The ICJ Armed Activity Case – Reflections on States' Obligation to Investigate and Prosecute Individuals for Serious Human Rights Violations and Grave Breaches of the Geneva Conventions

2009 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 581-598 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thordis Ingadottir
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Criminal Responsibility ◽  
National Level ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
International Court Of Justice ◽  
Geneva Conventions ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
International Court ◽  
Human Rights Treaties ◽  
Individual Criminal Responsibility

AbstractIn the Armed Activity Case, the International Court of Justice, found Uganda in breach of various international obligations. In establishing the state responsibility of Uganda, the Court concluded that in the Democratic Republic of Congo the country's troops committed, among other offences, grave breaches of international humanitarian law, as well as serious human rights violations, including torture. According to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and human rights treaties, these acts should also entail individual criminal responsibility. Furthermore, states have undertaken an obligation to investigate and prosecute individuals for these heinous acts. However,enforcement of that obligation has always been problematic; states have been very reluctant to prosecute their own forces. And without an effective enforcement mechanism at the international level, states have largely gottenaway with this bad practice. In light of the importance of having a state's responsibility support the enforcement of individual criminal responsibility at the national level, the article briefly reflects on the case's impact on individual criminal responsibility. It addresses the issue in two ways. Firstly, it examines a state's obligation to prosecute individuals as a secondary obligation, i.e., inherent in a state's obligation to make reparations for an international wrongful act. Secondly, it explores a state's obligation to prosecute individuals as a primary obligation, undertaken in the Geneva Conventions and human rights treaties. The article concludes thatdespite the clear obligation of a state to enforce individual criminal responsibility for the acts at hand in the Armed Activity Case, and the rear occurrence of having a case of this nature reaching the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, where the opportunity to address it and enforce it was largely missed. The nature and submissions in other recent cases at the International Court of Justice indicate that in the near future the Court will have a larger role in enforcing states' obligation to investigate and prosecute serious crimes at the national level.

II. AVENA AND OTHER MEXICAN NATIONALS {MEXICO v UNITED STATES OF AMERICA), PROVISIONAL MEASURES, ORDER OF 5 FEBRUARY 2003

2004 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 738-746 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandy Ghandhi
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
International Court Of Justice ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
International Court ◽  
Human Rights Treaties ◽  
Legal Contexts ◽  
Dispute Settlement Procedure ◽  
Rights Issues

The International Court of Justice is not a human rights court but it does hear human rights cases.1This is hardly remarkable. As Professor Ian Brownlie has pointed out ‘[h]uman rights problems occur in specific legal contexts. The issues may arise… within the framework of a standard-setting convention, or within general international law.’2Because human rights treaties normally have their own dispute settlement procedure, the situations in which the International Court of Justice is more likely to have to grapple with human rights issues lie within the realms of general international law or in non-human rights specific treaty provisions, which may, nevertheless, raise such issues. In addition, some human rights treaties, such as the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 1948, contain provisions specifically referring disputes to the International Court of Justice.3Thus, it should come as no surprise that the Court has been involved in a number of cases involving human rights questions.

The Martens Clause, Principles of Humanity, and Dictates of Public Conscience

2000 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theodor Mero
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
International Court Of Justice ◽  
Geneva Conventions ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
International Court ◽  
Conventional Weapons ◽  
The Hague

Together with the principle prohibiting weapons “of a nature to cause superfluous injury” or “calculated to cause unnecessary suffering,” the Martens clause, in the Preamble to the Hague Conventions on the Laws and Customs of War on Land, is an enduring legacy of those instruments. In the years since its formulation, the Martens clause has been relied upon in die Nurembergjurisprudence, addressed by the International Court of Justice and human rights bodies, and reiterated in many humanitarian law treaties that regulate the means and methods of warfare. It was restated in die 1949 Geneva Conventions for the Protection of Victims of War, the 1977 Additional Protocols to those Conventions, and the Preamble to the Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons, albeit in slightly different versions. The Martens clause was paraphrased in Resolution XXIII of the Tehran Conference on Human Rights of 1968, and is cited or otherwise referred to in several national military manuals, including those of the United States, die United Kingdom, and Germany. Moreover, attempts have recently been made, including by parties before die International Court of Jusdce, to invoke the clause, in the absence of specific norms of customary and conventional law, to oudaw the use of nuclear weapons.

Giving Meaning and Effect to Human Rights

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald L Neuman
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Multiple Roles ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
International Court Of Justice ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
International Court ◽  
Human Rights Treaties ◽  
Civil And Political Rights

This chapter discusses the multiple roles played by the members of the Human Rights Committee in giving effect to the rights guaranteed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It argues that the most important contribution the members make to the human rights project consists in their credible, professional elaboration of those rights, particularly by means of the Committee’s Views and General Comments, as emphasized by the International Court of Justice in the Diallo case. While the Committee members should be open to learning from the insights of other treaty bodies, they should resist urgings toward a simplistic harmonization. The texts and interpretations of other ‘core’ human rights treaties must be used with care in the members’ independent exercise of their own interpretive function.

