Latest news with #ICJ
Business Recorder
2 hours ago
- Politics
- Business Recorder
Dar tells UN moot on two-state solution: Israeli ‘occupation must end, and it must end now'
ISLAMABAD: The Deputy Prime Minister/Foreign Minister, Ishaq Dar, underscored that the question of Palestine remains a moral imperative and a litmus test for the international community. He declared, 'The occupation must end, and it must end now. It is time for freedom, self-determination, and statehood for Palestine.' Dar took part in the High-Level International Conference on the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution, where he delivered an important statement. The conference is being co-chaired by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and France. Pakistan, Turkiye call for immediate ceasefire in Gaza amid grave 'humanitarian catastrophe' Commending the leadership of the co-chairs and the contributions of the eight working groups, Dar reaffirmed Pakistan's active engagement and commitment to meaningful outcomes from the conference. He strongly condemned Israel's continued aggression in Gaza, calling it 'a graveyard of international law and humanitarian principles,' and cited the killing of over 58,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, as a flagrant violation of international law, UN resolutions, and the ICJ measures. Calling for urgent international action, Dar stressed the need for an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire; unhindered humanitarian access; support for UNRWA; accountability for war crimes; and reinvigoration of a genuine political process for a two-state solution. He also called for full UN membership and universal recognition of Palestine. He emphasised that the conference must produce actionable commitments to reaffirm the centrality of the two-state solution, demand Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, support its reconstruction in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 2735 and the OIC-Arab Plan, and reject forced displacement, demographic manipulation, settlements, and annexation. Welcoming France's decision to recognise the State of Palestine, Dar encouraged others to follow. He expressed Pakistan's readiness to provide technical assistance, capacity building, and support for the Arab-OIC Plan and any international protection mechanism. Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
Forbes
5 hours ago
- Politics
- Forbes
ICJ Climate Change Opinion Raises Constitutionality Question Of U.S. Joining Paris Agreement
US President Donald Trump holds letter to the UN stating the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement ... More during the inaugural parade inside Capital One Arena, in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2025. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP) (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images) Since 2015, conservatives and legal experts have questioned the legality of the United States joining the Paris Agreement without Senate approval. Both President Obama and President Biden justified sidestepping the constitutional requirement by claiming the document was not a treaty and did not bind the U.S. to any 'course of action.' However, a recent opinion by the International Court of Justice found that the agreement not only creates legal requirements, but also legal liability for countries that signed the treaty. This poses unique legal questions as to whether the U.S. ever legally joined the treaty and if the next Democrat President can rejoin it without Senate approval. The Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015 to address the impacts of climate change. The agreement sets a goal of reaching net-zero GHG emissions by 2050. To reach that goal, a series of policies were adopted to address how governments and businesses reduce and report GHG emissions. It also focused on funding of both climate change initiatives and the economic impacts of climate change. Within the U.S., the nature of the Paris Agreement has been debated. It has been a matter of dispute as to whether it is a treaty or an executive agreement. The differentiation is important. Under the Constitution, the President 'shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.' However, the President can enter into 'executive agreements' that do not require approval of the Senate. While there are a lot of nuances to the difference, generally, a treaty is legally binding and could require the U.S. to change national law. Executive agreements are limited. Even prior to adoption, President Obama asserted that the obligations of the agreement are aspirational, not legally binding. As a result, his administration believed it did not require Senate approval. This same rationale was used by President Biden when he rejoined the agreement after President Trump exited it. These arguments were echoed by Biden attorneys in a recent case before the International Court of Justice. On March 29, 2023, at the request of Vanuatu, the United Nations General Assembly asked the ICJ to issue an advisory opinion on the legal obligations of countries in preventing climate change. The ICJ was established in 1945 through the UN Charter to handle legal disputes between nations. Known as the World Court, it is an outlet for countries to settle civil disputes through a neutral court. The UNGA posed two questions to the ICJ:Developing countries asserted that the Paris Agreement created a legal liability for countries to meet the goal of net zero by 2050. They also argued that countries who contribute to climate change, through the production of fossil fuels and GHG emissions, should pay reparations to low lying and developing nations that are 'adversely impacted' by climate change. Much of the legal debate comes from the obligations states have under the Paris Agreement to submit reports to the UN. Article 4, paragraph 2 of the Agreement requires countries to 'prepare, communicate and maintain successive nationally determined contributions that it intends to achieve. Parties shall pursue domestic mitigation measures, with the aim of achieving the objectives of such contributions.' These NDCs outline actions taken by the the countries to reduce GHG emission. Throughout the legal proceedings, this process was referred to as procedural, meaning that countries are only required to go through the process of creating the report. The debate arose over whether there is a substantive, or actual action, required to enact the goals of the NDC. A substantive requirement creates a legal liability to act and could lead to legal consequences for failure to act. In its oral statement before the Court in December, attorneys for the U.S. stated, The Court disagreed. Following two years of proceedings, including both written and oral statements, the Court issued its Advisory Opinion relating to the Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change on July 23. The opinion created a new wave of liability for countries to address climate change, both within and beyond the confines of the Paris Agreement. Looking specifically at the Paris Agreement, the Court found that the NDCs were legally binding. Importantly, the Court also found that the NDCs require countries to change their domestic policy to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. In other words, the ICJ believes the Paris Agreement creates legal obligations for countries to act and to change national law to align with those goals. The opinion, while not legally binding, creates a strong legal argument that the Paris Agreement required Senate approval. For all sides of the debate, the ICJ opinion is a mixed bag. For climate change advocates, the establishment of a new legal liability for failing to take action to reduce the impacts of climate change is a huge win. How that will be applied to the U.S. is still unclear. For opponents of the Paris Agreement, the new legal argument that it is legally binding, and therefore would require Senate approval, could invalidate the previous ratifications and prevent the next Democrat President from rejoining the treaty. Ultimately, both issues will be decided in court.
