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The involvement of two graduate students from Dominican University, near Chicago, to bring a successful law suit to a close a night club in Ecuador that employed underage prostitutes is the topic of a story in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education. Human trafficking, a major human rights violation, is widespread in many regions of the world. The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, a division of the U.S. Department of State, compiles yearly reports on human trafficking, placing countries into tiers based on compliance with national and international norms. The Trafficking in Persons Report 2008 includes an evaluation of human trafficking in Ecuador, which is classed as a Tier 2 country. The key international document to read is the UN’s Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children, which supplements the Convention against Transnational Organized Crime.

With the Beijing 2008 Summer Games just 21 days away, I thought a quick assessment of research sources for sports law would be in line. Closest to home you’ll find C-M Law Library’s Sports Law Research Guide, which is a fairly comprehensive bibliography of Ohio and federal materials. For international sources, try the recently updated International Sports Law from GlobaLex. And it’s always worth a quick read through a standard like the third edition of Sports Law in a Nutshell.

Finally, one of my personal favorites is the very Web 2.0 tag-enabled Bibliography on Sports Law from the Peace Palace Library, which brings your basic bib into the 21st century.

Two days ago, I posted about the ICC’s indictment of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and I completely missed the mark on the facts in one part of the post. Yes, Bashir has really been indicted by the ICC, got that part right. What I got wrong was the number of heads of state prior to Bashir who had been prosecuted by international tribunals.

I said two -- Charles Taylor and Slobodan Milosevic – but that’s not right. Can you name the others? To check your guess, see the answer to the IntLawGrrls Prosecutorial Puzzler.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, has accused Sudan president Omar Hassan al-Bashir of genocide and crimes against humanity in the Dafur region of Sudan. This is the first indictment of a head of state by the ICC. Two other heads of state – Charles Taylor and Slobodan Milosevic – have been charged by international tribunals, the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, respectively.

Three judges of the ICC will decide whether to issue an arrest warrant for Bashir. ICC judges have issued eleven arrest warrants requested in the past, so it is likely that Moreno-Ocampo’s request for a warrant on Bashir will be granted.

For more details, read the NYT article.

The AALS International Human Rights Law Section is repeating its “New Voices” program at the 2009 Annual Meeting on January 7, 2009. Interested individuals should submit an abstract of no more than two pages describing their research or scholarship by August 15, 2008. For detailed information, see the call for papers in the Section newsletter.

The American Society of International Law (ASIL) has recently added another excellent information product to their already long list of print and electronic publications. The Interest Group on International Organizations now publishes ASIL’s Reports on International Organizations, which are known as ASIL RIO.

The goal of ASIL RIO is to highlight the work of international organizations that are generally not well-known to international lawyers. While plenty of information sources cover the UN, EU or WTO, few discuss the work of INTERPOL, the AU, ASEAN, UNEP or the OSCE, to name a couple of the international organizations featured in the first issue of ASIL RIO.

ASIL RIO is browsable by international organization or by topical keywords such as economic growth, judicial reform, sanctions, corruption or democracy.

The UK is considering tightening the reins of social networks, such as Facebook and MySpace. A study recently conducted asked if there should be tighter regulation of social networks. According to the Guardian, 89% of those polled said they want rules to prevent personal information from being abused. The PCC (Press Complaints Commission), which monitors internet and video content in the UK, warns people of the dangers of posting information online and of possible consequences when doing so.

The EU is also considering increased restrictions on social networks. Their internet security agency, ENISA, is expanding its legislation to cover photos taken then posted online. Both the UK and EU agencies believe people need to be educated on how these networks actually work and know that it is difficult to get information off the Internet once it is online.

So where, oh where is the US on this issue? Well, our legislation is geared more toward the safety of children, such as the Deleting Online Predators Act. This was later expanded to include social networks.

What are the ramifications of policing social networks? Any regulation enacted would affect the entire industry. While Facebook and MySpace are the giants in this field, there are smaller networks such as, Ning, which will be effected as well. These restrictions may also affect business type networks, such as Linkedin. In addition to affecting other networks, usage will be affected. People will use or not use these types of media if they know they are being watched or listened to, especially regarding personal matters.

