchworks of textual diverse treaties. Put differently, a computational assessment of textual similarity allows us to empirically show in a systematic, objective and replicable manner that developed countries tend to be the system’s rule-makers while developing countries are its rule-takers.

Second, Jaccard distances also shed light on consistency and innovation in national investment treaty programs. Some countries like the United Kingdom have only made cosmetic changes to their investment agreements over time. The country’s network of 110 bilateral investment treaties (BITs) concluded between 1975 and 2009 is thus the most consistent of the world. Other states have continuously updated their investment treaties. Our metric allows us to detect major changes in treaty design such as when the United States revamped its model agreement in 2004. Also less well-known innovations, such as the Finish shift to a pre-establishment treaty model in 1999 that combines investment protection with capital liberalization, are made visible. Our metric thus provides a means to inductively investigate the evolution of national treaty programs.

Third, our approach enables us to trace treaty design diffusion. We observe that some countries copied and pasted almost entire treaties from third states. Israel, for instance, heavily drew from British BITs when devising its own BIT program. Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia, in turn, used the BITs they concluded with each other in January 1993 as templates for their subsequent treaty negotiations resulting in strikingly similar agreements. Diffusion also happens on the clause level. We discovered, for instance, that the language of a public policy exception first appearing in Article 11 of the 1985 BIT between Singapore and China later diffused to India, Mauritius and half a dozen African countries. What makes the clause special is that it was conceived and is exclusively being used by developing countries making it one of the rare treaty design innovations in investment law that is indigenous to the Southern hemisphere.

Fourth, the approach we developed allows us to assess the novelty of newly concluded agreements. The Transpacific Partnership (TPP), for instance, was initially heralded as a “new and high standards agreement”. Our metric reveals how new it actually is and how high the standards are that it sets. We found that 81% of the text of the TPP investment chapter is taken verbatim from the 2006 USA-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. The remaining 19% are mostly used to clarify and further refine already existing standards. Hence, while it is true that the TPP investment chapter sets higher standards as compared to some of the earlier BITs with which it overlaps, it is very much a continuation of prior US practice rather than an IIA 2.0.

Computational analysis of international law thus provides an efficient and effective way to investigate the hidden structures of the international investment law universe revealing new and surprising insights. At the same time, the presented research offers only a glimpse of the multitude of opportunities that computational international law still holds in store. As computers turn the flood of legal information from a burden into a resource, hitherto impossible research avenues are opening up from the quantification of international law’s fragmentation to the investigation of state practice and opinion juris in 195 countries. Exciting times lie ahead.

[Ekaterina Kopylova is a PhD candidate at MGIMO-University, Moscow, and a former Legal Assistant with the ICC Office of the Prosecutor.]

On July 15, 2016, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) Contempt Judge Nicola Lettieri entered a guilty verdict against two co-accused standing trial for designedly violating confidentiality of several purported Prosecution witness identities in the case of Ayyash, et al. The special thing about this verdict is that one of the co-accused is a Beirut-based corporation called Akhbar Beirut S.A.L. It owns the newspaper and website that hosted the two articles pretending to reveal confidential information on the protected witnesses – a conduct that, in the Judge’s view, may have affected public confidence in the Tribunal’s ability to protect such information, and the potential witnesses’ determination to cooperate. Therefore, on July 15, 2016, for the first time in history a corporation was convicted of contemptuous conduct by an international criminal tribunal.

Earlier this year, the STL acquitted of similar charges another Lebanese corporation. Ironically, Judge Lettieri, who may have opened a new chapter in the history of the corporate liability in international criminal law with these two verdicts, wished he would not: throughout the two contempt matters involving the corporate accused, he consistently expressed a firm opposition to the STL’s exercise of jurisdiction over corporate entities.

Obviously, both cases set an important precedent in terms of the corporations’ principled amenability to trial before international courts, for interfering with their administration of justice or possibly other criminal conduct. They may incite other tribunals to look more closely at their law for any impediments to the punishment of corporations. The plain reading of the Rome Statute, for example, does not preclude the institution of the Article 70 proceedings against a corporation – for destroying, tampering or interfering with the collection of evidence, as may be the case. The drafters’ rejection of the corporate liability for the core crimes at the preparatory stage is not necessarily indicative of any such intent in respect of the offences against the administration of justice.

