Digest

Digest

UN Rules Myanmar's Continued Detention of Suu Kyi Illegal

A United Nations Human Rights Council working group on arbitrary detentions has issued a legal opinion criticizing Myanmar’s continued detention of local pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.  The ruling military junta, which has been in power since 1962, has confined Suu Kyi to her compound in Yangon for 13 of the past 19 years after refusing to recognize the victory of her party, the National League for Democracy, in the 1990 general elections.

The U.N. report found Suu Kyi’s detention to be in violation of both international law and the domestic laws of Myanmar. Although the U.N. group previously found her detention to be illegal under international law, the recent report marks the first time that the group has accused the junta of violating its own law. The report asserts that the 1975 State Protection Law, under which Suu Kyi has been held, only allows renewable arrest orders for a maximum of five years. Suu Kyi should therefore be released, the report contends, since this five year term ended in May 2008. The report further criticizes the junta’s designation of Suu Kyi as a threat to the  “security of the State or public peace and tranquility,” the provision of the State Protection Law that has been used to justify her continued detention.

The junta has not issued a response to the report and Suu Kyi’s lawyer Jared Gesner is wary of the report’s potential to change Suu Kyi’s situation. “I am under no illusion that the junta will be listening to the United Nations. There is no quick and easy answer to the problem of Burma, so we have to take it one step forward at a time.” Others are more hopeful. The National League for Democracy has requested a hearing from Myanmar’s Prime Minister, General Thein Sein, and activist groups, under a Free Burma’s Political Prisoners Now Campaign, are circulating a petition calling for the release of Suu Kyi, which is to be sent to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

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Digest

Spanish Court Considers Torture Inquiry for Bush Officials

The National Court in Madrid took steps toward a criminal investigation of six high-level former Bush administration officials pursuant to a complaint filed by a Spanish human rights group. The 98-page complaint alleged that the officials–including the former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, the former Justice Department lawyer John C. Yoo, and the former under secretary of defense for policy Douglas J. Feith–violated international law by producing the legal framework within which the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay was justified. The National Court assigned the case to Judge Baltasar Garzon, who is internationally reputed as a champion of human rights. Judge Garzon’s acceptance and subsequent referral to a prosecutor likely mean that investigation will follow. The investigation, in turn, could potentially lead to the issuing of arrest warrants, which would have symbolic, if not practical, meaning. The U.S. would be expected to ignore extradition requests of its former officials.

The complaint bases its argument on the Geneva Conventions and the 1984 Convention Against Torture to which both Spain and the U.S. are signatories, along with 143 other countries. Spain claims jurisdiction because five of its citizens or residents claim they were tortured while imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, and the torture convention authorizes member countries to investigate torture cases of their citizens.

For further information, please click here.

Digest

Brazilian Supreme Court Backs Amazonian Reservation

Brazil’s Supreme Court has found in favor of Amazonian Indians in a land dispute with farmers in the remote state of Roraima. The dispute concerned the 4.2 million acre Raposa Serra do Sol reservation and has been closely followed due to its potential importance to other cases involving Indian land rights and the future of the Amazon.

The Supreme Court president, Gilmar Mendes, called the decision precedent-setting in the area of Indian land rights for its in-depth analysis and its potential for application to other demarcation cases. However, Roraima leaders have stated that allowing the Indians to keep the land endangers national sovereignty and threatens economic growth in the state.

Brazil’s 1988 constitution called for the demarcation of Indian lands within five years but the Raposa Serra do Sol reservation was not created until 2005. Last year, violence broke out when authorities tried to evict the farmers. Nonetheless, there appeared to be calm after the ruling.

For further information, please click here.

Digest

Scholar: Wartime Environmental Protection Must Go Beyond Law

Although it can play an important role, the vital task of protecting the environment during warfare cannot rely solely or primarily on international legal tools to succeed.  So argues Dan Bodansky, a leading international law scholar, who sees the problem of wartime environmental degradation as one solved not by more legal rules or stricter enforcement but rather by more effective conflict prevention and resolution.

The problem of the environmental ramifications of armed conflict has garnered more and more attention in recent years.  Events like the deliberate burning of Kuwaiti oil wells during the 1991 Gulf War and the destruction of a chemical facility during the 1998 NATO bombing campaign in Kosovo have raised questions about the extent to which international legal rules can, or should, protect the environment from combat or and punish those who (intentionally or not) damage it during wartime.

Bodansky argues that international lawyers should resist the temptation to create a new body of law designed to implement environmental safeguards during combat.  Environmental disasters caused by belligerents, he argues, do not happen very often, and when they do, they have relatively little impact compared to the publicity they receive.  Moreover, it is not immediately clear what legal regime could regulate conduct related to such issues.  Additionally, wartime environmental destruction, Bodansky writes, is merely a symptom of larger problems relating to armed conflict: decay of rule of law, refugeeism, and the primacy of survival needs.  The existing legal framework surrounding warfare, when it functions correctly, addresses these concerns sufficiently to make a new legal regime a hindrance.

For further information, please click here.

Digest

African Ministers of Trade Seek Common Ground

On Friday, March 20, the African Ministers of Trade concluded a two-day meeting. The Ministers discussed Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) negotiations, Aid for Trade, and other trade initiatives and issues at the headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Meeting during their Fifth Ordinary Session, the Ministers sought to create common ground between constituent states. They pressed for the creation of time-lines and for the unification of positions between countries in EPA negotiations. During the closing ceremony, Commissioner Elizabeth Tankeu reemphasized the need for Africans to speak with a strong and united voice within the international  community.

The Ministers also discussed the impact of the financial crisis on African countries. Ato Girma Briu, Minister of Trade and Industry for the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, argued that the financial crisis was not created by African countries. Instead, the Ethiopian minister blamed “the greed of certain financial operators in Western countries and the failure of their regulators to excise adequate control and supervision over the operators.” According to Briu, global demand for goods and services produced in Africa has witnessed “a sharp decline,” as a result of the crisis. This, coupled with decreases in development aid and financial investment will have “adverse implications for…the reduction of poverty and the attainment of political and social stability on our continent.”

For more information, read the press release, or read statements by delegates here and here.

Digest

UN Releases Piracy Report

The United Nations released a new report last week on pirate activity in Somalia. The report identifies two main groups of pirates, but is especially concerned that the piracy network based in the northern Puntland region of the country, known as the Eyle Group, is collaborating with regional government officials.  Despite these accusations, many political leaders in Puntland have recommitted to fighting the piracy problem. 

In 2008 there were a total of 111 attacks on ships, a 200% increase over 2007, and there have been seven incidents in January and February of this year. Somalia’s government collapsed in 1991 and foreign vessels flooded the country’s territorial waters, drawn by the prospect of unlimited and unregulated fishing.  Somali leaders say that piracy is an offshoot of the wider problem of illegal fishing, and the UN report stresses that restoring order within Somalia is critical to solving the piracy problem.

The UN is especially concerned about transporting food aid because approximately 95% of food aid to Somalia arrives by sea and approximately 2.4 million people rely on that aid for survival.  NATO, the EU, Russia, and China are all contributing to a policing fleet in Somalia, and Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has urged UN member states in the region to contribute any naval resources they can spare to combating piracy.

For more information, please click here and here.

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