11 April 2011
Cross-posted on Spreading the Jam
Ivory Coast is quickly becoming a political nightmare. Indeed, with the evidence of crimes being committed by Gbagbo forces, as well as by Ouattara’s supporters, the international community is faced with a dilemna: if it turns out that Ouattara is indeed condoning such actions, how can he be supported by the world community, if it is to be consistent with calls for removal of other leaders who have alledgedly been involved in such situations, such as Khadafi in Libya? The result of such consistency would however be a political vaccum that might create more chaos in the country.
Beyond this political dimension, the situation raises interesting issues of Shared Responsibility. In her previous post, Bérénice considered the Shared Responsibility of France and the UN in Ivory Coast. One issue that needs to be considered in addition to that is the question of the responsibility for the crimes being committed on the ground, by both sides, which is even more complex.
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10 April 2011
In follow-up to Security Council Resolution 1975, and in response to recent attacks against civilians and the United Nations mission, the international forces in Ivory Coast recently launched operations against the Gbagbo camp. The “unusually robust” reaction seems to have been triggered by the attacks by the armed forces loyal to Gbagbo directed against the United Nations Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI) Headquarters. The impartiality of a UN operation directly targeting Gbagbo has been quickly questioned, but it can easily be shown that “the fact that Gbagbo’s troops attacked the UN justifies the punishing response”. These events prompt two questions of international law. (more…)
4 April 2011
The European Court of Human Rights issued a landmark ruling in the case of M.S.S. v. Belgium and Greece on 21 January 2011. The case concerned the expulsion of an asylum seeker to Greece by the Belgian authorities in application of European asylum law. Not only is this judgment extraordinarily rich, it also exposes serious flaws in the current European asylum regime.
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1 April 2011
On the 21 March 2011, after six years of research, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations issued its final report which includes its guiding principles on Business and Human Rights. The general idea of the guidelines is to guarantee the implementation of the UN “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework. In this sense, the guidelines are a combination of references to “hard rules” and recommendations to improve prevention of violations of human rights.
A few brief points of interest, both in general and in relation to Shared Responsibility. (more…)