However, the cogency of the proposed model of attributing responsibility to a corporation is rather limited. Specifically, having concluded to the absence of an applicable international model, Judge Lettieri borrowed wholesale the provisions of the Lebanese criminal legislation, requiring that the following facts be established: (i) criminal liability of a specific individual; (ii) this individual’s power to act in the name of the corporation; (iii) that the individual acted on behalf of or using the means of the corporation.

Judge Lettieri reasoned as follows:

“In its decisions, the Appeals Panel highlighted the “unique link between [Lebanese law] and this Tribunal” and the Tribunal’s “hybrid nature”. I thus find significant that the corporate Accused is domiciled in and substantially operates in Lebanon. As it was foreseeable from Lebanese domestic law that certain conduct might give rise to corporate liability, I consider that looking to the material elements of the pertinent Lebanese law would not violate the rights of the Accused; particularly in the absence of contrary provisions in the Tribunal’s Statute or Rules. Finally, I am mindful that, in addition to being the domicile of the corporate Accused, Lebanon is where the alleged acts and conduct in this case occurred and more broadly is at the heart of the Tribunal’s mandate”.

From this reasoning, it is unclear whether Lebanese law is intended generally to govern corporate responsibility at the STL, or whether the applicable law will each time be determined by one or a set of connecting factors, such as the accused’s place of registration, place of business, and/or place of crime.

On the plain reading of the appeals decision, the Appeals Panel is tending towards the second option. In affirming Judge Lettieri’s reasoning, it circumscribed its scope of application to the facts and circumstances of the matter under review, stating: “In light of these factors, the Appeals Panel finds that, in this case, the elements for the attribution of criminal liability to legal persons are to be found in Lebanese law under Article 210 of the [Lebanese Criminal Code]”.

There is nothing inherently flawed about the connecting-factors-based approach to the choice of law governing the corporate accused’s liability. However, it makes no contribution to the development of a general international corporate criminal liability concept.

In developing such concept, inspiration should be sought elsewhere in international law. The law on the responsibility of international organisations for internationally wrongful acts may be informative. The 2011 International Law Commission’s Articles on the matter contain a detailed overview of the different case-scenarios under which a conduct may be attributable to an international organisation. Contrary to the STL’s model, the Articles do not, for instance, predicate the entity’s responsibility on the established responsibility of a concrete individual or organ within this entity.

[Shehzad Charania was the Legal Adviser and Head of International Law at the British Embassy in The Hague between January 2013 and August 2016.  The views set out in this article are personal, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the British Embassy or the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.]

Earlier this year, the King of the Netherlands opened the new permanent premises of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, in a ceremony co-hosted by ICC President Silvia Fernandez and the President of the Assembly of States Parties Senegalese Justice Minister Sidiki Kaba.  The Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-Moon also attended, along with former ICC Presidents and Judges.

In his remarks, the Secretary General said that the inauguration was a “milestone in global efforts to promote and uphold human rights and the rule of law”.  The ASP President said that this was a “day of hope for all victims of mass crimes in the world”.  President Fernandez announced that the Court was “here to stay”.

But setting the rhetoric aside, how does the ICC’s report card look since it opened its doors 14 years ago?

The successes

Clearly, the ICC has come a long way since its establishment in 2002.  It has had notable successes.  The Prosecutor securing a first conviction against Thomas Lubanga was a significant step forward in bringing accountability for the recruitment and use of child soldiers; the second conviction saw the accused Germain Katanga apologise to his victims.  The conviction in March of former DRC Vice President Jean Pierre Bemba was the Court’s first for rape.  Earlier in March, the Court received its first guilty plea when Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi admitted to the destruction of historical and religious monuments in Timbuktu.  And across all the cases, 25,000 victims are formally participating in ICC proceedings, with over 180,000 beneficiaries of assistance through the ICC’s Trust Fund for Victims.

