On December 11, 2017, Pre-Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Court (ICC) referred Jordan to the Assembly of States Parties of the Rome Statute (ASP) and the UN Security Council for not executing the Court’s request for the arrest of Omar Al-Bashir when he was in Jordan for the League of Arab States' Summit on March 29, 2017. The Chamber noted that it had already given its opinion in an analogous case when South Africa failed to arrest Al-Bashir while he was in the state. The Chamber had not referred South Africa because it was the first to approach the ICC with a request for an...
International Law in Brief
International Law in Brief (ILIB) is a forum that provides updates on current developments in international law from the editors of ASIL's International Legal Materials.
On December 11, 2017, members and observers at the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference issued the Buenos Aires Declaration on Trade and Women’s Economic Empowerment, calling for increased participation of women in trade. Through the Declaration, members and observers have agreed to “to collaborate on making our trade and development policies more gender-responsive,” through methods including exchanging information on policies and programs to encourage women’s participation in trade, sharing best practices on gender-based analyses of trade policies as well as procedures for...
On December 8, 2017, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2389, welcoming the renewed commitment of signatories to the Peace, Security and Cooperation (PSC) Framework for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the Region and calling on states to abide by commitments made in the PSC. The Security Council reiterated “that the PSC Framework remains an essential mechanism to achieve durable peace and stability in the DRC and the Region.” The Council also noted its concern regarding the illicit flow of weapons throughout the DRC and their use among armed groups, strongly condemned...
On December 6, 2017, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in Coty Germany GmbH v. Parfümerie Akzente GmbH. that luxury brands may prohibit authorized distributors from selling their products on third-party internet platforms like Amazon. As noted in the press release, the Higher Regional Court, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, requested the Court of Justice to determine whether a contract clause between luxury brand Coty Germany and one of its authorized distributors prohibiting the distribution of Coty good on “amazon.de” was lawful under EU competition law. The Court of...
On December 5, 2017, the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers adopted a resolution to institute infringement proceedings against Azerbaijan due to the government’s failure to abide by the European Court of Human Rights’ May 2014 judgment in Mammadov v. Azerbaijan. In Mammadov, the Court held that Azerbaijan had violated the European Convention on Human Rights by detaining opposition blogger Ilgar Mammadov in order to punish him for his criticism of the government and ordered his unconditional release. The press release notes that through the resolution the Committee...
On December 5, 2017, the UN Human Rights Council concluded a special session on the human rights situation of the Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in the Rakhine state of Myanmar and passed a resolution condemning the alleged human rights abuses taking place there. The Human Rights Council expressed its concern over reports of human rights abuses by security forces and non-state actors, including extrajudicial and summary killing, sexual violence, destruction of property, torture, and large-scale displacement, which very likely amount to the commission of crimes against humanity. The...
On December 1, 2017, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in First Nation of Nacho Nyak Dun v. Government of Yukon that the Yukon government had acted improperly when it failed to consult any of the First Nations prior to adopting a final plan for the Peel Watershed that made substantial changes to the previously proposed plan and which increased access and development in the area. The Court held that the Yukon government did not act in accordance with the 1993 Umbrella Final Agreement that had created a land-use planning process for agreements between the Yukon government, the...
On November 29, 2017, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) issued its final judgment in Prosecutor v. Jadranko Prlić et al., affirming nearly all the convictions against the defendants Jadranko Prlić, Bruno Stojić, Slobodan Praljak, Milivoj Petković, Valentin Ćorić, and Berislav Pušić. As the press release notes, the case relates to events within Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1994 for which the defendants were “convicted of crimes against humanity, violations of the laws or customs of war, and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions,...
On November 28, 2017, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in Merabishvili v. Georgia that Georgia had violated the rights of former Prime Minister of Georgia, Ivane Merabishvili, by holding him in pre-trial detention that was initially justified, but later deemed to be a means of exerting pressure on him in order to obtain information. Merabishvili argued “that the arrest and the pre-trial detention had aimed to remove him from the political scene, and that the Chief Public Prosecutor . . . had attempted to use his detention as leverage to pressure him to provide information...
On November 27, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari in Ahmed Salem Bin Ali Jaber v. United States in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit dismissed a lawsuit brought by the families of two men allegedly killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in 2012. The families sought “a declaratory judgment stating their family members were killed in the course of a U.S. drone attack in violation of international law governing the use of force, the Torture Victim Protection Act (‘TVPA’), and the Alien Tort Statute (‘ATS’).” The D.C. Circuit Court held that the claims...