16 July 2015

SHARES News Items Overview: 16 June 2015-16 July 2015

This is our News Items Overview of 16 June 2015-16 July 2015, a summary of recent news relating to shared responsibility.

• Briefing the press on the Yemen crisis, the UN Secretary-General said that the UN and member states retained ‘a special obligation to act’.
• The collection of articles on Organised Non-State Actors (edited by Jean d’Aspremont, André Nollkaemper, Ilias Plakokefalos and Cedric Ryngaert) has been published in: (2015) 62 Netherlands International Law Review 49-160. Contributions are written by the editors and Veronika Bílková; Markos Karavias; Sorcha MacLeod; and Kimberley N. Trapp.
• The Hague District Court ordered the Dutch state to take more action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the Netherlands. The Court held that the NL cannot hide behind the fact that collective action is needed for a solution to the global problem of climate change, and the state has to ensure that its emissions in 2020 will be at least 25 per cent lower than emissions in 1990.
• The Special Rapporteur on the protection and promotion of human rights while countering terrorism said concerning the gross violations committed by ISIL: ‘The Security Council has an obligation to act’, and ‘[g]iven the reports of genocide, all members of the Security Council may now have a specific responsibility to take action to prevent this most serious of international crimes’.
• New research of intelligence documents suggests that high government officials of the UK, France and the US allowed Mladic and his army to proceed to the safe area of Srebrenica in 1995, while being aware of the risk of humanitarian disaster. Thousands of Muslim men were killed.
• On 8 July 2015, the Security Council failed to pass a resolution – with 10 votes in favour, four abstentions (Angola, China, Nigeria and Venezuela) and the Russian Federation voting against – strongly condemning as genocide the crimes committed at Srebrenica in 1995.
• UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said: ‘Europe has a clear responsibility to help those seeking protection from war and persecution […] European countries must shoulder their fair share in responding to the refugee crisis, at home and abroad.’