The setbacks

But the Court’s successes have arguably been overshadowed by a series of high-profile setbacks. For the Office of the Prosecutor, the most notable have been in Kenya, where the Prosecutor’s six attempted prosecutions for the 2007-08 post-election violence have all ended in failure, the final case against Kenyan Deputy President William Ruto collapsing in April.  Last year, the Prosecutor had to withdraw similar charges against President Kenyatta.  In the ruling in the case against the Deputy President, the majority referred to witness intimidation and, in the words of the Presiding Judge, “political meddling”.  But there have also been highly critical judicial decisions regarding the quality of the prosecution’s investigations and evidence across all the Kenyan cases.

The challenges

The Court’s current challenges are stark.  Yet it is important to note that many of these are primarily for its Member States rather than the institution to address.  But failure to deal with them reflects on the effectiveness, legitimacy and credibility of the ICC itself.  Here are some.

First, all the cases and eight of the nine investigations at the ICC are African, leading to accusations of racism and neo-colonialism, and questions around the Court’s legitimacy.  Admittedly, the majority of the Court’s situations were referred to the Prosecutor by African countries themselves.  But the Prosecutor has faced criticism about the fact that in those same situations there have been indictments only of opposition figures, opening up the Court to further accusations of partial justice, and allowing the ICC to be used for political ends.

Second, the absence of the US, Russia, China and India means that there will always be a question mark over the ICC’s relevance.  More urgently, the Court does not have jurisdiction over the worst crimes taking place in the world today: neither Syria nor Iraq are members of the Court, and Russia and China have vetoed a UN Security Council resolution allowing the ICC to step in on Syria.

Third, inadequate State cooperation remains the biggest obstacle to progress.  Just a few months ago, the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber made findings of non-cooperation against Djibouti and Uganda for not arresting Sudan’s President Omar Al-Bashir, in line with their legal obligation under the Rome Statute, when he stepped onto their territory.  And the cases against the Kenyan President and Deputy President, as well as the ongoing investigations into crimes committed in Cote d’Ivoire in 2012, have starkly posed the question of how the Court can prosecute serving high-ranking State officials when it needs the assistance of authorities in those very States to do so effectively.

Fourth, witness tampering is becoming an increasing part of the Court’s workload, diverting precious resources from the investigation and prosecution of the most serious crimes the ICC was set up to deal with.  The Court’s most expensive trial in 2016 was such a case.

Fifth, it takes years to administer international justice in a single case, in part due to the complexity of the crimes involved.  The current timescales could be reduced through more efficient procedures, and this is the ICC President’s top priority.  But these cases will never be as fast as simpler, domestic cases.  Many survivors will die before they see accountability.

Finally, international justice costs money.  And as States begin negotiations on the 2017 budget, they understand that unlike other international organisations they cannot tell the institution what to do – which investigation to open, who to pursue, and who to convict or acquit.  The Court must use States Parties’ own money to pursue individuals in those same States, sometime the heads of those States.  That’s part of the “price” of international justice.

The future

The ICC, therefore, faces an uphill task, not made easier by what is potentially on the horizon.  The Court is already investigating Russian and Georgian actions during the 2008 armed conflict.  And it is conducting preliminary examinations outside Africa – which could lead to full investigations and therefore indictments – in situations relating to: Ukraine, where the Prosecutor is likely to be examining allegations against Russia following the annexation of Crimea; Afghanistan, where amongst other things allegations of detainee abuse by US officials are being considered; possible war crimes by all sides in the Occupied Palestinian Territories; and of course Iraq. In addition, within the next couple of years, the Court is likely to have jurisdiction over the crime of aggression, opening up a whole new political dimension to the ICC’s work.

But for countries such as the UK which attaches serious importance to the rules based international system, the test of its commitment is about seeing institutions such as the ICC through both the good and the bad times. That means ensuring full cooperation, resisting threats to its independence, speaking up for the Court when it is under attack, and all while continuing to push for serious institutional reform.

More than ever, the ICC needs its friends, in particular States Parties and NGOs, to be constructive critics. At the same time, after only 14 years of existence, we should not be surprised that there is more to do within an institution designed to hold the most powerful individuals to account. Instead of lamenting the fact that the ICC is not perfect, we should celebrate the fact that the Court exists at all, and that it is ready and willing to meet the challenges head on.

