Hague Case Law – Latest Developments

Extract

On 16 April 2013, the International Court of Justice (the Court) rendered its judgment in the dispute between Burkina Faso and Niger concerning a frontier dispute over a section of their common boundary. The jurisdiction of the Court was based on a Special Agreement concluded between Burkina Faso and Niger in 2009 and submitted to the Court by joint notification on 12 May 2010. Upon the request of the parties, the Court determined the course of a particular section of their common boundary and decided that it would nominate three experts at a later point in time by means of an Order to assist the Parties as necessary in the demarcation of their frontier in the area in dispute. The Court did not uphold the request of Burkina Faso to adjudge and declare that its frontier with Niger in two demarcated sectors would follow a course which corresponds to the course recorded in 2009 by a joint mission which surveyed the work of a joint technical commission. According to the Court, these requests fell outside the scope of its jurisdiction – as defined by the Special Agreement – and exceeded the limits of its judicial function.

On 27 March 2013, Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) rendered its judgment in the case against Mićo Stanišic and Župljanin. Mićo Stanišić is the former Minister of the Interior of Republika Srpska; Župljanin is the former Chief of the Regional Security Services Centre of Banja Luka, and (between May and July 1992) was a member of the Crisis Staff of the Autonomous Region of Krajina. They were both prosecuted for war crimes (murder, torture) and crimes against humanity (extermination and persecution through acts of killing, torture, cruel treatment and inhuman acts, unlawful detention, establishing and perpetuation of inhuman living conditions, forcible transfer and deportation, the plundering of property, wanton destruction of towns and villages, including destruction or wilful damage done to institutions dedicated to religion and other cultural buildings, and the imposition and maintenance of restrictive and discriminatory measures) committed in a large number of municipalities in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992 involving thousands of victims and at least 1,735 individually named murder victims.