Violations of International Humanitarian Lawby United Nations Forces and Their Legal Consequences

2005 ◽  
pp. 199-236
Author(s):  
Keiichiro Okimoto
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Legal Consequences

Strange Bedfellows

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-325
Author(s):  
Vassilis Pergantis
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
African Union ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Legal Consequences ◽  
Normative Implications

This essay revisits the relationship between Article 4(h) of the African Union Constitutive Act and the R2P concept with a particular focus on military intervention. After unfolding the narrative of equation between the two norms, we explore their content and highlight their clear differences. We also observe the conceptual glissement concerning Article 4(h) from a right to a duty to intervene, which is not backed up by international practice. Furthermore, we examine the possible impact of the narrative of equation on the use of force architecture and particularly, on the relationship between the African Union and the United Nations. Finally, we analyse the normative implications of the equation for the R2P concept and conclude that the above equation fails to produce tangible legal consequences. What remains are its political motivations that sharply depart from the ‘higher’ ideals permeating the R2P and thus undermine its logic and realization.

Violations of international humanitarian law by United Nations forces and their legal consequences

2003 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 199-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keiichiro Okimoto
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Criminal Responsibility ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Substantial Evidence ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Individual Criminal Responsibility ◽  
Legal Consequences

There has been a significant amount of discussion on the applicability of international humanitarian law (IHL) to United Nations forces (hereafter, UN forces), and the practice of the UN and states on the matter has gradually developed over the years. Now, there is substantial evidence that IHL is applicable to UN forces. However, as alleged misconduct of UN forces has been increasingly reported, including potential violations of IHL, the legal consequences of such violations have come into question. Thus, this article will not only review the recent developments and remaining issues on the applicability of IHL to UN forces but will also discuss the responsibility of the UN and states for violations of IHL by UN troops as well as individual criminal responsibility of UN troops. The article begins by recalling the conditions in which UN forces have been conducting their activities.

Ethiopia-Eritrea Rapproachment

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Joseph Eliot Magnet
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Special Rapporteur ◽  
Joint Declaration ◽  
Port Area ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Legal Consequences

Abstract On July 9, 2018 Ethiopia and Eritrea signed a Joint Declaration of Peace and Friendship. On July 17, 2018 Ethiopia announced plans for landlocked Ethiopia to use Eritrea’s port of Assab. Ethiopia’s proposed use of Assab has implications for the indigenous Afar people who have lived in the port area for two thousand years. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights in Eritrea and the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in Eritrea found that Eritrea engaged in widespread persecution of the Afar people, including evicting them from the port area of Assab without any compensation. Both UN entities found that this persecution amounted to crimes against humanity. This paper considers the legal consequences for Ethiopia and Ethiopian officials if they use the Assab port area taken from the Afar by criminal means: will they be involving themselves in Eritrea’s crimes? The paper then considers alternative arrangements from the perspective of where the interests of Ethiopia, Eritrea and the Afar are anticipated to converge. It concludes with proposals to resolve the present untenable situation.

Part 1 Refugees, 3 Determination of Refugee Status: Analysis and Application

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Goodwin-Gill Guy S ◽  
McAdam Jane ◽  
Dunlop Emma
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Formal Definition ◽  
Refugee Status ◽  
High Commissioner ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Status Analysis ◽  
Legal Consequences

This chapter discusses the determination of refugee status. The legal consequences that flow from the formal definition of refugee status are necessarily predicated upon determination by some or other authority that the individual or group in question satisfies the relevant legal criteria. In principle, a person becomes a refugee at the moment when he or she satisfies the definition, so that determination of status is declaratory, rather than constitutive. However, while the question of whether an individual is a refugee may be a matter of fact, whether or not he or she is a refugee within the 1951 Convention, and benefits from refugee status, is a matter of law. Problems arise where States decline to determine refugee status, or where States and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reach different determinations.

scholarly journals Negotiating the Illegal: On the United Nations and the Illegal Occupation of Palestine, 1967–2020

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ardi Imseis
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
The Status ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Jus Cogens ◽  
Legal Consequences ◽  
International Rule

