Go On! International organizations

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest)

The International Organizations Interest Group of the American Society of International Law, with support from the Organization of American States, will hold a day-long works-in-progress workshop from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Friday, October 29, 2010, at the OAS General Services Building, 1899 F Street, N.W., Washington, D.C.
Featured:

► Richard Burchill, University of Hull School of Law, on “Regional Organisations as an Expression of Diversity in the International System”

► Megan Donaldson, New York University School of Law, “The Politics of Transparency: The World Bank Access to Information Policy”

► IntLawGrrl guest/alumna Noemi Gal-Or, Kwantlen Polytechnic University–Politics and Law,“The International Responsibility of the WTO”
► David Gartner, Arizona State University School of Law, “Beyond the Monopoly of States: Civil Society and the Governance of International Institutions”
► Ian Hurd, Department of Political Science, Northwestern University, “Actor, Forum, Resource: Legal and Political Aspects of International Organizations”
► Ian Johnstone, Fletcher School, Tufts University, and Garth Schofield, Permanent Court of Arbitration, “Relational contract theory and U.N. peacekeeping”
► Joseph Perkovich, Dorsey & Whitney LLP, “The Institutional Legal Framework for Exchange Stability”
► Guy Fiti Sinclair, New York University School of Law, “Of Living Trees and Constitutional Moments: Social Imaginaries and the Expansion of International Organizations”
For more information and to register, click here.

Parliamentary Privilege and National Security in Canada

(We welcome IntLawGrrls guest/alumna Noemi Gal-Or back for this guest post. Noemi, in turn, extends her thanks for the invitation to contribute to the blog.)

That the French saying ‘à la guerre comme à la guerre’ doesn’t fit democracy ‘à la canadienne’ was made clear this week in the ruling by the Hon. Peter Milliken, Canada’s Speaker of the House of Commons, in the Afghan detainees case. Minister Milliken found that Parliament has the right to access uncensored documents on the case because

[t]he house has long understood the role of the Government as ‘defender of the realm’ and its heavy responsibilities in matters of security, national defence, and international relations. Similarly, the Government understands the House’s undoubted role as the ‘grand inquest of the nation’ and its need for complete and accurate information in order to fulfill its duty of holding the Government to account.

Accordingly, he ordered government to devise within two weeks a method of information sharing that also guarantees the protection of legitimate national security concerns.
The Afghan detainees case has been brewing for a long time. It concerns allegations that the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan have transferred individuals detained by them to the Afghan local authorities, knowing that detainees, including child-detainees, were facing the likelihood of torture. The Canadian government has been challenged with such allegations in the federal court by Amnesty International Canada and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association. More disturbing to the government, however, were the allegations made by one of its employees, Richard Colvin of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, posted in Afghanistan from spring 2006 to early fall 2007. Mr. Colvin studiously communicated his related IHL concerns to his supervisors. The legal context is broad, including classic IHL documents as well as post-9/11 Afghanistan specific material and bilateral Canada-Afghanistan agreements concerning the transfer of the detainees.
A previous war-related Canadian scandal dates back to 1992-93 when, during the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Somalia, IHL violations by members of the Canadian Forces were followed by the Force’s withholding of information from the public as well as altering information. A full and open public inquiry was consequently established leading to the 1995 disbanding of the prestigious Canadian Airborne Regiment.
Unlike the Somalia debacle, the Afghan detainees affair has triggered a fierce and messy political struggle between opposition and government. While in the Somalia case, it was one organ within one ministry (Department of National Defence) that was found responsible for the system’s irregular performance, in the Afghan detainees case, the re-calibration of the entire system of government in matters national security is at stake. Mr. Milliken’s ruling, which represents the most recent chapter in the Afghan detainees saga, has been referred to as 'historic' in reminding Canada and its government that the essence of democracy hinges on the separation of powers.
While in itself, the Canadian Afghan detainees case is not a rarity in the international post 9/11 context of armed conflict, the Milliken ruling nevertheless is. It represents a fine, succinct, and explicit affirmation of the standard to which a democracy remains bound even in times of serious threat to national security. In its ‘simplicity’, the ruling serves as a lightning rod reminding that democratic resilience is tightly connected to jus in bello. Therefore, the Milliken ruling is relevant to the democracies fighting the GWOT in Afghanistan, but also to whenever and wherever they are engaged in armed conflict and preoccupied with matters concerning national security.

Go On! The Future of Canada-U.S. Crossborder Relations

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest)
On May 6-7, the Canadian Bar Association's International Law Section will host its annual international law conference in Vancouver, this year focusing on The Future of Canada-U.S. Crossborder Relations. Co-chaired by IntLawGrrls guest/alumna Noemi Gal-Or, the conference will feature IntLawGrrl Lucy Reed as its keynote speaker. The International Law Section will bring together practicing lawyers, legal academics, government officials, and other stakeholders to initiate a wide-ranging dialogue on cross-border legal questions. The conference will cover topics ranging from the multiplicity of laws governing cross-border trade to cross-border mediation and arbitration to effective remedies for corporate complicity in international human rights abuse. You can register for the conference here.

