On March 20, 2019, the European Commission fined Google €1.49 billion for breaching EU antitrust rules regarding abusive practices in online advertising. The European Commission stated that Google abused its market dominance by using its position to include in a number of clauses in contracts with website owners that restricted how and whether they could show competitors’ search ads on their search results pages. These competitors were then not able to compete on the merits, “because there was an outright prohibition for them to appear on publisher websites or because Google reserved for...
International Law in Brief
International Law in Brief (ILIB) is forum that provides updates on current developments in international law from the editors of ASIL's International Legal Materials.
On March 20, 2019, the Appeals Chamber of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals set aside Radovan Karadžić’s prior sentence of forty years and imposed a life sentence. Karadžić was convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity, and violations of the laws or customs of war in March 2016 by a Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and sentenced to forty years in prison. His crimes relate to war crimes he committed during the 1990s conflicts in the Balkans, in particular the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Serbs and the...
On February 28, 2019, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2458 (2019), in which it extended the mandate of the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Guinea-Bissau (UNIOGBIS) until February 8, 2020, and endorsed the Secretary-General’s recommendations for its reconfiguration with the aim of completing its tasks by the end of 2020. The Council supported a reprioritization of UNIOGBIS’s tasks into three phases, so that in Phase I, the electoral phase, it will remain as configured and support legislative and presidential elections scheduled for 2019; in Phase II, the post-...
On February 27, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Jam v. International Finance Corp. that under the International Organizations Immunities Act of 1945 (IOIA), international organizations are afforded the same immunity from suit given to foreign governments under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA). The question before the Court was whether the IOIA, “which affords international organizations the ‘same immunity’ from suit that foreign governments have,” grants international organizations immunity equivalent to that which foreign states were entitled in 1945, or...
On February 26, 2019, the Security Council passed Resolution 2456 (2019) in which it expressed its increased concern regarding the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Yemen and “all instances of hindrances to the effective delivery of humanitarian assistance, including limitations on the delivery of vital goods to the civilian population of Yemen.” Acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, the Security Council extended the travel ban, arms embargo, and economic sanctions against individuals or entities threatening the peace and stability of Yemen until February 26, 2020. The Council...
On February 20, 2019, the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan released its third report on the situation in South Sudan, providing updates on incidents that occurred in 2018 and concluding “that despite the signing of the peace agreement, violations including rape and sexual violence continue to occur which may amount to international crimes, including war crimes and crimes against humanity.” The Commission determined there were reasonable grounds to believe that the Sudan People's Liberation Army and affiliated armed groups have committed serious violations of human rights and...
On February 13, 2019, the International Court of Justice ruled in Certain Iranian Assets (Islamic Republic of Iran v. United States of America) that it has jurisdiction to hear part of Iran’s case against the United States and that the application is admissible. The case was initiated after the U.S. Supreme Court decision Bank Markazi v. Peterson, which led to the seizure of around $1.75 billion in assets from the Iranian national bank under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act’s terrorism exception in order to compensate victims of a 1983 bombing in Beirut, Lebanon, that...
On February 6, 2019, the Central African Republic (CAR) and fourteen non-state armed groups within the state signed a peace agreement. Peace talks began on January 24, 2019, in Khartoum, Sudan, and were led by the African Union, with UN support, through the African Initiative for Peace and Reconciliation in CAR. In a report on the situation in CAR, the UN Secretary-General noted that the parties reached consensus on “all major issues on the agenda, including on justice and reconciliation, a more transparent and inclusive governance system and transitional security arrangements,” and the...
On February 14, 2019, the U.K. House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee released a report entitled, “Disinformation and ‘Fake News’: Final Report,” in which it stated that Facebook “intentionally and knowingly violated both data privacy and anti-competition laws.” The report was an “inquiry on disinformation that has spanned over 18 months, covering individuals’ rights over their privacy, how their political choices might be affected and influenced by online information, and interference in political elections both in this country and across the world.” The Committee...
On February 8, 2019, a World Trade Organization (WTO) arbitration panel issued a decision to authorize South Korea to impose annual retaliatory duties worth $84.8 million on the United States after challenging U.S. anti-dumping and anti-subsidy tariffs on washing machines. The arbitration panel stated that South Korea “shall be entitled to impose suspension of concessions or other obligations” in the amount of $74.4 million for U.S. anti-dumping duty measures and $10.41 million for countervailing duty measures in the year following the decision. South Korea initiated proceedings on the...