On Tuesday 3 November at 15 CET, Pål Wrange will participate in an online seminar on the International Law Perspective on the Israel-Palestine Conflict at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs https://www.ui.se/english/events/upcoming/israel-and-palestine/.

SCILJ held the seminar “Thinking about Armed Groups Legislating for Rights for their Detainees” with Professor Andrew Clapham on 6 October 2020. Read about the event here.

You can watch a recording of the event below.

Trumpadministrationens åtgärder mot ICC utgör ett direkt angrepp på domstolen och syftar till att undergräva dess roll i den internationella rättsordningen, skriver professor Pål Wrange på SvD Debatt tillsammans med den tidigare professorn i internationell rätt vid SU Ove Bring, FN:s tidigare rättschef Hans Corell, som bl a är hedersdoktor vid SU och ordförande i SCILJ, samt den tidigare rättschefen vid UD Carl-Henrik Ehrenkrona.

Experter: Sverige kan vara skyldigt att hjälpa männen på ambassaden

SCILJ and ESIL held the joint event “Covid-19 and international law: science and disinformation, exceptions and emergencies” on 10 september 2020. Read about the event here.

You can watch a recording of the event below.

The Nordic Journal of International Law has published the article “Who Is Responsible for the Protection of the Ocean Floor?” by professor Rüdiger Wolfrum, Heidelberg University. It was also the fourth Hilding Eek Memorial Lecture, Stockholm, 2 October 2019.

Today, international law is everywhere. It seeks to regulate international issues like armed conflict, diplomatic relations and international trade, to be sure, but also reaches deep into the daily governance of states, municipalities, corporations and individuals.

This one-year Master’s Programme seeks to give students a profound knowledge of both general public international law and selected branches of the field, thereby providing them with a deep understanding of how international law actually works. The programme emphasizes in-depth study and is based on gradually increasing methodological training as students tackle more and more advanced international law problems.

The first, introductory course “Advanced Course in public international law” (15 ECTS credits) takes students step-by-step through the fundamental elements of the discipline, giving them a language and set of techniques with which to analyse and assess global affairs through the lens of international law. Importantly, students will already at this early stage be encouraged to think more critically about the makings and the effects of the very discipline itself. After introduction, students will choose between two tracks, International Law and the Individual and International Law and Global Justice.

In International Law and the Individual, students study two 15 ECTS credit courses “Human Rights in a Global Perspective” and “International Criminal Law”. “Human Rights in a Global Perspective” (HRGP) gives students an understanding of the fundamentals and theoretical underpinnings of human rights protection in the international legal framework, offering a critical (albeit a sympathetic) exploration of the meaning of rights and of their potential as the basis for an ethical and legal order by illustrating the complex interplay between law and extra-legal factors. The third course, “International Criminal Law” (ICL), which is elective, focuses on the national and international aspects of international criminal law, including basic concepts as well as procedural rules.

In International Law and Global Justice, after having taken the HRGP course, students take the elective course of 15 ECTS credits ”International Law and the Global Economy” (ILE). This course aims to impart comprehensive knowledge of legal principles and mechanisms in international economic law in the context of human rights as well as the economy and politics.

All the courses include both written and oral exercises in the form of legal memos and essays as well as mooting and negotiations simulations alike. The final Master Thesis contains, in addition to the thesis itself, a course in academic writing. Moreover, there is a year-long seminar running through the programme which seeks to impress upon students the realization that abstract theories do not lead a separate existence from more concrete facts.

The purpose of the Stockholm’s Master’s Programme in International Law is to offer students the opportunity to acquire the kind of specialist knowledge and ability for critical thinking that will serve them well in professional and academic work alike, at both national and international level, in public as well as private service.

Further information will be made available on https://www.jurinst.su.se/english/education/courses-and-programmes

SCILJ arrangerade den 11 juni 2020 seminarium där boken “Lagföring i Sverige av internationella brott” lanserades, se inbjudan.

Nedan finns videoinspelning från seminariet.

The Fourth Hilding Eek Memorial Lecture was held Wednesday 2 October on the subject “Who is responsible for the protection of the ocean floor?” by Rüdiger Wolfrum, Professor of international law at the Heidelberg University, Faculty of Law – The regime for the environmental protection of the ocean floor in UN the Law of the Sea Convention is from today’s perspective, frankly speaking, outdated. The Convention was up to date in 1982, but everything has changed dramatically since then, says Rüdinger Wolfrum.

The whole lecture was filmed and can be viewed here.