Guest Blogger: Noemi Gal-Or

It's IntLawGrrls great pleasure to introduce Dr. Noemi Gal-Or (left) as today's guest blogger. Below, she contributes a thought-provoking post about how the UN Trusteeship system could be put to work to improve governance in Haiti. Noemi is Director of the Institute for Transborder Studies (ITS) and Professor of Political Science and Law at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia, Canada. She has published extensively in matters security and strategic studies (specifically terrorism), international law (dispute resolution in trade and investment, international humanitarian law, and human rights law), international political economy and regional integration (NAFTA, FTAA, EU), and migration. She has consulted the Solicitor General of Canada and the Government of Israel in some of these areas.
Noemi received her B.A. from Tel Aviv University, her Ph.D. from the Geneva Graduate Institute of International Studies (International Cooperation in the Suppression of Terrorism, 1982, maîtres de thèse Profs. Jean Siotis† and Lucius Caflisch), and her LL.B. from the University of British Columbia. She is member of several academic organizations including Women in International Security Studies Canada (WIIS); serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Conflict Studies and as reviewer of several academic journals including the Canadian Political Science Review; is vice-President of the Board of Directors of the International Law Association (ILA) Canadian Branch, which she represents on the ILA’s Non-State Actor, and Feminism and International Law, Committees. She represents Kwantlen Polytechnic University on the Vancouver Board of Trade where she serves as member of the Canada-United States Relations Committee.
A licensed lawyer sole practitioner in British Columbia, Noemi is an active member of the Executive of the Canadian Bar Association (CBA) National International Law Section serving as co-Chair of its Trade & Investment Committee. She is also member of ArbitralWomen. Noemi is a frequent contributor to legal professional publications including the Lawyers Weekly and CBA’s International Lawyer.

Haiti's Lesson to the World: Opportunity in Disaster

(My thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute this guest post)

Today, Canada will host an emergency meeting in Montreal to draw a longer-term rebuilding plan for Haiti. On the table will certainly be a governance formula to assist Haitians on their road out of the current catastrophe and towards a viable stable and prosperous democracy. Haitian governance history has been fraught with disappointments since its independence in 1804, and more recently since the early 1990s. (credit for photo at left of Haiti's national palace post-earthquake).
A sustainable government is requisite as a care taker of not only ordinary and daily affairs for its citizens, but in Haiti’s case – an island geographically prone to nature’s onslaughts – also as a manager capable to face similar frequent challenges. At this backdrop, one wonders whether the current disaster and crisis, and the Monday international meeting, offer an opportunity to dust off the idea of international trusteeship and reconsider at least its partial revival in a fashion adapted to 21st century’s reality.
A long forgotten tool, the Trusteeship Council figures as one of the UN six main permanent organs. True, the historical circumstances prevailing at the time of the Charter’s adoption, namely post World War II decolonization, mostly no longer apply. Nevertheless, elements of the chief rationale underlying the two UN international trusteeship chapters XII and XII are as valid today as they were then. Equally true is that the trusteeship concept leaves a bad taste associated with past colonial misfortunes and coupled with fear of lurking neo-colonialism. To counter these concerns however, one should refer to the rich "acquis international", the extant body of international law accumulating since decolonization and designed to reassure newly independent states and peoples of their sovereignty, human rights, equality among the family of nations, to mention a few among the legal safeguards adopted since 1945. In this context, an international trusteeship concept, reconfigured and revamped, is worth giving a try.
Let’s face it. It is not a secret that Canadian assistance to Haiti was conceptualized to support the “establishment of a functioning state architecture” of a state loosely characterized as “fragile and failed”. As it currently stands, Haiti is not only fragile; it effectively lacks a functioning government, and some time will pass until such is re-instituted. Although legally sovereign, what is left after the earthquake is a government unable to discharge its duty of carrying out the attached jurisdiction. In a way, factually, Haiti’s sovereignty has been suspended. Some form of legal authority and institution must step in to fill the vacuum.
UN trusteeship is currently unavailable to Haiti because this system does not apply to members of the UN. Nevertheless, the spirit and the provisions laid down in both the UN Charter trusteeship chapters offer guidelines worthwhile embracing. These provisions are expressly instructed by Article 76.b. which lists among its objectives

to promote the political, economic, social, and educational advancement of the inhabitants of the trust territories, and their progressive development towards self government or independence as may be appropriate to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned and may be provided by the terms of each trusteeship agreement.

Some form of an “international partnership based trusteeship”, managed by a council made up of the Friends of Haiti and the participants in Monday’s meeting, and chaired by Haiti’s Prime Minister therefore offers a reasonable and workable governance solution.
Transitional internationally administered territories (TIAT) have featured as an important tool used by the UN in handling “governance gap” type of challenges in the Balkans, Africa, East and South East Asia, and Afghanistan. In many respects, they have mirrored the trusteeship concept quite closely. However, due to their ad hoc nature, knowledge gained from this valuable tool has been dispersed across UN bodies and documents, contributing members’ archives, academic publication, and the like. The benefit of an already extant UN permanent organ lies in its availability to operate as an institutional hub for such information and administrator for the purpose of drawing lessons for use in future similar cases. Therefore, while it will not be a surprise if TIAT becomes the next title of a post-earthquake formula for Haiti, it would be advisable to re-use the good offices of an already available UN trusteeship organ. The Trusteeship Council designated as custodian of a central library and home to assess, research, and educate about international trusteeship-like experiences is a first step towards rejuvenating and re-inventing this old institution.