On December 14, 2012, member states of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) approved the Final Acts of the World Conference on International Telecommunications. The ITU is the specialized agency of the United Nations fostering cooperation on information and communication technologies, and, through world conferences, it periodically revises the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs), a treaty the ITU adopted in 1988 However, in December 2012, the Final Acts, the manner in which they were approved, and the World Conference proved controversial, and these controversies will adversely affect the impact of the Final Acts and the revised ITRs on international telecommunications law.

On December 13, 2012, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (the Court) issued a final judgment in the case of El-Masri v. the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. It found that Macedonia, as a State party to the European Convention on Human Rights (the Convention), was responsible for torturing El-Masri while he was in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYRM) The El-Masri judgment is the first time in which an international court has ruled on the U.S. practice of secret forced renditions. It follows the rationale of Soering v. United Kingdom, that a State can be held responsible for facilitating a violation by a State outside the Council of Europe, and places it in a modern war on terror context.

Somalia, embroiled in civil war since the early 1990s, has been variously qualified as a failed state, a rogue state, or a collapsed state. Several peacekeeping operations by the United Nations (UN) have attempted to bring peace to the chaotic region. The latest UN Security Council Resolution pertaining to Somalia, Resolution 2093 (2013), partially lifts the twenty-one-year-old arms embargo imposed on Somalia, in an acknowledgement of the progress made by the current government towards stability.

On October 19, 2012, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (the Court) ruled that policies pursued by de facto authorities in the Transdniestrian region of the Republic of Moldova aimed at suppressing Moldovan-language education violated the right to education of the affected children and their parents. The Court held Russia responsible for these violations by virtue of the continued vital support Russia provides to the de facto authorities. Meanwhile, the Court found Moldova to have complied with residual human rights obligations it retained, despite lacking effective control over Transdniestria. This important judgment develops the jurisprudence of the Court in relation to human rights violations arising from conduct of de facto authorities. However, it does not fully clarify the standards the Court applies in attributing their conduct to third states.

In October 2012, the United Kingdom Supreme Court (the Court), by a 4-1 majority, signaled a sweeping return to a more traditional approach to the enforceability of foreign judgments in avoidance in Rubin v. Eurofinance SA. The Court rejected the more liberal rule previously advocated by the Court of Appeal, which gave English courts discretion to allow enforcement of in personam judgments in avoidance where they were related to insolvency and bankruptcy proceedings. The central issue in Rubin v. Eurofinance was whether an in personam judgment, entered in default but made as part of, or pursuant to, insolvency or bankruptcy proceedings abroad could be enforced at English common law. The Court held that the American default judgment at issue in Rubin was not enforceable in English courts.

On June 27, 2013, delegates to a Diplomatic Conference of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) adopted the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled (Marrakesh Treaty). Governmental delegates and international disability rights advocates hope that the new instrument will increase access to information for millions of visually impaired people around the world, especially in developing countries.

For nearly three decades, the United States has offered monetary rewards designed to facilitate the apprehension and transfer for trial of suspects when their trial would directly advance American national interests. In the 1990s, for example, posters and matchbooks appeared across the Balkans with contact information available to anyone who might be willing to assist in the transfer of Slobodan Milošević or Radovan Karadžić to face charges before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugloslavia. In Congress’s view, this rewards program has helped to generate actionable intelligence that has prevented terrorist attacks, aided convictions of key suspects charged with participation in other acts of international terror, and served as “one of the most valuable assets the U.S. Government has in the fight against international terrorism.” In his public comments introducing this legislation, the United States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes acknowledged that fourteen payments were made under existing legislation in the two years prior to passage of this bill, averaging $400,000 per person. Details remain classified of course, but the rewards have provided instrumental incentives in numerous high profile cases, inter alia, the arrest of the architect of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein at the hands of American military forces following the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The election of the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General is governed by its Constitution in Article 31. Candidates must be appointed by the Health Assembly on the nomination of the Executive Board. Unlike other international organizations in which the decision-making process is largely informal—such as the IAEA and WTO—the WHO procedures were formalized in the 1990s to include: clear deadlines; an initial screening of all candidates; short-listing by secret ballot in case of more than five candidates; compulsory secret ballot voting both in the Board and the Assembly; and a limit of two terms of office of five years each. However, beginning in 2006, some regional groups strongly demanded the introduction of a compulsory rotation of the post of Director-General among the WHO’s regions. The equally strong rejection of that request by other regional groups led to an increasingly polarized debate in the governing bodies of the WHO.

