Coming soon to the ICJ: Australia v. Japan over whaling

In a joint release, Australia's foreign and environmental ministers announced yesterday that early next week, "Australia will initiate legal action in the International Court of Justice in The Hague against Japanese 'scientific' whaling in the Southern Ocean."
The twin goals, they said, are:
► in the shorter term, "to bring to an end Japan's program of so-called 'scientific' whaling" (prior IntLawGrrls posts here and here), and
► in the longer term, "to do what it takes to end whaling globally."
The decision comes after the failure to date of diplomatic efforts, not only with Japan on a bilateral plane, but also, on a multistate level, with member states of the International Whaling Commission (logo above left). Yesterday's release was notably pointed in its criticism of some in the latter group:

Recent statements by whaling countries in the Commission have provided Australia
with little cause for hope that our serious commitment to conservation of the world's whales will be reflected in any potential IWC compromise agreement.

How will the decision affect bilateral relations? The Australians said:

Both Australia and Japan have agreed that, whatever our differences on whaling, this issue should not be allowed to jeopardise the strength and the growth of our bilateral relationship.

While a Japanese minister said upon hearing yesterday's announcement:

I do not wish to harm Japan-Australia relations over all, but I hope to assert that what’s wrong is wrong.

He did not mean to refer to his own country's practices.

On July 23, ...

... 2001, Megawati Sukarnoputri (right) became the 1st woman President of Indonesia following the impeachment of her predecessor. Her tenure was uneven, and she lost an election bid in fall 2004. She is the daughter of the country's 1st President, Sukarno, who was overthrown in a bloody coup in 1965, 20 years after leading Indonesia to independence from its colonizer, the Netherlands.
... 1982 (25 years ago today), the International Whaling Commission voted to enact a "pause" on commercial whaling beginning in 1985-1986. Despite controversy on which we've posted, the ban remains in place to this day.

A Whale of a Tale

Alaskan whale-hunters recently found embedded in the blubber of their catch "a 3-1/2-inch arrow-shaped projectile" like those a whaler would shoot "from a heavy shoulder gun around 1890." The discovery, which means that the 50-ton leviathan was as much as 130 years old, serves to remind that whaling continues well over a century after the heyday of Moby Dick. For the last 60 years, however, the industry's been monitored by the Cambridge, England-based International Whaling Commission established pursuant to the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, to which 77 countries, including the United States, are parties. (For news of another ocean-related treaty regime see below.)
In keeping with its mission of managing and conserving the world's cetacean population, in the 1980s the Commission imposed what it called a "'pause'" on commercial whaling. Revision of that moratorium has moved slowly, and not quickly enough for 1 maritime member state, Japan. There whaling is a nationalist cause supported by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the Japan Times. reports, and "forever linked with the hypocrisy of the West and the perceived humiliation of having to enter the modern world under pressure from U.S. gunboats." As it has for the last 20 years, this month Japan repeated its request for permission to hunt whale in its coastal waters, on cultural grounds, for the next 5 years. The bid failed; indeed, "40 countries passed a resolution condemning Japan's scientific whaling," a practice expected to claim 50 humpbacks this summer. And so the Commission's meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, concluded with the prospect that Japan would withdraw and restart its whaling industry. Some hope that the dispute will end in salutary fashion, with the establishment of a dispute settlement mechanism now absent from the treaty regime.