Al Jazeera
9 hours ago
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Settler sanctions are theatre. Hathaleen's murder exposes the cover-up
On July 28, 2025, an Israeli settler shot Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen in the chest, causing injuries that later proved fatal. The attack was captured on video, and the shooter was identified as Yinon Levi, a settler previously sanctioned by the European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States under the Biden administration. Hathaleen, aged 31, was a beloved activist and teacher from Masafer Yatta in the South Hebron Hills. He also played a supporting role in the Oscar-winning film No Other Land, which depicts the story of his village, subjected to relentless attacks from settlers and settler-aligned soldiers for decades. Hathaleen's killing is far from isolated. He is one of more than 1,000 Palestinians killed in the West Bank since the genocide in Gaza began in October 2023. This surge in violence coincides with a sharp rise in Palestinian land seizures and home demolitions. The Israeli government has used the genocide in Gaza as cover to accelerate its takeover plans for the West Bank. Just days before entering its three-month summer recess, the Israeli Knesset passed a non-binding motion to annex the entire territory. The Knesset's motion comes one year after the July 2024 International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling that Israel's ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories it seized in 1967 is illegal and must end. The court ordered the Israeli regime to dismantle settlements, provide reparations and facilitate the return of displaced Palestinians, setting September 2025 as the deadline. In the months leading up to the ICJ ruling, countries including Australia, France, the UK and Canada announced sanctions on a handful of settlers and entities involved in the settlement enterprise. Hathaleen's killer, Yinon Levi, was among those sanctioned. Yet, as expected, travel bans and financial restrictions imposed by these countries have had no impact on the ground. Levi continued his attacks on Palestinians from his illegal settler outpost, operating under full army protection. Not only have these sanctions had no impact, but by singling out a few settlers rather than addressing the broader machinery of settler colonialism, they also allow the Israeli regime to escape accountability by presenting settler violence as an aberration rather than an extension of state policy. By deliberately distinguishing between 'extremist' settlers and the rest of the Israeli regime, states implement token measures that enable them to posture as defenders of international law while avoiding any confrontation with the regime itself. The reality is that Israel operates as a settlement enterprise, and its state policy has always been to expand its territory across all of Historical Palestine and beyond, as demonstrated by the occupation of parts of southern Syria and Lebanon over the last two years. Today, more than 700,000 settlers reside in the West Bank and East Jerusalem across more than 250 settlements and outposts, all of which violate international law and are sustained by state infrastructure, security forces and planning agencies. This expansion has been enabled by hollow measures such as the sanctioning of Levi, where targeting a few individuals serves only to shield the regime responsible for the very system they uphold. This political theatre is utterly absurd. One cannot meaningfully sanction settler violence while maintaining full diplomatic, economic and military support for a regime that is, by definition, a settler regime. The settler and the state are inseparable. To sanction one while legitimising the other is not accountability; it is complicity. Hathaleen's murder is not an anomaly but the direct outcome of this system, one that is protected, financed and excused by the same states that claim to oppose it. Such actions do not challenge the status quo; they entrench and normalise it. Breaking this cycle requires states to end their support for Israel's genocidal regime of settlement and occupation altogether, through comprehensive sanctions and real accountability that targets the system, not just its murderous foot soldiers. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.
