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Japan Today
30-07-2025
- Politics
- Japan Today
World Court climate opinion turns up legal heat on governments
By Alison Withers and Stephanie van den Berg FILE PHOTO: Climate activists and campaigners demonstrate outside the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ahead of the reading of an advisory opinion that is likely to determine the course of future climate action across the world, The Hague, Netherlands, July 23, 2025. REUTERS/Marta Fiorin/File Photo 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 skeptical 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. 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 skepticism 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 licenses 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. © Thomson Reuters 2025.
Yahoo
29-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
UN court denies Mladic request for release on health grounds
By Stephanie van den Berg THE HAGUE (Reuters) -A U.N. war crimes court on Tuesday denied an application by Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, who is serving a life sentence for his role in the 1992-95 war in Bosnia, to be urgently released to Serbia on health grounds. In a decision published on the court's website, the court said that while Mladic's health condition is precarious, it is stable and well managed at the U.N. detention centre in The Hague. The specific medical conditions of the 83-year-old former general, convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity, are redacted in court papers but he is known to suffer cognitive impairments and was hospitalised at least twice this year, according to earlier court hearings and documents. "Uncontradicted medical opinions indicate that Mladic is nearing the end of his life, a fate that is human," the president of the court Graciela Gatti Santana, said in the ruling. She added, however, that the former general does not have an acute terminal illness which could justify his release. Mladic led Bosnian Serb forces during Bosnia's 1992-95 war, part of the bloody break up of Yugoslavia. He was convicted on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes including terrorising the civilian population of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo during a 43-month siege, and the killing of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys taken prisoner in the eastern town of Srebrenica in 1995. Solve the daily Crossword
Japan Today
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Japan Today
ICC issues arrest warrants for Taliban leaders over persecution of women
By Stephanie van den Berg The International Criminal Court on Tuesday issued arrest warrants for two Taliban leaders in Afghanistan including supreme spiritual leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, accusing them of the persecution of women and girls. The ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe that Akhundzada and Abdul Hakim Haqqani, chief justice of the Taliban, had committed the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds against girls, women and other persons non-conforming with the Taliban's policy on gender, gender identity or expression. Since the Islamist Taliban returned to power in 2021 it has clamped down on women's rights, including limits to schooling, work and general independence in daily life. The Taliban condemned the warrants as an example of hostility towards Islam. "We neither recognize anything by the name of an international court nor do we consider ourselves bound by it," the Taliban government's spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, added in a statement. It is the first time judges of the ICC have issued a warrant on charges of gender persecution. "While the Taliban have imposed certain rules and prohibitions on the population as a whole, they have specifically targeted girls and women by reason of their gender, depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms," the court said. The full warrants and details on the specific incidents they are based on remain under seal to protect witnesses and victims, the court said. NGOs hailed the warrants and called on the international community to back the ICC's work. "The international community should fully back the ICC in its critical work in Afghanistan and globally, including through concerted efforts to enforce the court's warrants," Human Rights Watch International Justice director Liz Evenson, said in a statement. The ICC has been under increased criticism from non-member states such as the United States, Israel and Russia. Last year the court issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Gaza conflict. The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2023 on suspicion of deporting children from Ukraine. Neither Russia nor Israel is a member of the court and both deny the accusations and reject ICC jurisdiction. Last month the United States imposed sanctions on four ICC judges including two who were involved in a ruling that allowed prosecutors to open a formal investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan, including alleged crimes committed by American troops. The ICC said it was an attempt to undermine the independence of an international judicial institution that provides hope and justice to millions of victims. © Thomson Reuters 2025.
The Star
24-06-2025
- The Star
Fire disrupts Dutch train traffic as NATO summit begins
THE HAGUE (Reuters) -Dutch police said on Tuesday they suspected a criminal act was the cause of a fire that disrupted train traffic in the Netherlands, where a NATO summit began in The Hague. A fire broke out early on Tuesday close to railway tracks in Amsterdam, damaging electricity cables, railway operator Prorail said. Services between Amsterdam and nearby Schiphol Airport and between the airport and the central city of Utrecht were cancelled until further notice. "The police are expressly considering a crime may have been committed and are further investigating the incident. We are looking for possible witnesses," a police spokesperson told Reuters. (Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg; Editing by Alison Williams)
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Populist Wilders breaks Dutch coalition to push immigration agenda in elections
By Stephanie van den Berg and Bart H. Meijer AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders toppled the ruling coalition on Tuesday, gambling that a snap election focused on immigration will bring victory at the polls and secure his decades-old ambition of holding the highest political office. "We had agreed that the Netherlands would become the strictest (on immigration) in Europe, but we're trailing somewhere near the bottom," he told journalists, speaking after his Freedom Party (PVV) ditched Prime Minister Dick Schoof's coalition, just weeks before a major NATO summit in The Hague. "I intend to become the next prime minister. I am going to make the PVV bigger than ever." Some analysts said that despite a European shift to the right as seen in Poland with the election on Sunday of a conservative nationalist as president, his plan could still backfire. Polls indicate declining popularity for the PVV since it joined the government. Even if it remains the largest party, fashioning a coalition will be difficult in a deeply polarised nation. Opposition parties rule out working with Wilders and his sudden move on Tuesday angered and baffled political partners. Wilders, the longest serving Dutch lawmaker, gradually climbed to power after entering parliament in 1998, running on an anti-Islam platform that called for zero immigration and expelling asylum seekers. He tapped concerns of voters disillusioned with established politics and concerns about housing costs and healthcare that he has associated with immigration. His euroseceptic Freedom Party joined a power-sharing, right-wing coalition in 2024 after a record win in general elections, but Wilders said the government failed to make good on promises to clamp down on immigration. Immigration has slowed significantly since a peak in 2022. The Netherlands received almost two first-time asylum applications per 1,000 inhabitants in 2024, slightly below the European Union average, according to Eurostat data. Ten EU countries had a higher relative number of asylum seekers last year, including neighbouring Germany and Belgium. Junior coalition government members, including the conservative VVD party of ex-prime minister Mark Rutte, were reluctant to embrace some of Wilders' harshest ideas, including closing the borders to asylum seekers, returning Syrian refugees and closing asylum shelters. Those proposals also flew in the face of European Union obligations and a Dutch humanitarian tradition since World War Two of taking in people fleeing conflict. Focusing attention on immigration is a critical electoral strategy for the PVV, said Simon Otjes, assistant professor for Dutch politics at Leiden University. "Wilders is trying to return the focus back to immigration in the hopes that that will be the main theme in the coming elections," Otjes said. "A lot can happen in the next six months and it will be very unpredictable." Political ambition has not been enough to secure Wilders the top job, even after winning multiple elections. He had to give up his claim to the top job last year to strike a coalition deal with three other conservative parties. Wilders' anti-Islam rhetoric has prompted death threats and travel bans to Muslim nations that trade with the Netherlands. His 17-minute film "Fitna" enraged the Muslim world in 2008 for linking Koranic verses with footage of terrorist attacks. He was convicted of discrimination after he insulted Moroccans at a campaign rally in 2014. Wilders also called the prophet Mohammad a "paedophile", Islam a "fascist ideology" and "backward religion", and suggested banning of mosques, headscarves and the Koran. The central question now will be whether Wilders can turn a future election into a referendum on immigration policy that effectively undercuts his opponents, said Joep van Lit, political researcher at Radboud University in Nijmegen. "But it's hard to tell how voters will react."
