The ICSID Arbitral Tribunal issued a partial ruling in the dispute between ConocoPhillips and Venezuela regarding the latter's 2007 taking of ConocoPhillips oil assets located in the country. ConocoPhillips submitted the dispute to ICSID in 2007 pursuant to Article 36 of the ICSID Convention, basing its claims on the Venezuelan Law on the Promotion and Protection of Investments and the 1991 Agreement on Encouragement and Reciprocal Protection of Investments between the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Republic of Venezuela (BIT). ConocoPhillips claimed Venezuela's 2007 actions violated...
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.
A tribunal convened at the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled that former settlement agreements protected Chevron from paying to Ecuador a $19 billion fine for polluting the Amazon basin region. According to the press release, the tribunal, which was convened under the authority of the U.S.-Ecuador Bilateral Investment Treaty and under the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Rules, "found that the Settlement and Release Agreements that the Government of Ecuador entered into with [Texaco Petroleum Company (TexPet)] in 1995 and 1998 released TexPet and its...
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed a District Court finding that Argentina had waived its immunity under the implied waiver and arbitral award exceptions to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). Blue Ridge Investments, L.L.C. had filed to confirm a 2005 arbitration award that an International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) tribunal had entered in the amount of $133.2 million plus interest. The District Court denied Argentina's motion to dismiss on, inter alia, the ground of foreign sovereign immunity. After finding that it had...
The Appeals Chamber of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) has unanimously upheld the conviction of former Liberian President Charles Taylor on eleven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and affirmed the fifty-year sentence imposed by the Trial Chamber. In April 2012, an SCSL Trial Chamber had found Taylor guilty of aiding and abetting crimes that the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council rebel forces had committed against Sierra Leone's civilian population over a five-year period, as well as planning, with RUF Battlefield...
The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that, according to the press release, "Turkish nationals do not have the right to enter the territory of an EU Member State without a visa in order to obtain services." Leyla Ecem Demirkan, a Turkish national whose application for a German visa had been denied, argued that the visa requirement violated the "standstill" clause of 1970 Additional Protocol (Protocol) to the 1963 European Economic Community-Turkey Association Agreement (Agreement). The aim of the Agreement was to, inter alia, "promote the continuous and balanced...
The United States has become the ninety-first country to sign the Arms Trade Treaty. In his remarks at the signing ceremony, Secretary Kerry stated that the treaty strengthens U.S. security and "builds global security without undermining the legitimate international trade in conventional arms which allows each country to provide for its own defense." The Treaty opened for signature on June 3, 2013, and will enter into force following ratification by fifty states. To date, four states have ratified it.
The International Court of Justice has removed from the Court's List the case brought by Ecuador against Colombia on March 31 2008, regarding a dispute concerning "Colombia's aerial spraying of toxic herbicides at locations near, at and across its border with Ecuador." According to the press release, on September 12, 2013, Ecuador notified the Court that it wished to discontinue proceedings in the case, "referring to Article 89 of the Rules of Court and to an Agreement between the Parties dated 9 September 2013 'that fully and finally resolves all of Ecuador's claims against Colombia' in...
The International Labour Organization's (ILO) Domestic Workers Convention came into force on September 5, 2013. The Convention was adopted by the ILO in 2011 and required ratification by two ILO member States to become binding international law; to date, eight ILO member States have ratified the Convention. An estimated 50 million individuals are employed as domestic workers globally, and the Convention recognizes such employees' entitlement to basic labor rights such as weekly rest periods, set hours, and a minimum wage.
A special Chamber convened by order of the Vice-President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has, by two to one, upheld a defense motion for disqualification of Judge Frederik Harhoff from the Prosecutor v. Vojislav Šešelj case. The disqualification is based on a letter that Harhoff wrote dated June 6, 2013, which the special Chamber found demonstrated an unacceptable appearance of bias in favor of conviction. In the letter, which became publicly available through the media and the Internet, Judge Harhoff criticized a number of recent ICTY Appeals...
The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights adopted Resolution 234 concerning the right to nationality. The Commission reaffirmed that the right to nationality is a fundamental human right, and calls upon African States to "refrain from taking discriminatory nationality measures and to repeal laws which deny or deprive persons of their nationality." The Resolution particularly calls upon states to adopt legislation aimed at preventing statelessness, such as: recognizing that all children have a right to the nationality of the State where they were born; prohibiting arbitrary denial...