Balkanizing Jurisdiction: Reflections on Article IX of the Genocide Convention in Croatia v. Serbia

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 893-897 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAYAM AKHAVAN
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Genocide Convention ◽  
Advisory Opinion ◽  
International Court Of Justice ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
International Court ◽  
Human Rights Treaties ◽  
International Instruments ◽  
Fundamental Values

AbstractWhen it first encountered the Genocide Convention in its 1951 Advisory Opinion, the International Court of Justice recognized that the treaty reflected the ‘most elementary principles of morality’. Its provisions were to be read broadly, in light of the Convention's transcendent object and purpose. This expansive approach stands in contrast with the narrow interpretation of Article IX in the recent Judgment in Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Croatia v. Serbia) case. This article is a commentary on the retroactive obligation to punish genocide under the Convention with regard to acts occurring prior to its entry into force for that state. It concludes that the Court's narrow interpretation of its jurisdiction ratione temporis raises wider questions for its contemporary jurisprudence, namely, whether it will interpret human rights treaties enshrining fundamental values any differently than other international instruments.

Human Rights Treaty Bodies and the Jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Zimmermann
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Court Of Justice ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
International Court ◽  
Human Rights Treaties ◽  
The Icj

Abstract In recent years, the ICJ has had to deal more and more often with alleged violations of major human rights treaties and the respective compromissory clauses contained in such treaties. Yet, the interrelationship between the Court’s treaty-based jurisdiction under such clauses and State complaint mechanisms, as provided for in human rights treaties, has not yet been fully considered and analysed. Moreover, there might also be interlinkages between the ICJ’s contentious jurisdiction under Article 36 (2) of the ICJ Statute and such State complaint procedures.

Ahmadou Sadio Diallo

2013 ◽  
Vol 107 (1) ◽  
pp. 178-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
David P. Stewart ◽  
Mads Andenas
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
International Court Of Justice ◽  
Republic Of Guinea ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
International Court ◽  
Republic Of The Congo ◽  
The Republic ◽  
First Time

For the first time since the Corfu Channel case of 1949, the International Court of Justice (Court) has awarded damages. The Court did so on June 19, 2012, in its third judgment in the Diallo case, brought by the Republic of Guinea for human rights violations committed against a Guinean citizen by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The judgment was also the Court’s first on damages in a human rights case.

scholarly journals Serious Human Rights Violations – Eclipse or Mere Twilight of State Immunity?

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-78
Author(s):  
Ondřej Svaček
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Mutual Relationship ◽  
Extensive Discussion ◽  
International Court Of Justice ◽  
State Immunity ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
International Court ◽  
The Law

Abstract Presented article contributes to the extensive discussion over the mutual relationship between serious human rights violations (violation of ius cogens) and the law of state immunity. Th e structure of article derives from the argumentation presented by Germany and Italy in current dispute before the International Court of Justice. Author focuses his attention on delimitation of existing international legal framework and particularly on assessment of friction areas in German and Italian submissions. Three separate issues are analyzed: temporal, territorial and material.

Human Rights in the International Court of Justice

2007 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 745-751 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROSALYN HIGGINS
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
International Court Of Justice ◽  
The Past ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
International Court ◽  
Human Rights Treaties ◽  
The Icj ◽  
Occupied Territories ◽  
Rights Issues

In this speech delivered at the conference honouring Professor Dugard, President Higgins discusses various human rights issues that have come before the International Court of Justice, including self-determination, reservations to human rights treaties, the application of human rights instruments to occupied territories, and allegations of genocide by one state against another. President Higgins notes that in the past few decades the ICJ has been joined by regional human rights courts, commissions and treaty monitoring bodies. Similar human rights claims are surfacing in these diverse fora, but the acknowledged expertise of these specialist bodies and the desire to avoid fragmentation provide an impetus for all concerned to seek common solutions on evolving points of law.

scholarly journals Remarks by Maria Flores

2018 ◽  
Vol 112 ◽  
pp. 79-82
Author(s):  
Maria Flores
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
International Court Of Justice ◽  
Public International Law ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
International Court ◽  
Small Department ◽  
The University

I first became involved with international law while I was at university. After graduating, I decided to teach public international law. As an undergraduate, I particularly enjoyed this branch of study. I was attracted to it because it helped me to understand the problems, challenges, and breakthroughs in the field of international relations on a global scale. Therefore, after facing a competitive entry process, I joined the international law department of the Universidad de la República. It was a small department, but the university had produced some well-known scholars like Eduardo Jiménez de Aréchaga, who became a judge at the International Court of Justice, and Hector Gross Espiell, who served as a judge at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

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