Go On! Trafficking conference today

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest) Blogreaders in the Twin Cities take note:
Today the University of Minnesota Law School is hosting the 2010 International Congress on Human Trafficking. Experts in areas like human trafficking, international criminal law, international children’s issues, and victimized populations will examine:
► Trafficking for labor, drugs, sex, and military purposes;
► The vulnerability of children to traffickers in the wake of international disasters; and
► Methods to combat this problem.
Organizing this conference is Michele Bratcher Goodwin, Everett Fraser Professor of Law at Minnesota. A 2d conference, on organ trafficking, is to be held next month in Brazil.
Among the many who will take part today are 2 of IntLawGrrls' guests/alumnae, Luz Estella Nagle (Stetson) and L. Song Richardson (DePaul).
Conference details here.

P.S. on Colombia/Ecuador

Anyone whose interest's been piqued by posts on counterrorism activities in Colombia and Ecuador -- which IntLawGrrl Naomi Norberg criticized yesterday and for which Luz Estella Nagle articulated possible justifications in an April guest-post -- will want to look at a recent ASIL Insight on the subject.
The author is Tatiana Weisberg, formerly an Associate Professor of International Law at the Catholic University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, and now an LL.M. student at the Center for Advanced Legal Studies, Buchman Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University, Israel. Her Insight focuses on the March 5, 2008, resolution by the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States that Colombia's entry into Ecuador a week earlier

constitutes a violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ecuador and of principles of international law ...

With some understatement, Weisberg observes that the OAS resolution "is in tension with the declared policy and practice on this issue of the United States, an OAS Member State, and with the UN Security Council’s post-September 11th willingness to consider that terrorist violence can trigger the right to use force in self-defense."

(credit for map of Colombian incursion -- courtesy of The Economist)

Guest blogger: Luz Estella Nagle

Today IntLawGrrls welcome our latest guest blogger, Luz Estella Nagle (right), a Professor of Law at Stetson University College of Law, St. Petersburg, Florida.
As her publications indicate, Nagle's a specialist in "international law, international criminal law, and national security law as it pertains to terrorism, narco-trafficking, human trafficking, and guerrilla insurgency, and Latin American business law with an emphasis on regional trade." Educated in law in Colombia, from 1983 to 1986 she served as a judge in the Colombia's court of general jurisdiction. "Compelled to leave Colombia following assassination attempts and repeated death threats, Professor Nagle worked as an undercover private investigator" while earning an M.A. in Latin American studies and an L.L.M. in Comparative Law at the University of California, Los Angeles. She then moved eastward, pursuing her J.D. at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, then practiced at a firm in Florida and as of counsel to a firm in Colombia.
In addition to her work at Stetson, Nagle's an External Researcher on national security and foreign policy at the Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and further works with the Office of the Judge Advocate to train Colombian military commanders and lawyers at the division level in compliance with international humanitarian law and human rights protocols.
In her post below, Nagle describes her most recent article, an analysis of Colombia's assertions that it acted legally last month when it raided a rebel camp in Ecuador. The post is dedicated to Policarpa Salavarrieta (left), who, as Luz writes, "was a Colombian patriot, organizer and spy during the revolution for independence from Spain in the early 1800s. She was captured by Spanish Royalists, tried, and executed by firing squad, and in the process became one of Colombia's greatest historical figures." This heroine of Colombian independence joins our list of IntLawGrrls' transnational foremothers at right, just below the "visiting from..." map.

Heartfelt welcome!

Colombia's cross-border raid of rebel camp

I appreciate this invitation to guest-post at IntLawGrrls, and hope my contribution will be of interest to the blog’s participants.

On March 1, 2008, Colombia attacked a jungle encampment in Ecuador occupied by Raul Reyes, the second in command of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), killing Reyes and others. Colombian soldiers retrieved Reyes’ remains, his computer and other forensic evidence, and hastily withdrew.
The raid, undertaken prior to notifying Ecuador, sparked a regional crisis that resulted in Ecuadorian and Venezuelan military mobilizations along their borders with Colombia. Colombia justified its incursion as a right of legitimate self-defense under the doctrine of hot pursuit. The justification quickly unraveled, however, when evidence showed that the encampment’s occupants were sleeping at the time of the attack, and that the camp was well established, fortified, and provisioned.
Hot Pursuit on land is recognized as the chasing or tailing of armed aggressors across international borders as part of a tactical pursuit plan. Even then, the active hot pursuit argument is debatable under international law. Hot pursuit entails the use of force against the territory of a sovereign nation, and raises sensitive issues involving state sovereignty. While it may be argued that hot pursuit is justifiable under principles of self-defense, it is difficult to make the case that the Colombian forces could go into Ecuadorian territory and kill FARC members without Ecuador’s consent.
Other international law doctrines might apply to justify Colombia’s military action, such as Anticipatory Self-Defense to prevent an armed attack from happening where there is convincing evidence that an attack is actually being mounted. The notion of anticipatory self defense evolves from the 1837 Caroline case, which involved the interception and burning by British forces of an American vessel suspected of gunrunning to anti-British rebels in Canada. The Caroline case was later cited at Nuremberg in the Norway case where the judges rejected the argument made by the German defendants that their invasion of Norway was justified on a reasonable fear that Norway would become a base for an Allied attack on Germany. Colombia could support its anticipatory self-defense argument by proving that it took action against the FARC group on the strength of evidence tying the group to prior attacks in Colombian soil and perhaps producing the testimony or testimonies of apprehended individuals who revealed that more attacks were planned.
Finally, Colombia might rely on the Bush Doctrine of preemptive self-defense to justify its raid as a military action against a potential adversary to preempt future attacks. Under this definition, a military reaction is divested of defensive character since the defense is future-oriented and the threat is merely a potential one.
These doctrines, as well as an analysis of Colombia’s potential arguments of self-defense under applicable articles of the United Nations Charter, are discussed in my forthcoming article, Colombia’s Incursion into Ecuadorian Territory: Justified Hot Pursuit or Pugnacious Error?, to be published in the Spring 2008 issue of the Florida State Journal of Transnational Law and Policy.