industryterm:customary international law

First #Geneva_Declaration_on_Human_Rights_at_Sea published

The first version of the inaugural ‘Geneva Declaration on Human Rights at Sea‘ is today published by Human Rights at Sea after the initial drafting session was held in Switzerland on 20-21 March 2019 at the Graduate Instiute of International and Development Studies, Geneva.

The Declaration was first announced to students in Malta on 4 April at the IMO International Maritime Law Institute (IMLI) during the second Human Rights and the Law of the Sea workshop held in co-ordination with the Stockton Centre for International Law; and today will be briefed at the World Maritime University, Malmo, Sweden during the Empowering Women in the Maritime Community conference by the charity’s Iranian researcher, Sayedeh Hajar Hejazi.

The principal aim of the Declaration is to raise global awareness of the abuse of human rights at sea and to mobilise a concerted international effort to put an end to it.

It recognises established International Human Rights Law and International Maritime Law, highlights the applicable legal assumptions, and reflects the emerging development and customary use of the increased cross-over of the two bodies of law.

The concept of human rights at sea rests on four fundamental principles: 1. Human rights apply at sea to exactly the same degree and extent that they do on land. 2. All persons at sea, without any distinction, enjoy human rights at sea. 3. There are no maritime specific rules allowing derogation from human rights standards. 4. All human rights established under treaty and customary international law must be respected at sea.

The core drafting team comprises: Professor Anna Petrig, LL.M. (Harvard), University of Basel, Switzerland, Professor Irini Papanicolopulu, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy, Professor Steven Haines, Greenwich University, United Kingdom and David Hammond Esq. BSc (Hons), PgDL, Human Rights at Sea, United Kingdom. It is supported by Elisabeth Mavropoulou LL.M. (Westminster), Sayedeh Hajar Hejazi LL.M. (Symbiosis India).

The first drafting round was supported with input and observers from multiple UN agencies, leading human rights lawyers, international and civil society organisations.

The second drafting session will be held in Geneva in May.

https://www.humanrightsatsea.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/HRAS_GENEVA_DECLARATION_ON_HUMAN_RIGHTS_AT_SEA_April_2019frontcover2-212x300.jpg

Pour télécharger la déclaration :
▻https://www.humanrightsatsea.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/HRAS_GENEVA_DECLARATION_ON_HUMAN_RIGHTS_AT_SEA_5_April_2019_Versio

How the Israeli army takes Palestinian land and hands it to settlers -

45 settlements have been built on Palestinian land requisitioned for military purposes. A new study explains how
Amira Hass

▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-how-palestinian-land-goes-from-the-army-to-the-settlers-1.7004514

https://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.7004513.1552253883!/image/3531724496.jpg_gen/derivatives/headline_1200x630/3531724496.jpg

In the end, the result is the same: More Palestinian land stolen and transferred to Jews because they are Jews (born in Israel or the Diaspora) and for their benefit. But the Jewish brain invents tricks of the trade, and the means and methods that the military bureaucracy has created and is still creating to reach this result are many and varied, until confusion and fear take over at the sheer multitude of details.

Dror Etkes, a researcher of Israel’s settlement policy, wants, as usual, to put things in order. In a new study he will be publishing this week, he focuses on the history of orders to seize Palestinian land, issued by generations of army commanders in the West Bank (not including the part that was annexed to Jerusalem). More than 1,150 seizure orders have been issued from 1969 to the present. After subtracting those that were revoked or that overlap, it turns out that this particular trick enabled Israel to take over more than 100,000 dunams (25,000 acres) of Palestinian land. More millions of dunams of Palestinian land have been stolen in other ways, which Etkes has been researching too.

The declared purpose for such seizure is security and military needs. On the website of the Military Advocate General, the body that advises the army on legal issues, this goal is stressed. Etkes quotes at length from this source in his study: In accordance with the laws of belligerent occupation detailed in customary international law, an occupying power is prohibited from confiscating the private property of a local population in an area under its belligerent occupation. [But] the commander of the area has the authority to take possession of private land if there is a military need. … Exercising this authority does not invalidate landowners’ rights of possession, although they are temporarily prevented from holding and using the land. ... The word temporary is used, because the occupation is meant to be temporary, and because military needs may change.

Surprise surprise. Some 40 percent of the area officially seized for military and security needs have been allocated over the years to settlements (a quarter of the total area is indeed used for military purposes and another quarter is occupied by the separation barrier). The governments of the Alignment, the Labor Party’s predecessor, started this tradition. They allocated 6,280 dunams to settlements – 28 percent of the approximately 22,000 dunams that have been seized for military use in those years. As expected, the rise of Likud to power has seen a huge spike in allocation to settlements of land that was originally seized for military use. From Likud’s victory in May 1977 to the end of 1979, more than 31,000 dunams were seized. Out of this total, 23,000 were allocated to settlements – that is, 73 percent.

If we thought this method was quashed by the High Court of Justice ruling in the case of the settlement of Elon Moreh – which was handed down in October 1979 and placed restrictions on the authority of an Israeli military commander in the West Bank to seize land for settlement construction – it turns out we were wrong. Because for three years, commanders continued under Likud to issue seizure orders for security needs that benefited the settlements: Out of some 11,000 dunams seized, 7,040 dunams were given to 12 new settlements. (The dates on some of the orders are unclear; therefore they are not included in the breakdown above that Etkes produced at Haaretz’s request. But the goal of those orders, too, is clear: settlement. And they apply to areas amounting to about 2,000 dunams).

Following the High Court ruling on Elon Moreh, Israel found a surer method of robbery: declaring Palestinian land to be state land (that is, for Jews), in a very lenient interpretation of an Ottoman law on the matter. The raw material from Etkes’ research is digital maps and layers of data given to him by the Civil Administration (through gritted teeth) by dint of the Freedom of Information Law. According to this information, Etkes estimates that since the 1980s, Israel has declared some 750,000 dunams as state land, out of approximately 5.7 million dunams in the West Bank. (Reminder: This column does not recognize the legality of the Israeli definition of Palestinian land as state land, and even less the legality of their transfer to Jews).

#Kenya reverses position to close #Dadaab camp this year until Somalia stabilises

Kenya will hold back its decision to close Daadab camp until peace in Somalia is restored, the country’s Interior Minister Joseph Nkaissery has said.

▻http://goobjoog.com/english/?p=32455
#camps_de_réfugiés #asile #migrations #réfugiés #fermeture (pas de -)

Fahamu Refugee Legal Aid Newsletter | The right to seek asylum and protection

▻http://frlan.tumblr.com/post/75306382921/the-right-to-seek-asylum-and-protection

The adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 was a watershed in the relations betweeen States and individuals. It came quickly to influence treaties for the protection of groups, such as refugees, to underwrite the covenants which transformed the Declaration more clearly into obligations, and, by framing and guiding the practice of States, to contribute to customary international law.

History is important, for no international lawyer can avoid being an historian. This gives us the long view essential to understanding law in the relations of States, and enables us to counter misunderstandings dressed up as advocacy – to point out, for example, that no one in the Commission on Human Rights in 1947-48 ever suggested that a right ‘to be granted asylum’, (even if it were adopted, which it was not), meant that you could just turn up anywhere by boat and demand and get it.

#migrations #asile #réfugiés #droit_d_asile