ChanCe, Order, Change : The COurse Of InTernaTIOnal law general Course on Public International law

This study considers self-defence in its role as a circumstance precluding wrongfulness, as codified in Article 21 of the ILC’s Articles on State Responsibility. The paper examines the development of this provision in the work of the ILC and considers relevant practice by States and international tribunals in relation to this defence. The study explains that self-defence has two roles in international law. The right of self-defence, codified in Article 51 of the UN Charter and recognised in customary international law, is an exception to the prohibition of force only. In the ILC terminology, the right of self-defence is a primary rule. The circumstance precluding wrongfulness of self-defence, contained in Article 21 ARS, serves to preclude the wrongfulness of potential breaches of obligations (other than the prohibition of force) binding the States involved in an armed conflict, so long as the breach of those obligations is a collateral effect of self-defensive forcible measures adopted in conformity with the requirements of the right of self-defence under international law. In the ILC terminology, this is self-defence in its role as a secondary rule.

In the last few decades, the UN Security Council has increasingly implemented enforcement measures in the context of many non-international armed conflicts. Both in those cases and in international conflicts, certain resolutions explicitly impose rights and obligations upon all the parties, without making a legal distinction between States and non-state actors, including armed opposition groups. This paper aims to explain some consequences of the approach adopted by the Security Council. Mainly, two issues are dealt with: a) how does the Security Council address armed opposition groups and to what extent its resolutions impose rights and obligations upon them; b) if these non-state actors are in fact bound by those resolutions and why. In order to achieve an explanation that grasps the complexity of these issues, the article adopts a systemic approach, which includes the application of the principle of equality of belligerents to Security Council resolutions.

This paper examines the operation of the international law principle on the prohibition of the use of force with regards to two contemporary issues frequently witnessed in Middle Eastern international relations. These are the issues of State support to Governments engaged in civil strife and the ever increasing utilisation of non-state actors as tools for furthering a State’s foreign policy interests. Yemen is used as a case study for this examination as both issues are evident in the facts of the current conflict. This paper attempts to provide a conclusion as to the current state of international law with regards to the permissibility of assisting a Government engaged in civil strife and a conclusion on the legality of Operation Decisive Storm launched by a coalition of Arab states in Yemen on the 26th of March 2015. It also examines the international law framework applicable to indirect uses of force manifested in the support of armed groups active in other states, attempting to evaluate the legal effects of the purported Iranian complicity in the Yemen conflict and reflecting on the efficiency of international law as a guarantor of international peace and security.

This paper addresses how the duty to prevent genocide, as a jus cogens norm, legally affects the voting behavior of the five permanent members of the Security Council (P5). In particular, this paper argues that the duty to prevent genocide requires the P5 to vote for - and not veto - draft Security Council resolutions aimed at preventing an imminent or ongoing genocide.

The EU's international agreements with Morocco on trade in agricultural and fishery products have drawn criticism due to their application to the disputed territory of Western Sahara, a territory that remains on the list of non-self-governing territories to be decolonised in accordance with the right of self-determination of the indigenous Sahrawi people. Recently, the Sahrawi liberation movement Front Polisario brought an action for annulment before the General Court of the European Union (GC) against the Council Decision approving the conclusion of one such agreement, alleging multiple violations of European and international legal norms. Interestingly, although the GC concurred by annulling the Decision insofar as it applies to Western Sahara, it chose to exclusively base its judgment on EU fundamental rights, invoking the EU's failure to ensure that the fundamental rights of the Sahrawi people were not infringed by applying the agreements to Western Sahara. By summarily setting aside Front Polisario's other claims, several relevant questions of applicable international and European law, which warrant further discussion , remain. This article examines these questions using the GC's judgment in Front Polisario, thereby combining general matters of international and European law with the specific circumstances of the EU-Morocco relations and Western Sahara.

Comparing the EU law principle of loyalty with international law good faith and the duty of federal good faith in German constitutional law (Bundestreue), this article contributes to the discussion on the nature of the EU legal order and its relationship to international law more generally by finding that EU loyalty is in essence a specific incarnation of the international law principle that treaties are to be interpreted in good faith. At the same time, it challenges the assumption that international law good faith differs fundamentally from federal good faith. To this end, the article points at historical links between both and posits that good faith is in essence a principle of constructive interpretation the strictures of which increase with the level of integration of the legal order in which it is applied.

Academic analysis of pronouncements of human rights treaty monitoring bodies has tended to focus on their contribution to the promotion of human rights in domestic jurisdictions, particularly to convey the desire of scholars to see more use of these pronouncements by domestic courts. Comparatively little attention has been paid to the issue of their legal status in light of the supervisory function of human rights monitoring bodies. The following paper starts with a thorough analysis of a few recent cases by national courts, which commented on the legal value of the work of these bodies. The paper then challenges two recurring arguments in the legal scholarship: their assimilation to judicial bodies, and the existence of a procedural obligation on States to consider their views. Next, it focuses on the interpretive weight of the pronouncements of these treaty bodies in international law, and, accordingly, in national jurisdictions. The paper argues that the alleged existence of a general procedural obligation on States to consider the pronouncements of human rights treaty monitoring bodies is controversial, and that their work does not have a specific, or privileged, legal position in defining the ordinary meaning of a treaty. The conclusions point out that supervisory bodies have a specific and important role in the international legal order, different from that of courts, which bears preserving.