scholarly journals The Bosnian Genocide and the Srebrenica massacre

2021 ◽  
pp. 40-52
Author(s):  
Marko A. Hoare
Keyword(s):  
Military Forces ◽  
Bosnian War ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Icj

This paper aims to place the Srebrenica massacre in its broader context, both in terms of its place in the Bosnian war, and theoretically. The Srebrenica massacre is the only war crime of the Bosnian war that has, in legal terms, been solidly confirmed to have constituted genocide. In the ICTY, 2001 convicted Radislav Krstic of complicity in genocide for his role in the Srebrenica massacre, thereby establishing the fact of the Srebrenica genocide. The ICJ, in its ruling of 2007 in Bosnia vs Serbia, explicitly stated that the Srebrenica massacre was an act of genocide. However, the ICJ in the same ruling stated that other massacres of the Bosnian war, in particular those of 1992 when Bosnian Serb military forces were formally under Belgrade’s command, were not genocide. The ICTY has so far failed to convict any suspect of genocide except in relation to the Srebrenica massacre. Consequently, the Srebrenica massacre has assumed the status of a crime apart in the Bosnian war.  

GENESIS AND COURSE OF TRANSNISTRIAN CONFLICT AND ATTEMPTS OF ITS RESOLUTION

2012 ◽  
Vol 165 (3) ◽  
pp. 121-138
Author(s):  
Michał LUBICZ-MISZEWSKI
Keyword(s):  
Russian Federation ◽  
International Community ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Military Forces ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Russian Military ◽  
The Military

The Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic is a quasi-country not recognized by the international community. It constitutes de-jure a part of the Moldavian Republic. In 1992, as a result of a five month, victorious war with Moldavia, separatist Transnistria defended itself and in the following years strengthened its independence. After the end of the military part of the conflict, both countries maintained unfriendly relationships, and any political attempts to settle that conflict have so far been ineffective. It is mainly due to the Russian Federation supporting the separatist republic (the evidence of which is the presence of Russian military forces in Transnistria), the weakness of the Moldavian country and the interest of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic to maintain the status quo.

Introductory Note

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John G. Merrills
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Hearings ◽  
Introductory Note ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Icj

In 2016 the ICJ gave five judgments and made two significant orders. All five judgments concerned various issues of jurisdiction, while the orders concerned respectively the appointment of experts and provisional measures of protection. Three new cases were begun in 2016. These related to the status and use of a river, the alleged immunity of a minister and the legal status of an embassy building, and the alleged violation of a treaty between Iran and the United States. The Court was also able to hold public hearings on the preliminary objections in one case with a view to giving judgment in 2017. The Court's record in 2016 underlines the importance of jurisdictional issues in its work and shows that states continue to value its assistance in resolving their disputes peacefully.

Continuation of Membership in the United Nations Revisited: Lessons from Fifteen Years of Inconsistency in the Jurisprudence of the ICJ

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 315-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando Lusa Bordin
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Genocide Convention ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Icj ◽  
The United Nations

AbstractThe judgment on preliminary objections in Croatia v. Serbia provided closure to fifteen years of controversy as to whether Serbia had access to the ICJ from 1992 to 2000, a period in which Serbia was involved in three sets of cases before the Court. At the heart of the controversy lay the question of the status of Serbia vis-à-vis the United Nations following the disaggregation of the former Yugoslavia. Taking as a starting point the series of cases relating to the application of the Genocide Convention and the legality of use of force by NATO states, this article revisits the issue of continuation of membership in the United Nations. It begins by discussing the problems posed by the “horizontal inconsistency” among the Court’s jurisdictional findings, which implied that Serbia had and did not have access to the Court in the relevant period. It then offers a critique of the ICJ’s decision in Legality of Use of Force, and proposes an approach to continuation of membership in the UN that would have allowed the Court not only to avoid inconsistency, but also to clarify an important question of UN law. The argument to be advanced is that, according to the soundest interpretation of the UN Charter, a de facto exercise of membership may produce valid legal effects.

