PhD studies in human rights: Swiss Depository accepts Palestine's accession to the Geneva Conventions

Saturday, 12 April 2014

Swiss Depository accepts Palestine's accession to the Geneva Conventions

On 2 April 2014, the State of Palestine notified the Swiss Federal Council, depository of the Geneva Conventions, of its intention to accede to the four Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol I. The accession of the State of Palestine to the Conventions and Protocol was formally accepted by Switzerland via a letter issued on 10 April.

This is a highly significant development for the recognition of Palestine as a state. The Palestinian Liberation Organisation first sought to join the Geneva Conventions in 1989, which was rejected by the Swiss Foreign Ministry 'due to the uncertainty within the international community as to the existence or the non-existence of a State of Palestine.'

Israel argues that the Geneva Conventions should not apply to the West Bank and Gaza, because no state claimed sovereignty over the territory. This position was rejected by the International Court of Justice, stating that Section III of the Fourth Geneva Convention 'which concerns “Military authority over the territory of the hostile State”, is particularly pertinent in the present case.' Similarly, UN Security Council Resolutions have consistently called upon Israel to apply the Fourth Geneva Convention in Palestine. The Israeli position, while already on very dubious legal grounds, has become even more difficult to justify with this latest development.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations circulated notifications regarding the State of Palestine's accession to 14 other treaties on 9 April. The notification regarding the Genocide Convention can be found here.

Thanks to Evelyne Schmid and Yousef N. Zeidan.

No comments:

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

William A. Schabas is professor of international law at Middlesex University in London. He is also professor of international criminal law and human rights at Leiden University, emeritus professor human rights law at the Irish Centre for Human Rights of the National University of Ireland Galway, and an honorary professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in Beijing and Wuhan University. He is the author of more than 20 books and 300 journal articles, on such subjects as the abolition of capital punishment, genocide and the international criminal tribunals. Professor Schabas was a member of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Technical Cooperation in Human Rights and president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. He serves as president of the Irish Branch of the International Law Association chair of the Institute for International Criminal Investigation. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. Here is the full c.v.

Dr Yvonne McDermott is Senior Lecturer in Law at Bangor University, UK, where she is also Director of Teaching and Learning and Co-Director of the Bangor Centre for International Law. Yvonne is a graduate of the National University of Ireland, Galway (B. Corp. Law, LL.B.), Leiden University (LL.M. cum laude) and the Irish Centre for Human Rights (Ph.D.). Her research focuses on fair trial rights, international criminal procedure and international criminal law. She is the author of Fairness in International Criminal Trials (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Niamh Hayes has been the Head of Office for the Institute for International Criminal Investigations (IICI) in The Hague since September 2012. She is about to complete her Ph.D. on the investigation and prosecution of sexual violence by international criminal tribunals at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland Galway. She previously worked for Women's Initiatives for Gender Justice as a legal consultant, and as an intern for the defence at the ICTY in the Karadzic case. She has lectured on international criminal law and international law at Trinity College Dublin and, along with Prof. William Schabas and Dr. Yvonne McDermott, is a co-editor of The Ashgate Research Companion to International Criminal Law: Critical Perspectives (Ashgate, 2013). She is the author of over 45 case reports for the Oxford Reports on International Criminal Law and has published numerous articles and book chapters on the investigation and prosecution of sexual and gender-based violence as international crimes.

Joseph Powderly is Assistant Professor of Public International Law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, Leiden University. Between September 2008 and January 2010, he was a Doctoral Fellow/Researcher at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, where he worked, among other projects, on a Irish Government-funded investigation and report into the possible perpetration of crimes against humanity against the Rohingya people of North Rakhine State, Burma/Myanmar. He is currently in the process of completing his doctoral research which looks at the impact of theories of judicial interpretation on the development of international criminal and international humanitarian law. The central thesis aims to identify and analyze the potential emergence of a specific theory of interpretation within the sphere of judicial creativity. Along with Dr. Shane Darcy of the Irish Centre for Human Rights, he is co-editor of and contributor to the edited collection Judicial Creativity in International Criminal Tribunals which was published by Oxford University Press in 2010. He has written over 80 case-reports for the Oxford Reports on International Criminal Law, as well as numerous book chapters and academic articles on topics ranging from the principle of complementarity to Irish involvement in the drafting of the Geneva Conventions. In December 2010, he was appointed Managing Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Criminal Law Forum. His research interests while focusing on international criminal and international humanitarian law also include topics such as the history of international law and freedom of expression.