15 February 2013

SHARES News Items Overview: 1-15 February 2013

The SHARES Project is closely following and collecting news items that are linked to the issue of shared responsibility (see: www.sharesproject.nl/news). Here is our third ‘SHARES News Items Overview’, a new category of blog posts consisting of a summary of recent news relating to shared responsibility.

• An advance copy of the Report of the independent international fact-finding mission to investigate the implications of the Israeli settlements on the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem by a UN Human Rights Council Fact Finding Mission, calls on States to not recognise an unlawful situation resulting from Israel’s violations of international law in the occupied territories. States should take appropriate measures to make sure that business enterprises which are domiciled in their territory and conduct activities related to the settlements, respect human rights. Private companies should assess the human rights impact of their activities and ensure they are not adversely impacting the human rights of the Palestinian People.
• The French Foreign Minister announced that France seeks a United Nations led peacekeeping force in Mali by April 2013, incorporating troops offered by West African countries. The Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations confirmed that a UN-led mission looks increasingly likely rather than an African-led force.
• The Open Society Justice Initiative published a report according to which at least 54 States co-operated with the CIA’s rendition programme. Cooperation varied from holding interrogations to hosting CIA prisons. The exact number of co-operating States is still unknown.
• The New York Times reported that the United States carries out strikes in Yemen from a drone base in Saudi Arabia since 2011. These military strikes are carried out with the consent of the government of Yemen. However, the CIA can carry out a drone strike without the permission of the government of Yemen, when killing leaders of al-Qaeda who the Obama administration have determined to pose a direct threat to the United States.
• The former Congolese militia boss Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, who was acquitted of war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC) late last year, has applied for asylum in the Netherlands. After being freed from the ICC’s detention centre, he was immediately arrested by Dutch police because he did not have papers allowing him to remain in the Netherlands.
• The recently published book Global Justice, State Duties: The Extraterritorial Scope of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights in International Law (edited by Malcolm Langford, Wouter Vandenhole, Martin Scheinin and Willem van Genugten, CUP 2013) contains several chapters dealing with questions of shared responsibility. This book deals with the question whether States possess extraterritorial obligations under existing international human rights law to respect and ensure economic, social and cultural rights and how far those duties extend. Issues that are addressed include jurisdiction, causation, division of responsibility, remedies and accountability.