On 15 July 1999, the ICTY Appeals Chamber, while delivering its judgment in the Tadic case, gave some landmark general findings on international humanitarian law and on international criminal law. In doing so the Appeals Chamber overturned the findings of the Trial Chamber. It adapted and blurred the distinction between non-international and international armed conflicts and in doing so it acted in disagreement with a judgment of the International Court of Justice (I.C.J). It also updated the definition of “protected persons” from the 1949 Geneva Conventions. The concept of criminal responsibility for participation in a group with a common purpose has been lengthened. It was extremely crucial for both the Trial and Appeals Chamber to qualify the conflict which Tadic committed, as international. As for the conflict in which Dusko Tadic was involved, the Appeals Chamber determined in its decision on the matter of jurisdiction that “since it cannot be contended that the Bosnian Serbs constitute a State”, it can only be taken to be international based on the assumption that they are organs or agents of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). The ICTY had to establish the facts as well as the legal standard according to which outside support could make the law of international armed conflicts applicable to the behavior of rebels. The ICTY Appeals Chamber found that State responsibility and individual responsibility are admittedly different issues and that the ICJ did not have to determine whether international or non-international armed conflicts laws have to applied in the Nicaragua case. The ICTY Appeals Chamber found that the rules according to which the State or the individual should have acted have to be applied before vario...
... middle of paper ...
...ts are essentially a de facto Sate authority. As a consequence to this the full scope of the laws of the armed conflict will come into effect between the State and the insurgent party.
The ICTY Appeals Chamber’s decision has certainly developed and refined international humanitarian law and international criminal law. The legal findings of the chamber are sound interpretations of existing laws, which are important issues and need to be properly clarified. The resultant redefinition of the concept of protected persons contra legem and the blurring of the distinction between international and non-international armed conflicts are well meant. The Court’s affirmation that the responsibility of the perpetrators or participants in international crime closes the gaps in criminal responsibility and relates to an important moral imperative.
Humanitarian intervention after the post-cold war has been one of the main discussions in the International Relation theories. The term intervention generally brings a negative connotation as it defines as the coercive interference by the outside parties to a sovereign state that belongs in the community. The humanitarian intervention carried out by international institutions and individual sovereign states has often been related to the usage of military force. Therefore, it is often perceived intervention as a means of ways to stop sovereign states committing human rights abuse to its people. This essay will focus on the key concepts of allowing for humanitarian intervention mainly in moral and justice in international society. This essay will also contribute some arguments against humanitarian intervention from different aspects of theories in International Relation Theory.
By definition, a successful military invasion gives the occupier superiority on the ground and in the air, in the ability to use physical force and violence. Despite that, when a military invader loses control of what the people read and believe, of when and if they work, of how they spend their money — when the occupiers are constantly on the defensive, as they try to maintain their position — their ability to command events is detached from their ability to use violence.
...an, Payam. "Are International Criminal Tribunals a Disincentive to Peace?: Reconciling Judicial Romanticism with Political Realism." Human Rights Quarterly 31 (2009): 624-54.
"War Crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina." A Helsinki Watch Report: A Division of Human Rights Watch (1992): 1-357. Print.
the role of the state and also from the perspective of how the decision to fight impacts the
The Bosnian Serb military are the ones who started and committed the Bosnian genocide and other crimes against humanity. The ICTY charged over 160 individuals for crimes they have committed during the conflict in Yugoslavia.
Hoare, Marko A. "Bosnia-Herzegovina and International Justice: Past Failures and Future Solutions." East European Politics and Societies 24.191 (2010). SAGE Journals Online. Web. 18 Apr. 2011.
...es’ constitutions, the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, according to Wright, “pressed for the acceptance of its rulings in Argentine courts” (166). Not only international efforts, but also domestic efforts, to apply international jurisprudence to local courts were on the rise. For example, in 1995, CELS launched its “program for the application of international law to human right in local courts” based on the amendments to the Argentine constitution (Wright 166). Just as well, human rights lawyers pushed “courts to embrace the international principle that crimes against humanity cannot be amnestied” (Wright, 167). In sum, the International human rights lobby wanted each country to mold its human rights jurisprudence around the rulings of international human rights law, and domestic actors adopted the same goal.
My answer to these two questions is threefold: First, I assert that TSMs and INGOs can and have posed substantial normative challenges to state hegemony, most commonly the notion that the state enjoys a monopoly on representation of its citizens and their interests. Furthermore, TSMs and INGOs that employ the use of violence (particularly terrorism) breach the conventional notion that states...
Rethinking Violence: States and Non-state Actors in Conflict. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2010. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost (accessed April 22, 2014).
The concept of state terrorism is highly debated. The main opposition to state-terrorism declares that states have legitimate monopoly over violence, therefore, state-violence cannot be considered terrorism (Lacquer). Furthermore, conceptualizing particular properties of state-terrorism has furthered complicated the debate. For instance, should state-terrorism constitute external conflict or internal conflict; also is the normative strength of non-state violence as compelling as
This essay considers that the violation of human rights can indeed be address by extraterritorial jurisdiction throw the human rights legal framework, mainly throw treaties as showed jurisprudence.
...th 2001). Roth argues that the concept of international jurisdiction is not a new idea but was exercised by the US government in the 1970 after an aircraft hijacking. Also the war crime courts established after the end of World War II exercised international jurisdiction. In fact the Geneva Convention states that is a person regardless of their nationality should be brought before the court of any state in which that person has committed grave breaches of law and convention. Roth states that the concept of international jurisdiction is not a new one but that only in recent years have states been willing to act on universal jurisdiction and go after criminals of the international community regardless of their stating or power within the international community. Roth believes in the ability and authority of international organizations and institutions (Roth 2001).
Although, within the U.N. Charter of 1945, Article 2(4) prohibits the use of force against ‘the territorial integrity or political independence of any state’ (U.N. Charter, art.2 para.4), it has been suggested by counter-restrictionist international lawyers, that humanitarian intervention does not fall under these criteria, making it legally justifiable under the U.N. Charter (e.g. Damrosch 1991:219 in Baylis and Smith 2001: 481). However, this viewpoint lacks credibility, as it is far from the general international consensus, and unlikely the initial intentions of the draftsmen of the charter. In more recent times, one can examine the emerging doctrine of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’(RtoP), which was adopted unanimously by the UN in 2005, as a far more persuasive example of modern legitimacy of humanitarian intervention. While not consolidated within international law, RtoP, which promotes humanitarian intervention where sovereign states fail in their own responsibility to protect their citizens, does use legal language and functions as a comprehensive international framework to prevent human rights
Many controversies have arisen nowadays as to whether international law is “natural law”, international law now faces considerable criticism as to its effectiveness as law and doubts as to its actual existence, and its power to bind countries .