We are looking for two Senior Teaching Fellows. Here is the advertisement:

Salary: £34,336 – £40,448 per annum pro rata inclusive of London Allowance

Fixed term, part time for two years from September 2016

SOAS, University of London is the world’s leading institution for the study of Asia, Africa and the Near and Middle East, offering programmes in arts, humanities, languages, law and social sciences. Inaugurated in June 1916, SOAS has had an international reach since the arrival of its first students in February 1917 and is celebrating its Centenary in this year. As an institution we combine language scholarship, disciplinary expertise and regional focus, and have the largest concentration in Europe of academic staff concerned with these specialisms.

The School of Law invites applications for two year fixed term Senior Teaching Fellow positions available from September 2016.  The vacancies are designed on a 0.5 FTE part-time teaching basis to support postdoctoral individuals who might be seeking to develop an academic career in conjunction with their personal research interests.

You will have academic expertise in an area of the law that is consistent with the SOAS mandate as a specialist institution in the study of Asia, Africa and the Near and Middle East. Ideally, you will also have a PhD in Law.  You will be expected to teach to a high standard undergraduate and postgraduate students in two or more of the following areas of law: Contracts, Property, EU, Human Rights Law and Law and Society in Asia and Africa. You will be expected to engage in teaching-related administration, supervision of Masters dissertations, pastoral care, and administration.

Prospective candidates seeking further information about SOAS and the Department may contact the Head of the School of Law, Professor Carol Tan (ct9 [at] soas [dot] ac [dot] uk).

These are excellent positions. Applications are due August 10. Full information here.

[Alexandra Hofer is a Doctoral Researcher at Ghent University, GRILI member. The topic addressed in this post is based on a paper entitled Promoting Threat: The Effect of European Union Restrictive Measures on the Development of International Law’s Enforcement, a Sociological Approach. All websites were last accessed on 5 July 2016.]

The starting point of this post is related to the renewal of the EU’s economic and sectorial sanctions against the Russian Federation for its destabilizing policies in Ukraine. These restrictive measures were first adopted in July 2014 in reaction to the events in east Ukraine. The measures restrict financial exchanges with Russia and exports of technology needed for oil exploitation and production; they impose an embargo on arms, dual-use goods and technology. They aim at pressuring Russia into using its influence on the Ukrainian separatists and to prevent the transfer of heavy arms across the Ukrainian border. Their objective is to impose costs on Russia for its illegal and destabilizing conduct in Ukraine. (For example, see this.)

Since 2014, renewals have taken place despite signs of sanctions fatigue as certain EU Member States have suggested reconsidering the sanctions against Russia, arguing that the restrictive measures have been ineffective against the Kremlin. (Examples include Greece, Italy, Cyprus and Hungary; French President Hollande). At present, the lifting of the European measures is dependent upon Russia’s implementation of its obligations under the Minsk Agreements and its contribution to the peaceful settlement of the dispute with Ukraine.

This post considers whether such restrictive measures are an effective means for the EU to resolve the Ukrainian crisis and enforce international law. In order for this to be the case, the measures need to be successful in convincing (or pressuring) Russia to change its policy in east Ukraine and cease its wrongful act. Although the effectiveness of sanctions is generally an issue addressed by political scientists, it is an equally important question for international lawyers who are interested in ensuring compliance with international legal obligations. Can sanctions such as those imposed by the EU change Russia’s behaviour? We are therefore interested in these measures’ coercive effect (see Francesco Giumelli ‘How EU sanctions work. A new narrative’ (2013) n° 129, 13 EUISS Chaillot Paper).