Abstract This article takes a critical look at the United Nations’ commitment to the international rule of law through an examination of its position on occupied Palestine post 1967. Occupation of enemy territory is meant to be temporary, and the occupying power may not rightfully claim sovereignty over such territory. Since 1967, Israel has systematically and forcibly altered the status of occupied Palestine, with the aim of annexing, de jure or de facto, most or all of it. While the UN has focused on the legality of Israel’s discrete violations of humanitarian and human rights law, it has paid scant attention to the legality of Israel’s occupation regime as a whole. By what rationale can it be said that Israel’s prolonged occupation of Palestine remains legal? This article argues that the occupation has become illegal for its systematic violation of at least three jus cogens norms. Although an increasing number of commentators have subscribed to this view, little attention has been paid to its relevant international legal consequences which dictate a paradigm shift away from negotiations as the condition precedent for ending the occupation, as unanimously affirmed by the international community through the UN.

scholarly journals The Law of International Organisations: “Internal” or “International”? A Critical Analysis of the Relevant Practice of the United Nations Codification Organs

2014 ◽  
pp. 141-163
Author(s):  
Diego Mejía-Lemos
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
International Organisations ◽  
Member States ◽  
Legal Personality ◽  
Special Rule ◽  
International Responsibility ◽  
The Law ◽  
Legal Consequences

The main claims of this paper are that the law of international organisations is internal in nature and that, in this regard, the use of “rules of the organisation” instead of “internal law of the international organisation” by United Nations codification organs does not address the problems that the latter apparently raises and is not based on solid grounds. In particular, the characterisation of the law of international organisations as “internal” is a corollary of international organisations’ legal personality under international law, without prejudice to the international nature of some of the instruments which contain “rules of the organisation”. Indeed, the law of international organisations is “internal law”, for it applies only to member states qua members, autonomously from the application of “international law”, which applies to them qua states parties to a treaty or bound by a custom or principle. Lastly, the characterisation of the law of an international organisation, including its “rules”, as “internal law” has practical legal consequences, for, as “internal law”, no rule of the organisation can be considered as a special rule of international law derogating from the law of treaties or the law of international responsibility.

To Wreck a State

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 208-235
Author(s):  
Amy Baker Benjamin
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
First Century ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
International Level ◽  
Legal Justification ◽  
Legal Consequences

The Responsibility to Protect Doctrine (R2P), a modernized version of the doctrine of Humanitarian Intervention, seemed to gain growing acceptance amongst scholars and statesmen during the first decade of the twenty-first century. When Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi faced an insurgency against his rule in 2011, R2P was deployed as the legal justification for the United Nations’ intervention in Libya via NATO, which resulted in the elimination of the Gaddafi regime. However, in the five years since the intervention, Libya has devolved into a broken and failed state. Its social and economic demise raises the question: Should there be consequences in international law for “wrecking” a state, provided the wrecking is accomplished through the pretextual and fraudulent use of humanitarian concerns? This Article answers this question in the affirmative, and proposes the recognition of a new crime in international law, “aggression-by-pretense,” to be prosecuted at the international level in the International Criminal Court. It explores the key theoretical and practical dimensions of this new crime, moving us past the long and somewhat tired debate over the wisdom of R2P and toward an exploration of the concrete legal consequences that should ensue for the world’s statesmen in the event R2P is abused.

A Tribute to the Late William J. Curran

1996 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 274-275
Author(s):  
O. Lawrence ◽  
J.D. Gostin
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Mental Health Care ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
Legal Medicine ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
International Institute ◽  
University Professor

In the summer of 1979, a group of experts on law, medicine, and ethics assembled in Siracusa, Sicily, under the auspices of the International Commission of Jurists and the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Science, to draft guidelines on the rights of persons with mental illness. Sitting across the table from me was a quiet, proud man of distinctive intelligence, William J. Curran, Frances Glessner Lee Professor of Legal Medicine at Harvard University. Professor Curran was one of the principal drafters of those guidelines. Many years later in 1991, after several subsequent re-drafts by United Nations (U.N.) Rapporteur Erica-Irene Daes, the text was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly as the Principles for the Protection of Persons with Mental Illness and for the Improvement of Mental Health Care. This was the kind of remarkable achievement in the field of law and medicine that Professor Curran repeated throughout his distinguished career.

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