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AsianSIL Events & Announcements
 
International Symposium on International Commercial Arbitration
Organised by the Japan Chapter of the Asian Society of International Law
Date: Monday (national holiday), 23 November 2009 (10:00 – 17:30)
Venue: Room 1096, Liberty Tower (Level 9) situated in Surugadai Campus, Meiji University


The Japan Chapter of the Asian Society of International Law will hold an international symposium in Tokyo on Monday (national holiday), 23rd November. Invited to participate in this symposium are Professor Michael Reisman (Yale University, USA) as the main speaker, and leading academics and practitioners both foreign and domestic as the discussants and panel speakers.

Click here for details of the programme.


7th Asian Law Institute Conference - Call for Papers
Law in a Pluralist Asia : Challenges and Prospects
26 & 26 May 2010, Tuesday & Wednesday


The Asian Law Institute (ASLI) and the Ahmad Ibrahim Kulliyyah of Laws, International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) are pleased to announce that the 7th Annual ASLI conference will be held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 25th and 26th May 2010.

Click here for details on the call for papers and conference.


Centre for International Law
NUS, Singapore


The Centre for International Law (CIL) was established in 2009 at the National University of Singapore’s Bukit Timah Campus in response to the growing need for international law expertise and capacity building in the Asia-Pacific region. A university-wide research centre aimed at fostering multidisciplinary research, the CIL welcomes close collaboration with other NUS or external centres of research and academic excellence.

Click here to learn more about the CIL. Members who wish to be informed of the CIL’s events should email cil.info@nus.edu.sg.


Call for Papers
International Conference on India-United States Nuclear Cooperation Agreement
Tamil Nadu Dr. Ambedkar Law University, Chennai, 23-24 March 2010


The University of Reading, UK, and the Tamil Nadu Dr. Ambedkar Law University, Chennai, have undertaken a collaborative research project funded by the British Academy’s UK-South Asia Partnership scheme to examine various issues arising from the 123 Agreement signed by the United States and India in 2007 to facilitate the exchange of civil nuclear technology between India and the United States.

The organisers are requesting papers that touch upon the 123 Agreement and issues related to, among others, the environment and trade, to be submitted for the Chennai conference.

Please click here for the call for papers.


Regular features
 
 

Directory of international law practitioners in Asia

 

AsianSIL members who would like to be listed on the directory of international lawyers in Asia for networking opportunities and possible project collaborations among AsianSIL members should denote their areas of interest and email asiansil-admin@nus.edu.sg .

AsianSIL Membership

Membership of the AsianSIL is open to any person and institution who has an interest in and respect for international law and supports the objectives of the Society.

Please click here to join the Society. To update membership particulars, please email asiansil-admin@nus.edu.sg
 


Asia and International Law
 
Developments and news pertaining to Asia in various areas of IL

Law of the Sea Need for coastal integration in South Asia (The Hindu, 21 October 2009)

India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh share the resources of the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. Since the 1970s, India’s maritime boundaries have been demarcated with many countries, but these remain seriously unresolved with Pakistan and Bangladesh. It is not easy to demarcate sea boundaries. The process is also tied closely to the lives of millions of fishermen across the globe.  South Asian coasts need to demarcate borders clearly for the well-being of the coastal communities, fisheries and also for the peaceful exploitation of deep sea resources. More possibilities, therefore, need to be explored for greater coastal, bilateral and regional integration.

International humanitarian law, peace and security Israel rejects UN report approval (BBC, 6 November 2009)

Following the Goldstone report which found that both Israel and Palestine had "committed actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity" in the Gaza hostilities that began in December 2008, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) passed Resolution A/RES/64/10, giving Israel and the Palestinians three months to undertake “independent, credible investigations” into the serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law committed during the conflict.

An Israeli foreign ministry statement has called the UN endorsement "completely detached from realities on the ground". It also said the 18 votes against the resolution, including the United States (US), and the 44 abstentions, including many European countries, were the "moral majority", presumably over the 114 states that had voted in favour.

Resolution A/RES/64/10 is not yet available online; please see Meeting Record/Press Release GA/10883 for more details on the proceedings.

See an op-ed critique of UN (in)justice here.

Environment Climate-Agreement Deadline May Slip to End of 2010 (Bloomberg, 6 November 2009)

The long-awaited agreement on climate change scheduled for the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference from 7 to 18 December continues to be hampered by unresolved negotiations. It may well be delayed by a year due to the delay in states’ pledging to cut carbon emissions or providing financial aid to help developing nations in their climate change efforts. Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has expressed his concern, saying, “I don’t think we can get a legally binding agreement by Copenhagen… I think that we can get that within a year after Copenhagen.”  