It is relatively safe to say that the EU uses its sanctions policy in order to play out its role as a civil and liberal power (see for example Barbara Delcourt ‘Au nom de quoi sanctionner et punir?’ (2015/1) nº97 Revue internationale et stratégique 79). Not only is the EU’s external action guided by the norms that contributed to its creation, which are ‘democracy, the rule of law, the universality and indivisibility of human rights and fundamental freedoms, respect for human dignity, the principles of equality and solidarity, and respect for the principles of the United Nations Charter and international law’, through its international relations the organization seeks to advance them in the wider world (as illustrated by the Treaty on European Union, Title 1, Article 3 and Title V, Chapter 1 ‘General Provisions on the Union’s External Action’, Article 21).

It is within the scope of this role that the EU adopts restrictive measures. Accordingly, through these measures the EU seeks to enforce compliance with one of the most fundamental rules of international law by pressuring Russia into changing its behavior towards Ukraine and complying with the Minsk Agreements. Notwithstanding the high structural costs of the sanctions to Russia’s economy and the negotiation of a ceasefire, it would appear that the sanctions have not encouraged Russia to change its policy in Ukraine but have instead been used to enforce anti-EU propaganda and have further alienated Russia from the EU, resulting in a stalemate between the two parties. Russian high-officials have stated that the sanctions against it are illegal and that they have contributed to souring relations between the EU and Russia, leading to a new Cold War (See these two statements: 1 and 2.) Tit-for-tat sanctions have followed as Russia has adopted its own measures against the EU. Finally, Russia has avoided isolation by forging new alliances.

Acts of aggression and the imposition of sanctions do not come about in a vacuum. Instead, they are the product of an interaction between agents whose respective identities and perceptions of a situation cause them to act in a certain way. From a sociological perspective, it would appear that the EU’s coercive measures have not encouraged the Kremlin to change its policy in Ukraine and cease its wrongful conduct. Taking into account constructivist notions of State identity and norms, the sanctions may have had the effect of encouraging Russia to further pursue its destabilizing, and illegal, policies in Ukraine. This is because the restrictive measures cause Russia to continue to view the EU as a threat. In as much as this perception of threat caused the Kremlin to pursue its destabilizing policy in the first place, the restrictive measures are not giving Russia incentive to change its behavior.

Indeed, as argued by Hopf in a recent article (Ted Hopf ‘”Crimea is ours”: a discursive history’ (2016) vol. 30(2) International Relations 227), Russian policies in the Ukraine can be understood as the result of Russia’s identity as, inter alia, a regional power that has historical and fraternal ties with Ukraine and its interpretation of Western policies coupled with the circumstances that arose in Ukraine. Russia may have felt threatened by NATO’s expansion and by Ukraine’s turn to the EU, which would have been perceived as the broadening of Western influence in Eastern Europe. Indeed, President Putin has expressed misgivings about the military alliance’s turn to Eastern Europe, which prevents the European continent from uniting and moving away from the Cold War mentality (see for example, 1 and 2); this concern has been expressed over the years, as illustrated by Putin’s speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007. Under these circumstances, Russia reacted dominantly, or aggressively. When Russian officials state that the restrictive measures bring EU-Russian relations back to the Cold War, this is an indication that the sanctions contribute to the perception that the EU poses a threat. The Kremlin therefore continues its destabilizing policies in Ukraine because they are believed to be necessary to safeguard Russian interests and standing in the region. In a way, not complying with the EU’s demands become a value to the Russian Federation, who would have too much to lose if it were it to give into Western pressure (such as, for example, its standing as a regional power).