What implications do you foresee for regulating social networks?

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are 8 goals established in 2000 that United Nations member states have agreed to try to reach by the year 2015. The 8 goals, embodied in the United Nations Millennium Declaration, are:

• Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
• Achieve universal primary education
• Promote gender equality and empower women
• Reduce child mortality
• Improve maternal health
• Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
• Ensure environmental sustainability
• Develop a global partnership for development

To see how member states are doing in reaching these goals, check out the MDG Monitor. As a starting point for finding out if individual countries have enacted legislation that relate to the topics of the MDGs, try searching the Foreign Law Guide.

Human Rights Watch has put together a website highlighting the human rights challenges and issues in China happening as a result of 2008 Beijing Olympics. The site discusses issues such as forced evictions, labor abuses and more.

As posted earlier, 2008 has been designated by the U.N. as the International Year of Languages. The UNESCO portal provides some interesting tidbits on languages.

Did you know that --

• More than 50% of the approximately 7,000 languages spoken worldwide are likely to die out within the next few generations?

• 96% of the world’s languages are spoken by a mere 4% of the world’s population?

• Fewer than 100 languages are used in digital environments?

Minority languages are afforded some measure of protection through human rights mechanisms such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Article 27), and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

One of the most linguistically rich areas of the world is Africa, with an estimated 2,000 languages spoken on the continent [see Major Languages of Africa from PanAfriL10n from more details.] The topic of international legal protection for African languages is taken up in this new GlobaLex guide, “Towards the Human Rights Protection of Minority Languages in Africa” by Innocent Maja of Zimbabwe. It’s one of a large collection of research guides on international and foreign law topics available through GlobaLex.

On May 3rd, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities will enter into force, joining the ranks of the now eight core U.N. international human rights instruments [full list of instruments here]. The purpose of the treaty is to “protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity” (Article 1).

Some of the rights protected in the treaty include:

• Freedom from exploitation, violence and abuse (Article 16)
• Right to respect physical and mental integrity (Article 17)
• Freedom of expression and opinion (Article 21)
• Respect for privacy (Article 22)
• Right to adequate standard of living (Article 28)

The Convention also includes an Optional Protocol, which establishes a system that allows individuals with complaints of violations under the Convention to lodge ‘communications’ with a monitoring Committee.

The U.S. has not signed the Convention – no surprises there. The State Department's position statement on the Convention explains why. See this map to find out which countries are State Parties or signatories.

The United Nations Enable page provides details on development, history and news about the new Convention.

If you’re researching in the area of human rights, you’ll definitely want to consult human rights reports. These reports, conducted by governmental entities or major non-governmental organizations, document human rights conditions in all countries worldwide. In them, you’ll find country-specific information on topics such as torture, extrajudicial killing, disappearances, unlawful detention, prison conditions, freedom of speech, human trafficking, rights of women and children, freedom of religion, child soldiers, and more. Some reports broadly describe conditions in a country, while others discuss particular instances of human rights violations with some detail, complete with names and places of incidents.

Three major sources for human rights reports are the U.S. Department of State, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. All three base their reports generally on the principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The State Department submits its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices annually to Congress in compliance with sections 116(d) and 502B(b) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (FAA). Its 2007 report was released in March. Archived reports are available online back to 1999.

Unlike the State Department, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch include the United States in the list of countries reported. Both AI’s 2007 report and Human Rights Watch’s 2008 World Report on the United States discuss Guantánamo, torture and other ill-treatment, military commissions, domestic prisons, death penalty, and other topics.

For a basic background on human rights, check out International Human Rights in a Nutshell.

Remember all the news coverage about fashion models being too thin? Now France is taking measures against this. The lower house of the French Parliament has adopted a bill that would make it illegal to “provoke a person to seek excessive weight loss by encouraging prolonged nutritional deprivation that would have the effect of exposing them to risk of death or endangering health.” [full text of bill, in French, from the National Assembly] The bill is particularly aimed at websites that promote eating disorders and starvation as a means of weight loss. Full news coverage from the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune.

