International Law Archive

After a successful appeal at a United Nations tribunal, Croatian national hero Gen. Ante Gotovina, who led a 1995 offensive to retake a region of Croatia from Serbian militant control, was acquitted of war crimes last week. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia reversed the convictions of war crimes and crimes against humanity against Gotovina and Mladen Markac, a more junior general. Gotovina’s conviction in 2011 had dealt a blow to the image of Croatians as victims, rather than perpetrators, of the atrocities committed during the breakup of Yugoslavia. The successful appeal now provides Serbs with another example […]

Ahead of a World Health Organization summit bringing 100 countries together for the first meeting of member states on falsely labeled medical products, a group of public health experts is calling for an international treaty on substandard and counterfeit medicines. Some countries have laws prohibiting the sale of fake medicines, but, as the BBC reports, the lack of an international treaty allows organized criminal networks to sell fake drugs out of countries with weak laws. There have been multiple instances of mass deaths due to fake drugs, including in 2008, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration documented 81 deaths […]

A meeting in Hobart, Australia, of countries charged with protecting marine life in the waters around Antarctica closed last week without a vote on a joint proposal by New Zealand and the United States to create a marine protected area in the Ross Sea.* In an email interview, Alan D. Hemmings, an environmental consultant and specialist on Antarctic governance and environmental management, discussed the bid to protect the Ross Sea. WPR: What is at stake in the discussion over creating a protected area in the Ross Sea? Alan D. Hemmings: At stake is, critically, the Ross Sea ecosystem — what […]