In conclusion, the argument here is that the restrictive measures have been counterproductive because they have contributed to promoting a situation of mutual distrust between the EU and the Russian Federation. Each actor continues to view the other as a threat and bases its response on this perception. This would mean that contrary to encouraging Russia to cease its policy in the Ukraine, the sanctions give Russia incentive to continue its actions in the region, which gives the EU incentive to pursue its sanctions policy, etc. Russia’s interpretation of Western powers’ policies in Ukraine and NATO’s expansion towards the East caused Russia to feel its fraternal ties with Ukraine were threatened and act aggressively. In response, the EU believes the norms it wants to defend in the ‘wider world’ are threatened and responds – with Kiev’s approval (see 1, 2, and 3)– by adopting coercive measures; this also allows the organization to fulfil its identity as a civil and liberal power that aims at promoting peaceful relations between States (see TEU, Title V, Chapter 1, Article 21(2)(c)). In the EU’s view, ‘it has a special responsibility for peace, stability and prosperity in Europe’ (see this statement). Instead of feeling the negative costs of its actions, the ban on exportations to Russia in technology is used as an opportunity to develop Russian industry and steps are being taken to substitute former EU and American agricultural imports (see here and here). Instead of being enforced, international law is continuously violated. The challenge is to free both parties from the deadlock. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to occur with the breaking down of communication, the pursuit of NATO operations in Eastern Europe and the continuation of the sanction tit-for-tat. Given this counterproductive outcome, the EU’s role as an enforcer of essential legal norms is being undermined. Nevertheless, as Wendt wrote: ‘if states find themselves in a self-help system, this is because their practices made it that way’ (Alexander Wendt ‘Anarchy is what States Make of it: The Social Construction of Power Politics’ (1992) 46:2 International Organization 391, 407). Hence, if the EU and Russia want out of the stalemate, they need to change their practices. The EU should focus on tools that promote dialogue and communication, which would bridge the gap and help Russia no longer perceive the EU as a threat. This may then have the effect of encouraging Russia to demilitarize in Ukraine.

Here’s your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world:

Africa

• United Nations children’s agency UNICEF said it is continuing its aid work in northeastern Nigeria, a former stronghold of Islamist militant group Boko Haram, despite an attack on a humanitarian convoy earlier this week.
• Several people have been killed in an assault on a police base in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
• An aircraft wing part found in Tanzania is “highly likely” to be part of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, an Australian government minister said on Friday, in what would be the second confirmed piece of the jetliner.

Middle East and Northern Africa

• A Syrian maternity hospital in a rebel-held area of Idlib province was extensively damaged on Friday after a direct hit, international charity Save the Children, which supports the hospital, said.
• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has lashed out at Western leaders for failing to show solidarity with Ankara over a failed coup attempt, saying countries who worry more about the fate of the perpetrators than democracy cannot be Turkey’s friends.
• Up to one million Iraqis risk facing displacement in the coming weeks as fighting intensifies ahead of a government offensive to retake the northern city of Mosul from ISIL, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
• Islamic State called on its group members to carry out jihad in Russia in a nine-minute YouTube video on Sunday. Islamic State, losing territory and on the retreat in Iraq and Syria, has claimed credit for a surge in global attacks this summer, most of them in France and Germany.

Asia

• British Prime Minister Theresa May was concerned about the security implications of a planned Chinese investment in the new Hinkley Point nuclear plant and intervened personally to delay the project, a former colleague and a source said on Saturday.
• Nepal’s Maithil women break traditional gender roles.
• The United States military said on Friday it was preparing for the biggest land return in Okinawa since 1972, as it faces a surge in opposition to its presence following the arrest of one its civilian contractors for the murder of a local woman.

Europe

• Almost as many Europe-bound asylum seekers and irregular migrants have died on desperate journeys so far this year than in all of 2015, the deadliest year on record for refugees.
• Belgium charged a man with planning to commit murder in a terrorist attack and released his brother after a series of house searches on Friday evening, federal prosecutors said.

Americas

• Brazilian authorities on Saturday arrested a man wanted since 1992 for allegedly committing war crimes during fighting that raged in the former Yugoslavia.
• U.S.-backed forces have now seized control of almost 70 percent of Manbij in northern Syria from Islamic State after making rapid advances over the past two days, a spokesman said on Sunday.

Oceania

• The head of an Australian inquiry into the abuse of children in detention resigned on Monday, four days after being appointed to investigate prison video of aboriginal boys being abused, citing his lack of support from the country’s indigenous leaders.
• Australians have rallied against the alleged mistreatment of young people in detention, including the hooding and physical restraint of teens, amid calls for an inquiry into the abuse to be expanded and the United Nation High Commission on Human Rights called on Australia on Friday to compensate children abused in prison.

UN/World

• The U.N. Deputy Special Envoy for Syria on Sunday held talks with Syrian officials in Damascus to sound out their position on how to break an impasse hindering the proposed resumption of peace talks around the end of August.