Kunihiko Shimada, principal negotiator for Japan, shares a similar view – that the broad outlines and issues would be agreed upon this year with further negotiations in the next, such that a final agreement could be ready at the end of 2010. Another Japanese negotiator, Akira Yamada, has stated that while Japan is looking to scale up existing climate aid of an aggregate US$10 billion pledged for 2008 through 2012, a final pledge cannot be made yet because it is still studying how to generate funds for helping poorer nations to adapt to warmer temperatures and cut their own emissions.

Human rights and development Sri Lanka steps up return of war-displaced - U.N. (Reuters, 5 November 2009)

Zola Dowell, head of U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said that from August to the end of October around 90,000 people moved back to their areas of origin, with 30,000 returning just in the last 10 days. Dowell told Reuters that people were “being moved back to their districts of origin, but due to the ongoing mine risks, many were not able to immediately go back to their actual homes”. Returnees were therefore moved to “schools and churches and other buildings” and had “relative freedom of movement”. Nonetheless, aid workers are not allowed to have a full-time presence there to ensure the provision of food, water and adequate sanitation as the government fears that Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) cadres could infiltrate the organisations as they did in wartime.

Karzai says he's addressing corruption (Reuters, 8 November 2009)

Now that Hamid Karzai will be President of Afghanistan for another 5 years after his opponent in the run-off election, Abdullah Abdullah, withdrew on 7 November, Karzai has publicly declared he will fight corruption. Saying also that he had begun tackling corruption within his government with some officials having already been sent to prison, he added that while external cooperation for development would be welcome, the Afghan government would “like [their] partners to have a lot of respect for Afghan sovereignty [as] Afghanistan is extremely sensitive about that”.

Myanmar diplomat: Junta may free Suu Kyi soon so she can take part in elections (Canadian Press, 9 November 2009)

Following the meeting by US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Min Lwin, a director-general in the Myanmar Foreign Ministry, has told the Associated Press that "there is a plan to release her soon ... so she can organize her party", hinting at the possibility of Suu Kyi’s participation in Myanmar’s 2010 elections. Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, has not yet decided whether to take part in the polls, which it says would be held under a constitution established last year by undemocratic means. It is unclear if Suu Kyi would be allowed to campaign as Myanmar's constitution includes provisions that bar Suu Kyi from holding office and ensure the military a controlling stake in government.

Trade and investment APEC members enjoy de facto integration: report (Xinhua, 9 November 2009)

The impact of membership of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) on trade is comparable to that of a free trade agreement, even without a binding agreement, says a report released Monday by the APEC Secretariat. The report's analysis reveals that APEC members trade with each other more than they do with other free trading agreement partners and much more with trading partners who are both members of the APEC and members of the World Trade Organization. There has been a five-fold increase in trade within the APEC since its establishment in 1989 and 67 percent of total APEC trade is intra-regional – a larger proportion than that which occurs in the European Union. Philip Gaetjens, director of the APEC Policy Support Unit, the team responsible for the report, said, “This provides analytical evidence that the APEC achieves results.”

Please click here for a summary of the trade report.

APEC gives trade a big boost (Straits Times, 10 November 2009)

Economic cooperation is set to be further enhanced with the plan to make it cheaper and faster to do business within the APEC region. This project, led by Singapore, New Zealand, the United States, Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong, aims to share expertise and experience in the 5 main areas of starting a business, getting credit, enforcing contracts, trading across borders and dealing with construction permits.

International organizations The President of the International Court of Justice, addressing the General Assembly, welcomes the growing trust and respect of the international community for the Court (ICJ Press Release 2009/31, 2 November 2009)

The President of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Judge Hisashi Owada, in addressing the United Nations General Assembly in early November, welcomed the fact that “over the past decade, the trust and respect of the international community for the activities of the Court as the principal judicial organ of the United Nations have been growing”. President Owada highlighted that the cases submitted to the Court had involved States from all continents and the issues ranged from “classical issues as territorial and maritime delimitation and diplomatic protection, to issues of increasing relevance to the contemporary international community like human rights, the status of individuals, international humanitarian law and environmental issues”. This reflected truly “the universal character of the principal judicial organ of the United Nations”.

President Owada stated that “the increased recourse to the International Court of Justice by States for the judicial settlement of their disputes points to the consciousness among political leaders of the importance of the rule of law in the international community” and stressed the importance of the rule of law; that while “law does not replace politics or economics… without it we cannot construct anything that will last in the international community”. He further stated that only 66 states have recognized the compulsory jurisdiction of the Court which “can only be utilized in cases where it is accepted by both parties to a given dispute”. It was therefore desirable to broaden this particular basis of jurisdiction through wider state acceptance of the Optional Clause.

Please click here for the Report of the International Court of Justice (1 August 2008 – 31 July 2009).

 

 

 

 

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