A Court of “UN Law”

2005 ◽  
Vol 38 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 134-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michla Pomerance
Keyword(s):  
World Order ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Legal Advice ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
The Status ◽  
New States ◽  
The Icj ◽  
Legal Contexts ◽  
Advisory Opinions

Resort to the Court presupposes a disposition to depoliticize the issues; when this precondition is not attained on both sides of the fence, the Court's Advisory Opinions are bound to be ineffective. The Opinions will become part and parcel of the political contest and share in its outcome.[Leo Gross]It would make a mockery of the independence of the Court if it could never “reach conclusions at variance with the conclusions stated by the General Assembly”. … It would also render the Court largely useless as an organ for giving legal advice to the Assembly.[D.H.N. Johnson]There are some worrying signs that, far from developing traditional legal techniques in a way acceptable to old and new States, the Court may depart radically from legal patterns accepted in the West in favour of outright politicization of the Court.[Lyndel V. Prott]In the present case, worrisome trends that have been infecting the ICJ-General Assembly nexus peaked more overtly and ominously than ever before, recalling earlier fears that the Court's advisory pronouncements would be either ineffective political utterances or ex parte quasi-compulsory judgments rendered without the consent of a state principally concerned. The manner in which the JCJ's advisory function was exercised raises grave doubts regarding the “judicial” nature of that function, and more generally, the future role of the Court in clarifying the law and strengthening world order in the age of the global terrorist scourge.Employing inapt analogies and formalistic, formulaic, and occasionally inconsistent reasoning, the Court evinced an unjudicial eagerness to furnish the General Assembly with the imprimatur it sought for its pre-set conclusions. The Court adopted a consistently unevenhanded posture that manifested itself, inter alia, in its embracing the assumptions and nomenclature of the Assembly resolution; ignoring the context of ongoing terrorism; minimizing the status of Israel as an objecting quasi-litigant while magnifying the role and rights of the Assembly; upholding questionable Assembly practices; presenting a sanitized and skewed version of the crucial factual and legal contexts; embracing a simplistic and Manichean view of the rights and obligations of the protagonists in conflicts bearing on self-determination; and unjustifiably restricting the Charter-affirmed inherent right of self-defense. In all this, it faithfully mirrored the perspective of the Assembly and proved itself, more patently than ever before, to be a Court of “UN Law” rather than of consensual international law. And to the extent that its “UN Law” perspective continues to spill over from the advisory to the contentious sphere, the process of “undeifying” the Court may gather strength.

Bosnia-Hercegovina and International Justice

2010 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marko Attila Hoare
Keyword(s):  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
International Court Of Justice ◽  
International Courts ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
European Court ◽  
International Court ◽  
Bosnian War ◽  
The Icj

Three different international courts have determined that genocide took place in Bosnia-Hercegovina in 1992-1995: the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Yet paradoxically, there has been virtually no punishment of this genocide, while the punishment of lesser war crimes of the Bosnian war has been very limited. The ICTY has convicted only one individual, a lowly deputy corps commander, of a genocide-related offence. The ICJ acquitted Serbia, the state that planned and launched the assault upon Bosnia-Hercegovina in 1992, of genocide and related offences, finding it guilty only of failure to prevent and punish genocide. Although Serb forces were responsible for the overwhelming majority of war crimes, the ICTY prosecution has disproportionately targeted non-Serbs in its indictments and, among Serbs, has disproportionately targeted Bosnian Serbs, with no official of Serbia or Yugoslavia yet convicted of war crimes in Bosnia. This article argues that the meagre results of the international judicial processes vis-à-vis the crimes of the Bosnian war must be sought in the structural failings, poor decision making, and political influences that affected the international courts. It argues that the international courts have failed either to deliver justice to the victims of the war crimes or to promote reconciliation among the peoples of the former Yugoslavia and suggests measures that could be taken to rectify the situation.

scholarly journals Palestine v. US before the International Court of Justice?

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-75
Author(s):  
Władysław Czapliński
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Reasonable Doubt ◽  
International Treaties ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
International Court ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Icj ◽  
National Bank ◽  
The Uk