The Star
10 hours ago
- Politics
- The Star
Analysis-World Court climate opinion turns up the legal heat on governments
THE HAGUE (Reuters) -A landmark opinion delivered by the United Nations' highest court last week that governments must protect the climate is already being cited in courtrooms, as lawyers say it strengthens the legal arguments in suits against countries and companies. The International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, last Wednesday laid out the duty of states to limit harm from greenhouse gases and to regulate private industry. It said failure to reduce emissions could be an internationally wrongful act and, found that treaties such as the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change should be considered legally binding. While not specifically naming the United States, the court said countries that were not part of the United Nations climate treaty must still protect the climate as a matter of human rights law and customary international law. Only a day after the World Court opinion, lawyers for a windfarm distributed copies of it to the seven judges of the Irish Supreme Court on the final day of hearings ona case about whether planning permits for turbines should prioritise climate concerns over rural vistas. It is not clear when the Irish court will deliver its ruling. Lawyer Alan Roberts, for Coolglass Wind Farm, said the opinion would boost his client's argument that Ireland's climate obligations must be taken into account when considering domestic law. Although also not legally binding, the ICJ's opinion has legal weight, provided that national courts accept as a legal benchmark for their deliberations, which U.N. states typically do. The United States, where nearly two-thirds of all climate litigation cases are ongoing, is increasingly likely to be an exception as it has always been ambivalent about the significance of ICJ opinions for domestic courts. Compounding that, under U.S. President Donald Trump, the country has been tearing up all climate regulations. Not all U.S. states are sceptical about climate change, however, and lawyers said they still expected the opinion to be cited in U.S. cases. In Europe, where lawyers say the ICJ opinion is likely to have its greatest impact on upcoming climate cases, recent instances of governments respecting the court's rulings include Britain's decision late last year to reopen negotiations to return the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean to Mauritius. That followed a 2019 ICJ opinion that London should cede control. BONAIRE VERSUS THE NETHERLANDS Turning to environmental cases, in a Dutch civil case due to be heard in October - Bonaire versus The Netherlands - Greenpeace Netherlands and eight people from the Dutch territory of Bonaire, a low-lying island in the Caribbean, will argue that the Netherlands' climate plan is insufficient to protect the island against rising sea levels. The World Court said countries' national climate plans must be "stringent" and aligned to the Paris Agreement aim to limit warming to 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial average. The court also said countries must take responsibility for a country's fair share of historical emissions. In hearings last December at the ICJ that led to last week's opinion, many wealthy countries, including Norway, Saudi Arabia, and The United States argued national climate plans were non-binding. "The court has said (...) that's not correct," said Lucy Maxwell, co-director of the Climate Litigation Network. In the Bonaire case, the Dutch government is arguing that having a climate plan is sufficient. The plaintiffs argue it would not meet the 1.5C threshold and the Netherlands must do its fair share to keep global warming below that, Louise Fournier, legal counsel for Greenpeace International, said. "This is definitely going to help there," Fourniersaid of the ICJ opinion in the Bonaire case. 'URGENT AND EXISTENTIAL THREAT' The ICJ opinion said climate change was an "urgent and existential threat," citing decades of peer-reviewed research, even as scepticism has mounted in some quarters, led by the United States. A document seen by Reuters shows the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency may question the research behind mainstream climate science and is poised to revoke its scientific determination that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health. Jonathan Martel of the U.S. law firm Arnold and Porter represents industry clients on environmental issues. He raised the prospect of possible legal challenges to the EPA's regulatory changes given that an international court has treated the science of climate change as unequivocal and settled. "This might create a further obstacle for those who would advocate against regulatory action based on scientific uncertainty regarding the existence of climate change caused by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases," he said. The U.S. EPA changes would affect the agency's regulations on tailpipe emissions from vehicles that run on fossil fuel. Legal teams are reviewing the impact of the ruling on litigation against the companies that produce fossil fuel, as well as on the governments that regulate them. TheWorld Courtsaid that states could be held liable for the activities of private actors under their control, specifically mentioning the licensing and subsidising of fossil fuel production. Notre Affaire à Tous, a French NGO whose case against TotalEnergies is due to be heard in January 2026, expected the advisory opinion to strengthen its arguments. "This opinion will strongly reinforce our case because it mentions (...) that providing new licences to new oil and gas projects may be a constitutional and international wrongful act," said Paul Mougeolle, senior counsel for Notre Affaire à Tous. TotalEnergies did not respond to a request for comment. (Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg and Alison Withers, additional reporting by Valerie Volcovici from Washington; editing by Barbara Lewis)