According to Rüdinger Wolfrum, the Convention is regulated on assumptions that are no longer valid. Since it was signed, science has developed. The Rio Conference in 1992, ten years after the adoption of the Law of the Sea Convention, changed modern international environmental law. Thus, the Law of the Sea Convention does not contain some of the traits of modern environmental law such as the principle of sustainable development. Moreover, economic use of the sea, including the seabed, has intensified dramatically.
Another deficiency of the Convention is its division of the sea into territorial zones.

– From the point of view of the protection of the sea, this was a disaster. The ocean is an ecological unit. To chop it up makes it impossible to provide for a comprehensive environmental regime. There is also a functional division of environmental law for example into fishery, mining, dumping and scientific research. This is of course not optimal.

A chaotic conference

Rüdinger Wolfrum points out that the regional approach was not to serve the environment but to serve the economic interests of coastal states, distance fishing nations and industrialised countries that wanted to become independent on copper, nickel and cobalt from the deep seabed. His final remark on the background of the Law of the Sea Convention is that the conference that drafted the Convention was very chaotic.

– We met in sessions with many participants but without proper preparatory documents. We could hardly speak to each other. Occasionally we had states that misbehaved such as the USA when President Reagan decided that the US delegation had no mandate to participate.

The Law of the Sea Convention is outdated according to Rüdiger Wolfrum.

According to Article 192 of the Convention, all States have an obligation to protect the marine environment. The article is applicable on all regions of the sea, including the territorial waters. The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea has argued in its advisory opinion on fisheries from 2015 that other States are obliged to endorse and implement the coastal States’ laws on the protection of fisheries.

– The Tribunal has decided that all issues concerning fisheries are part of the environmental regime. This is an example of how the loopholes in the Convention are being filled with a very progressive interpretation of those who are engaged in the administration and management of the ocean.

Many legal gaps in the Convention

The seabed is under surveillance and management of the International Seabed Authority. The Authority has a rather complicated mandate. It has jurisdiction over the mineral resources but not over the seabed as such. Therefore, the protection of the environment is done in connection with seabed mining.

During his lecture, Rüdinger Wolfrum displayed the legal gaps of the Convention due to the technological, economic and societal changes that have occurred since the Convention was adopted. One major challenge is the ongoing UN conference on an international legally binding instrument under the Convention on the Law of the Sea on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ). The aim to incorporate the BBNJ into the Law of the Sea Convention meets serious obstacles since it will demand a legal distinction of biological resources in different sections of the sea and various levels of water column.

– Due to scientific and legal development, we need to fresh up the Law of the Sea Convention. The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea has shown that it can be easily freshened up by a progressive interpretation of existing rules.

The negotiators of the legal regime for the BBNJ believe that the best way to go about this is to sign a new treaty. Rüdinger Wolfram is not in favour of such a solution because he thinks there might be a risk that the new treaty will have other parties than the Law of the Sea Convention and thus you will end up with two different sets of parties with two different regimes.

– The International Seabed Authority is a modern international organization. Nobody can blame it for not trying to protect the environment. I would recommend extending the competence of the Authority, but I know that this is not going to happen.

Rüdinger Wolfrum was introduced by Deputy Vice Chancellor Henrik Cederquist and Director of SCILJ Pål Wrange. Afterwards, Hans Corell, Chair of the Board of SCILJ, concluded the event by making some comments on the subject of the lecture.

Stockholm Centre for International Law and Justice (SCILJ)

was established on February 20, 2012 with the mission to develop research in international law and to strengthen the links between academia and practice. The Centre shall have an interdisciplinary and practice oriented character and should make international law visible in public discourse. The Hilding Eek Memorial Lecture is given every other year in the memory of Hilding Eek, the distinguished Professor of International Law at Stockholm University 1956-1974.

www.scilj.se

This event was organised in cooperation with the Stockholm Environmental Law and Policy Centre and the Swedish branch of the International Law Association and was funded by the Cassel Foundation.

Stockholm Centre for International Law and Justice

Introduction and Words of Welcome to Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji,
President of the International Criminal Court

by

Ambassador (ret.) Hans Corell
Former Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and the Legal
Counsel of the United Nations

Juristernas hus, Stockholm University

21 October 2019

Dear Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji,

As Chairman of the Board of the Stockholm Center for international Law and Justice and former Legal Counsel of the United Nations it gives me great pleasure to welcome you to Stockholm University to address the topic The Enduring Value of the International Criminal Court to Humanity. This is, in particular, since I was so deeply involved in the 1998 Rome Conference that adopted the statute of the International Criminal Court and also in the establishment of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the International Tribunal for Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.