In December 2017, the administration of President D. Trump decided to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. On 28.09.2018, Palestine initiated proceedings against the US in connection with the said transfer. According to the ICJ Statute, only the parties of concern can take part in the case before the Court. However, it does open the way for non-member countries that had presented a declaration of submission to the Court’s jurisdiction, to observe. If there are any doubts as to the validity or effects of the declarations, they are decided by the ICJ. In the present case, doubts are connected, in particular, with the status of Palestine as a State, with the status of Jerusalem and with the participation in the proceedings of all interested parties. It is unclear whether Palestine meets the criteria of statehood under international law,and the nation is far from being universally recognized. Nor may the GA Resolution 67/19 be viewed as sufficient collective recognition. Furthermore, we do have reasonable doubt as to whether this is sufficient collective recognition to be essentially constitutive of Palestine’s statehood. This situation is not changed by the acceptance by Palestine of the jurisdiction of the ICC nor accession to UNESCO and to a number of international treaties. On the other hand, the jurisdiction of Israel with respect to East Jerusalem is also disputed. Certain international bodies, including the UNSC, have expressed doubts equally regarding the incorporation of Jerusalem into Israel or that Palestine has claim to the city. The mere submission of a claim by Palestine does not prejudge the existence of a legal title to Jerusalem. The legitimation of Palestine to bring to international court a claim is thus disputable under the law on state responsibility. It is probable that the ICJ would avoid rendering a decision on merits of the dispute, doing so by referring to the principle of Monetary Gold that was formulated by the ICJ in a judgment on 15.06.1954 in a dispute between Italy, on the one hand, and Great Britain, France and the US, on the other. The subject of the dispute was the fate of gold owned by the National Bank of Albania, plundered by Germany in Rome in 1943.In accordance with an arrangement concluded at the Paris Conference on German reparations (14.01.1946), all gold found in Germany that was known to have been plundered was to be returned in proportional shares to the States concerned. In the case of Albania, however, difficulties appeared in connection with two issues: claims by some States (in particular Italy) resulting from nationalisation of the National Bank of Albania, and compensation in favour of the UK due to the ICJ judgement in the Corfu Channel. It was disputable whether the gold belonging formerly to Albania could be redistributed among the unsatisfied claimants without the consent of the Albanian State. The Tribunal avoided the problem and decided that it lacked jurisdiction. It refused to render judgment in a situation in which Albania did not participate in the trial; on the  other hand, the ICJ has indicated on what terms Albania could join the proceedings. Albania did not meet the conditions, and the Court decided that it was unable to continue the proceeding.

THE STATUS OF PEACE OPERATION PERSONNEL UNDER INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW

2008 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 109-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ola Engdahl
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Peace Operations ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Military Forces ◽  
The Status

AbstractCurrent peace operations often include an element of enforcement. Such operations are based upon Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter and are regularly endowed with a right to use ‘all necessary measures’ to fulfil the tasks set down in the particular mandate from the UN Security Council. Such operations, moreover, are often deployed in unstable conditions that border on armed conflict, or in areas of existing conflict. At times, the military forces involved in these operations are also involved in the armed conflict itself.The utilization of military force naturally raises the question of the legal status of personnel in peace operations under international humanitarian law (IHL). They represent the international community and as such are protected personnel. But how should they be treated from the perspective of IHL? Should they, despite their obvious military characteristics, be regarded as civilians? At what point, if any, could they be regarded as combatants? On the issue of change of status under IHL, does the same threshold apply for the operation's military forces as for other military personnel? Does the involvement of peace forces in an armed conflict, made up of contributions from a number of States, automatically cause that conflict to assume an international nature? Are theConvention on the Safety of United Nations and Associated Personneland IHL, applicable in non-international armed conflicts, mutually exclusive? These dilemmas are well illustrated by the difficulties facing the International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.

New Insights into Roman Policy in Judea on the Eve of the Bar Kokhba Revolt

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Ben Zeev
Keyword(s):  
Late Summer ◽  
Military Forces ◽  
The Status

Abstract The first years of Hadrian’s reign witness meaningful changes in the Roman policy in Judea, identifiable with the strengthening of military forces, the change of the status of the province to that of provincia consularis, the building of new military roads, emphasis on the pagan character of the settlement displayed both in coinage and in new temples devoted to the emperor cult, and the beginning of the preparation works for the building of a Roman colony in Jerusalem. The background of this policy is examined, and its relation with the Diaspora uprisings, which were finally quelled in the late summer of 117.

scholarly journals Revisiting the ‘Recognition’ of the Palestinians’ Right to Self-Determination: Peoples as Territories

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 236-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shadi Sakran
Keyword(s):  
Self Determination ◽  
Advisory Opinion ◽  
Independent State ◽  
The People ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Icj ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
State Of Israel ◽  
General Fact

‘[B]ehind every Palestinian there is a great general fact: that he once – and not so long ago– lived in a land of his own called Palestine, which is now no longer his homeland.’ The question of whether the Palestinian people, as a people, are entitled to exercise the right to external self-determination has been highly controversial over the years. Divided scholarly research, particularly regarding the attitude of the State of Israel which, at time of writing, has not yet explicitly recognized the Palestinian peoples’ right to emerge as an independent State, serves as evidence to this claim. In 2004, the ICJ in the Wall Advisory Opinion observed that the Palestinians’ right to self-determination is no longer in issue. This observation serves as the benchmark for this paper to revisit the identification of a people under international law. This paper critically examines whether constitutive and declaratory theories of recognition in statehood can assist in understanding the concept of a people in the law of self-determination. While concluding that neither theory of recognition is satisfactory, this paper argues that application of the right to self-determonation, within and beyond the colonial context, is inevitably linked to the territory peoples inhabit. Although the relationship between peoples and territories should come as no surprise, the key element in determining a people is not based on the people but on the status of the territory they inhabit.

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