In 2014, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rendered judgment in a maritime boundary dispute between Peru and Chile (Judgment). The subject of the dispute was an area of maritime space in the Pacific Ocean comprising nearly seventy thousand square kilometers, or roughly “an area the size of Sri Lanka or Georgia.”

On December 12, 2012, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court (Court) in the case of Prosecutor v. Laurent Koudou Gbagbo unanimously confirmed the Pre-Trial Chamber I decision to dismiss Mr. Gbagbo’s challenge to the jurisdiction of the Court. In the Judgment, the Appeals Chamber, for the first time, was called to interpret Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute (Statute), which allows a non-party State to accept the jurisdiction of the Court on an ad hoc basis without acceding to the Statute. The Judgment further includes two procedural issues. Firstly, the Appeals Chamber found that although the Pre-Trial Chamber erred by not rendering a separate decision on Côte d’Ivoire’s request for leave to submit its observations, this error did not materially affect the Pre-Trial Chamber’s decision. Secondly, the Appeals Chamber dismissed, in limine, Mr. Gbagbo’s request for a stay of proceedings based on allegations of violations of his fundamental rights, since it was not jurisdictional in nature and thus fell outside the scope of the appealable matter.

On December 12, 2013, the Fifth Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ or the Court) issued its decision in Frédéric Hay v. Crédit Agricole Mutuel de Charente-Maritime et des Deux-Sévres (the Hay decision), an important ruling on the rights of same-sex couples in the workplace. Certain provisions in a collective agreement allowed employees to claim particular benefits on the occasion of a marriage, but not on the occasion of the conclusion of a form of civil partnership. The Court found that, since at the relevant time homosexual couples were only permitted to enter into civil partnership and not marriage under French law, the impugned provisions constituted direct discrimination based on sexual orientation and were therefore prohibited by the 2000 Employment Equality Framework Directive (the Equality Directive).

Following the takeover of Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb forces on July 11, 1995, Rizo Mustafić and his family, as well as Hasan Nuhanović’s parents and brother, were sent away from the UN compound in Potočari, within the Srebrenica enclave, by the Dutch forces (Dutchbat) who were based there. Shortly thereafter, Bosnian Serb forces killed Rizo Mustafić, Ibro Nuhanović, Nasiha Nuhanović-Mehinagić, and Muhamed Nuhanović. Mustafić’s surviving wife and children, and Nuhanović’s other son (applicants) filed separate suits for incurred damages against the Netherlands, arguing that the Dutchbat acted wrongfully by sending their relatives away from the compound. On September 6, 2013, the Dutch Supreme Court issued its two judgments in the matter, holding that the Netherlands was responsible for the conduct of the Dutchbat and had acted wrongfully towards the applicants.

In recent years, national and international courts have grappled with the questions of foreign state immunity and foreign official immunity from domestic jurisdiction over claims arising from human rights abuses committed under color of foreign law. Foreign state immunity involves the immunity ratione personae of the state as a juridical person, as well as that of the state’s agencies, instrumentalities, and political subdivisions. Foreign official immunity involves the immunity ratione personae of incumbent heads of state and diplomats, as well as the immunity ratione materiae of other current and former officials for acts performed in the scope of their official duties.

In May 2014, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, an expert body tasked with monitoring the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) by its state parties, issued its concluding observations on the second periodic report of the Holy See. The observations mark a definitive turning point in the approach of the treaty body concerning the nature of obligations which the Holy See incurs under the Convention; shed light on the concrete modalities which the Holy See could embrace to perform these obligations; and tie into the broader discussion on the extraterritorial reach of human rights treaties, in casu, the CRC.