On February 24, 2015, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights announced the first session of the working group responsible for examining the periodic reports of parties to the Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights in the Area of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (also known as the Protocol of San Salvador). Paulo Vannuchi, the commissioner in charge of the economic, social, and cultural rights unit, called the session “ a milestone—a historic event” and added that the challenge of the Organization of American States is to advance “all human rights,...
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 February 23, 2015, a jury in a U.S. District Court in Manhattan, New York, found in Sokolow v. Palestine Liberation Organization the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority liable for supporting six terrorist attacks that wounded or killed several Americans, among other victims, in Israel in the early 2000s. The jury awarded victims US$215 million in damages, and the amount is expected to be tripled as the Anti-Terrorism Act, under which the suit commenced, allows a successful plaintiff to recover “threefold the damages he or she sustains and the cost...
On February 18, 2015, the U.S. Court of Military Commission Review, a military appeals court, overturned the conviction of David Hicks, an Australian man who pled guilty in 2007 to providing material support to a terrorist organization. The Commission dismissed the finding of guilty and vacated Hicks’s seven-year sentence on the ground that the charge was not a crime at the time of Hicks’s plea. Citing U.S. v. Al Bahlul, the Commission noted that the case “was a plain ex post facto violation” and the “conviction cannot stand on the merits.” Hicks, who admitted to receiving...
On February 16, 2015, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) released a report entitled “Children’s Rights in Return Policy and Practice in Europe.” The report addresses the challenges presented by the thousands of unaccompanied children who enter the European Union each year seeking asylum. To ensure that the Union meets its international obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Europe has developed various instruments in an effort to facilitate the return of children to states such as Afghanistan, from which a significant percentage of unaccompanied children come...
On February 18, 2015 France’s highest court, Cour de Cassation, overturned the decision of a lower court to extradite Mario Sandoval, a former Argentine police officer who is accused of committing crimes against humanity during Argentina’s “dirty war,” and ruled that the case be reexamined. According to one report, Sandoval’s lawyer indicated “the reversal was on a technicality in the statute of limitations.” Argentina has prosecuted and sentenced various individuals for crimes committed during the dirty war and has sought Sandoval’s extradition since 2012.
On February 12, 2015, in a Chamber judgment, the European Court of Human Rights (the Court) ruled in Sanader v. Croatia that not providing a defendant convicted in absentia of crimes against humanity a real possibility for retrial is a violation of the right to a fair trial under Article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights. According to the press release, based on eye witness testimony, Mile Sanader, a Croatian and Serbian national, was tried, convicted, and sentenced to twenty years in prison for taking part in the 1991 shooting of twenty-seven prisoners of...
On February 12, 2015, the United Nations Security Council, acting under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, adopted a resolution targeting the funding sources of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Al-Nusrah Front (ANF) and “all other individuals, groups, undertakings and entities associated with Al-Qaida.” According to a press release, the Council condemned “those buying oil from the groups, banning all trade in looted antiquities from Iraq and Syria, and calling on States to end ransom payments.” The resolution also condemned the “destruction and smuggling of cultural heritage...
On February 11, 2015, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) released a manual on best practices for the referral of international criminal cases to national courts. According to a press release, the “manual documents the ICTR Office of the Prosecutor’s (OTP) experience in securing the referral of ten genocide indictments to national jurisdictions for trial.” Of the ten indictments, eight were referred to Rwanda and two to France. The OTP noted that the “referral of these indictments marked an important milestone in the ICTR’s completion strategy. Without...
On January 30–31, 2015, the African Union adopted, among other documents, a Special Declaration on Illicit Financial Flows, which seeks to address “the increasing scale and extent of Illicit Financial flows from Africa.” The declaration resolved “to ensure that all the financial resources lost through illicit capital flight and illicit financial flows are identified and returned to Africa to finance the continent’s development Agenda.” Estimating that the continent loses US$150 billion annually through such flows, the declaration acknowledged the role played by corruption and poor...
On January 30, 2015, the England and Wales Court of Appeal issued a judgment in GS, EO, GM, & Others v. Secretary of State for the Home Department confirming that the deportation of foreign nationals suffering from serious diseases for which they could not receive healthcare in their home states was not a breach of Article 3 (prohibition against inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment) or Article 8 (capacity to form and enjoy relationships and the right to privacy) of the European Convention of Human Rights. Five of the six appellants— nationals of India, Ghana, Jamaica,...