Straits Times
11 hours ago
- Politics
- Straits Times
World Court climate opinion turns up the legal heat on governments
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox THE HAGUE - A landmark opinion delivered by the United Nations' highest court last week that governments must protect the climate is already being cited in courtrooms, as lawyers say it strengthens the legal arguments in suits against countries and companies. The International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, last Wednesday laid out the duty of states to limit harm from greenhouse gases and to regulate private industry. It said failure to reduce emissions could be an internationally wrongful act and, found that treaties such as the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change should be considered legally binding. While not specifically naming the United States, the court said countries that were not part of the United Nations climate treaty must still protect the climate as a matter of human rights law and customary international law. Only a day after the World Court opinion, lawyers for a windfarm distributed copies of it to the seven judges of the Irish Supreme Court on the final day of hearings on a case about whether planning permits for turbines should prioritise climate concerns over rural vistas. It is not clear when the Irish court will deliver its ruling. Lawyer Alan Roberts, for Coolglass Wind Farm, said the opinion would boost his client's argument that Ireland's climate obligations must be taken into account when considering domestic law. Although also not legally binding, the ICJ's opinion has legal weight, provided that national courts accept as a legal benchmark for their deliberations, which U.N. states typically do. The United States, where nearly two-thirds of all climate litigation cases are ongoing, is increasingly likely to be an exception as it has always been ambivalent about the significance of ICJ opinions for domestic courts. Compounding that, under U.S. President Donald Trump, the country has been tearing up all climate regulations. Not all U.S. states are sceptical about climate change, however, and lawyers said they still expected the opinion to be cited in U.S. cases. In Europe, where lawyers say the ICJ opinion is likely to have its greatest impact on upcoming climate cases, recent instances of governments respecting the court's rulings include Britain's decision late last year to reopen negotiations to return the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean to Mauritius. That followed a 2019 ICJ opinion that London should cede control. BONAIRE VERSUS THE NETHERLANDS Turning to environmental cases, in a Dutch civil case due to be heard in October - Bonaire versus The Netherlands - Greenpeace Netherlands and eight people from the Dutch territory of Bonaire, a low-lying island in the Caribbean, will argue that the Netherlands' climate plan is insufficient to protect the island against rising sea levels. The World Court said countries' national climate plans must be "stringent" and aligned to the Paris Agreement aim to limit warming to 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial average. The court also said countries must take responsibility for a country's fair share of historical emissions. In hearings last December at the ICJ that led to last week's opinion, many wealthy countries, including Norway, Saudi Arabia, and The United States argued national climate plans were non-binding. "The court has said (...) that's not correct," said Lucy Maxwell, co-director of the Climate Litigation Network. In the Bonaire case, the Dutch government is arguing that having a climate plan is sufficient. The plaintiffs argue it would not meet the 1.5C threshold and the Netherlands must do its fair share to keep global warming below that, Louise Fournier, legal counsel for Greenpeace International, said. "This is definitely going to help there," Fournier said of the ICJ opinion in the Bonaire case. 'URGENT AND EXISTENTIAL THREAT' The ICJ opinion said climate change was an "urgent and existential threat," citing decades of peer-reviewed research, even as scepticism has mounted in some quarters, led by the United States. A document seen by Reuters shows the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency may question the research behind mainstream climate science and is poised to revoke its scientific determination that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health. Jonathan Martel of the U.S. law firm Arnold and Porter represents industry clients on environmental issues. He raised the prospect of possible legal challenges to the EPA's regulatory changes given that an international court has treated the science of climate change as unequivocal and settled. "This might create a further obstacle for those who would advocate against regulatory action based on scientific uncertainty regarding the existence of climate change caused by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases," he said. The U.S. EPA changes would affect the agency's regulations on tailpipe emissions from vehicles that run on fossil fuel. Legal teams are reviewing the impact of the ruling on litigation against the companies that produce fossil fuel, as well as on the governments that regulate them. The World Court said that states could be held liable for the activities of private actors under their control, specifically mentioning the licensing and subsidising of fossil fuel production. Notre Affaire à Tous, a French NGO whose case against TotalEnergies is due to be heard in January 2026, expected the advisory opinion to strengthen its arguments. "This opinion will strongly reinforce our case because it mentions (...) that providing new licences to new oil and gas projects may be a constitutional and international wrongful act," said Paul Mougeolle, senior counsel for Notre Affaire à Tous. TotalEnergies did not respond to a request for comment. REUTERS
