Latest news
14 October 2011
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, made a public statement urging the international community to take action to protect the Syrian population. She refers to the excessive use of force and killings by the Syrian government as constituting crimes against humanity and stresses that the ‘onus to take protective action’ now rests upon the international community. A finding of crimes against humanity is one of the four grounds for operationalization of the Responsibility to Protect, accepted by the international community in the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document (see paras. 138-39).
Source: http://www.ohchr.org
5 October 2011
Australia and Norway put forth a new proposal to secure a global agreement on climate change by 2015 amid deep divisions between rich and poor countries over the ways to combat global warming.
Source: www.trust.org/alertnet
4 October 2011
The International Law Commission published the Report on its sixty-third session (2011), which includes the Commentaries to the DARIO on second reading. The whole report is available here in pdf.
In comparison to the first reading, the DARIO and their Commentaries have improved in some aspects. However, in general, the text of the DARIO and the Commentaries have not undergone fundamental changes.
Source: www.un.org/law/ilc
27 September 2011
In an address to the Security Council the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, Uri Rosenthal, urged its members to come to an agreement on sanctions against the regime in Syria. He stressed that the Council’s indecision is costing human lives as the crackdown on protestors continues.
Source: http://www.un.org
26 September 2011
A new book on ‘Complicity and the Law of State Responsibility’, written by Helmut Philipp Aust, has recently been published by Cambridge University Press.
In an honest, critical and thoroughly researched manner Aust covers several SHARES issues through the lens of a principle of complicity. His definition of complicity is thereby inspired by Article 16 of the ILC Articles on State responsibility (ILC ASR). This Article (on ‘aid and assistance’) and Article 41 ASR (on non-assistance, non-recognition and cooperation in the face of serious violations of peremptory norms of international law) consequently form the main focus of the book. The study in detail addresses the content of these Articles and their relation to an international legal system that in Aust’s view increasingly involves an international rule of law and community interests. In doing so, it touches upon several adjacent SHARES issues such as the ‘Monetary Gold principle’ and bilateralism in international law. More information about the book can be found here.
Source: http://www.cambridge.org