For my part, all of this started in 1992, when I was appointed a war crime rapporteur in the former Yugoslavia by the then Conference on Security and Co-Operation in Europe. On 9 February 1993, my co-rapporteurs Helmut Türk of Austria and Gro Hillestad Thune of Norway and I delivered a proposal for a statute of an international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. This proposal was immediately transferred to the UN Security Council.

At this time the Council was also contemplating establishing such a tribunal. On 22 February 1993 the Council decided to do precisely this. On 6 March 1994, I took up my position as the Legal Counsel of the UN. Exactly one month later, the genocide in Rwanda broke out. On 8 November 1994, the Security Council decided to establish the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Since Rwanda, a member of the Security Council at the time, had voted against the resolution, I was sent to Kigali to convince President Bizimungo, Prime Minister Twagiramugo and then Vice President Kagame that they should cooperate with the ICTR.

At the same time, the UN General Assembly intensified its work to establish a permanent international criminal court. The International Law Commission had been asked to prepare a Draft Statute for an International Criminal Court, which they delivered to the General Assembly in 1994.

After further preparations, including by an expert committee, the General Assembly decided to convene a conference in Rome in the summer of 1998 to negotiate a statute. It became my responsibility to be the Representative of the Secretary-General at the Conference, basically responsible for its organisation. The Codification Division of the UN Office of Legal Affairs became its Secretariat.

The States succeeded, and the so-called Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court was adopted on 17 July 1998 by a solid majority of the participating States: 120 yes, 7 no and 21 abstentions. In April 2002, the 60 ratifications necessary for its entry into force became a reality. This meant that the Statute could enter into force on 1 July 2002.

Later, I was responsible for negotiating the agreement between the United Nations and Sierra Leone on the Special Court, which was signed in Freetown on 16 January 2002, and the agreement between the United Nations and Cambodia on the Extraordinary Chambers, which was signed in Phnom Penh on 6 June 2003.

It is against this background that it is such a pleasure for me to welcome you, Judge Eboe-Osuji, to deliver your lecture. You have been deeply involved in the work of some of these organs before you assumed your full time duty as a Judge of the ICC on 16 March 2012.

Judge Eboe-Osuji is a national of Nigeria. There he received his LLB degree from the University of Calabar. He also has an LLM degree from McGill University in Canada and a PhD degree from the University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands.

He was called to the Bar in British Columbia, Canada, in 1982, to the Bar in Nigeria in 1986 and to the Bar in Ontario, Canada, in 1992, which meant that he practiced law as a barrister before different courts in Nigeria and Canada.

Judge Eboe-Osuji taught international criminal law as adjunct professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Ottawa, Canada, and has an extensive record of legal scholarship and publications. He is the editor-in-chief of the Nigerian Yearbook of International Law and he served as legal expert to Nigeria’s delegation to the ICC-ASP Special Working Group on the Definition of the Crime of Aggression.

Prior to joining the ICC, Judge Eboe-Osuji was the Legal Adviser to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. He also served as principal appeals counsel for the Prosecution in the Charles Taylor Case at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and has held several posts at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, including Head of Chambers and Lead Prosecution Trial Counsel.

Since 11 March 2018, Judge Eboe-Osuji is President of the ICC and assigned to the Appeals Division. Earlier he served in the Trial Division.

Dear Judge Eboe-Osuji,

I noted that during your time in the Trial Division you heard questions in the following two cases relating to Kenya: The Prosecutor v. Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta and The Prosecutor v. William Samoei Ruto. That reminded me of the time in 2008-2013 when I was a member of the team assisting the Panel of Eminent African Personalities, chaired by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, to support the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation. In February 2008, I was chairman of its Legal Working Group on Governance that elaborated the draft legislation necessary to form a grand coalition government. William Ruto was a member of this working group.

My heart sank when I heard that he was a suspect in one of these cases. Time does not allow that I get into this matter. But I was very troubled by the fact that the manner in which these cases developed forced the prosecutor to withdraw or vacate the charges.

Under all circumstances, late Kofi Annan deserves the greatest respect for bringing the two competing sides together to negotiate and agree to form a coalition government. This agreement was later confirmed in the 2008 Kenya National Accord and Reconciliation Act, which entered into force on 20 March 2008 and would govern the coalition government in the
country for five years.

Dear Judge Eboe-Osuji, you are warmly welcome. The floor is yours!