On September 12, 2012, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (the Court) ruled in Nada v. Switzerland that the implementation by Switzerland of the United Nations Security Council Al-Qaida Sanctions Regime violated the right to private and family life under Article 8, and the right to an effective remedy under Article 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

On March 7, 2013, the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 2094 (2013), bolstering the scope of United Nations (UN) sanctions against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The Resolution represents the international community’s latest attempt at applying diplomatic and economic pressure to the DPRK so as to curb its nuclear weapons program. The resolution is also a response to the DPRK’s third nuclear test on February 12, 2013 and its subsequent threat to carry out preemptive nuclear strikes against the United States and South Korea. Acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, the Security Council responded to these grave violations of its existing Resolutions—seen as clear threats to international peace and security—by building upon, strengthening, and expanding the scope of the sanctions regime against the DPRK.

In Scoppola v. Italy (No. 3), the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights clarified its position on prisoner disenfranchisement under Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The Grand Chamber upheld, by sixteen votes to one, the challenged Italian legislation as within the margin of appreciation granted to member states in determining the conditions under which the Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 right to vote is exercised. Following its precedent in Hirst v. United Kingdom (No. 2), the Grand Chamber ruled that the Italian law pursued the legitimate aim of preventing crime and enhancing civic responsibility and respect for the rule of law, and that the relevant measure was proportionate because it did not affect a group of people generally, automatically, and indiscriminately. Notably, the Grand Chamber differentiated Scopppola (No. 3) from Hirst (No. 2), stressing that the U.K. legislation challenged in the latter deprived all prisoners, regardless of the length of their sentences or the nature of their crimes, of their right to vote. Unlike Hirst (No. 2), the Grand Chamber noted, the Italian legislation adapted voting restrictions to the particular circumstances of each case.

In the past decade, Latin American States have begun to voice strong criticisms of the existing system for the settlement of disputes between foreign private investors and States through international arbitration based on investment treaties. Since the end of the nineties, said system has undergone an extraordinary development due to the direct right of action granted to foreign investors by investment treaties. Indeed, the great majority of the thousands of investment treaties existing today not only grant substantive protection to investments made by investors of one State party in the territory of the other State party to the treaty, but also contain investor-State dispute settlement provisions allowing investors to initiate arbitration proceedings against host States for an alleged breach of the treaty by the State. The practice of arbitration based on investment treaties has, however, generated many difficulties with respect to both the arbitral tribunals’ application of the substantive protections provided for in the treaties and to the functioning of the arbitration proceedings. In response to those difficulties, Latin American States are seeking to set up regional legal and political cooperation initiatives to create alternatives to the existing system. The Declaration of the 1st Ministerial Meeting of the Latin American States Affected by Transnational Interests (Declaration) adopted in Guayaquil, Ecuador on April 22, 2013 is one recent example of such initiatives.

On August 22, 2012, the Republic of Senegal and the African Union (AU) signed an agreement to create a tribunal within the Senegalese judicial system to prosecute the perpetrators of international law violations in Chad between 1982 and 1990. To be called the Extraordinary African Chambers (Chambers), the tribunal is the result of years of political and judicial bargaining around Hissein Habré, the former President of Chad. The Chambers were inaugurated in February 2013, following the agreement upon a Statute of the Chambers in January 2013. On July 2, 2013, Hissein Habré was charged with crimes against humanity, torture, and war crimes, and placed in pre-trial detention. To date, Habré is the only indictee, but the Prosecutor reportedly intends to seek the indictment of five officials of Habré’s administration suspected of having committed international crimes.

Article 36(1) of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations provides that a consular officer shall, if requested by a national of the sending state arrested in the receiving state, be informed of the arrest by the authorities of the receiving state ‘‘without delay [and] shall have a right to visit [and assist the arrested] national.’’ It also provides that ‘‘said authorities shall inform the person concerned without delay of his rights’’ to communicate with the consular officer.

On June 14, 2013, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (the Court), in the consolidated matter of Tanganyika Law Society and the Legal and Human Rights Centre v. Tanzania and Rev. Christopher R. Mtikila v. Tanzania, found that the government of Tanzania violated the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Charter) when it prohibited independent candidates from contesting presidential, parliamentary, and local government elections. The case provides insight into the trajectory of the Court and its approach towards the jurisprudence of other international and regional human rights organs.