Research Tip!! How’d I find the text of that proposed French legislation? (No, it wasn’t mentioned or linked in either newspaper article.) Answer: I went over to GlobaLex and looked up a research guide on French law, which led me to the National Assembly site and the bill text.

Pakistan has been seriously in the news and here’s your opportunity to learn more about its Constitutional crisis and implications. Professor and Associate Dean Tayyab Mahmud of the Seattle University School of Law, and former faculty member at Cleveland-Marshall speaks at 5:30 p.m. (note change in time) Thursday, April 10^th , Moot Court Room, on “Laws, Limits and Exceptions: Lessons of the Constitutional Crisis in Pakistan.” See Announcement . As noted on his Seattle University page links to a number of his law journal articles are available on the SSRN site.

For some background info on Pakistan – New York Times articles; BBC Pakistan page; the CIA World Factbook; Pakistan’s government website; infopak.gov.pk

Did you know that this February, woman in Saudi Arabia was arrested for being in a Starbucks with a male colleague?

Or that this January, a seven-year ban on attending opera and circus performances was lifted in Turkmenistan?

What about Germany's new Act Protecting Against the Endangerment of German Security Through the Proliferation of High Resolution Aerial Imagery of Earth?

The source for these tantalizing pieces of far-flung legal information is the March issue of the Global Legal Monitor, an electronic publication of the Law Library of Congress. The Global Legal Monitor provides timely updates on legal developments worldwide, with information drawn from the Global Legal Information Network, offical national legal publications, and reliable media sources. Back issues of the Global Legal Monitor are available online from May 2006.

The Law Library of Congress also publishes Current Legal Topics, a series of online research guides which includes guides on international topics such as children's rights, Cuba and Castro's resignation, the legal history of Iraq, and the Hariri assassination.

Here’s a smattering of U.S. legislation to watch in 2008 that could have a substantial impact on people’s lives throughout the world:

• Global Poverty Act (sponsored by Senator Barack Obama) would require the U.S. to provide for the implementation of the Millennium Development Goal of alleviating poverty and promoting sustainable development.
• GROWTH Act (Global Resources and Opportunities for Women to Thrive Act) would increase U.S. support of economic opportunities for women living in poverty worldwide.
• Global Democracy Promotion Act would overturn a policy referred to as the “Global Gag Rule.”
• United Nations Population Fund Women’s Health and Dignity Act would promote women’s and family health.

Source: the Sierra Club’s Legislative Tracker website, full-text of the bills from Thomas (Library of Congress).

Recently, the IntLawGrrls blog featured Prof. Mary Ellen O’Connell’s observations on the anniversary of the Iraq invasion, who notes that “[f]ive years on, the most tangible lesson of Iraq is that our nation ignores international law at its peril.” Prof. O’Connell points out that the U.S. has ignored provisions of the U.N. Charter on the use of force, as well as the Geneva Conventions on the humane treatment of detainees. Full post here. Prof. O’Connell also has an op-ed on the topic at Jurist.

The Kyoto Protocol to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change is due to expire in 2012 and delegates have met for an international conference in Bali to discuss plans for next major climate change agreement. More information is available on the UN FCCC website and in a Special Report in the BNA Environment Reporter.

Being a signatory, but not having ratified Kyoto, the United States is not among the 176 state parties to the treaty. Complete treaty status information, including all state parties with ratification dates is available through our online version of Multilateral Treaties Deposited with the Secretary-General.

On Feb. 19, President Bush met with Rwandan President Paul Kagame to sign a bilateral investment treaty (BIT) that would guarantee legal protection for investors in this small east-central African nation. According to a White House Fact Sheet, this is the first BIT concluded between the U.S. and a Sub-Saharan African country since 1998. The signed treaty will enter into force following ratification by the U.S. Senate and the Rwandan Parliament.

The CIA World Factbook states that coffee and tea are Rwanda’s primary trade commodities, but this Jan. 28 article from AllAfrica.com states that the tourism industry overtook the coffee and tea industries in 2007 as the country’s top foreign currency earner. The mountain gorillas are one of the major ecotourism attractions in Rwanda.

You can find more information on the U.S.-Rwandan BIT through the Library’s subscription to BNA International Trade Reporter, including in this overview article [on-campus IP access, otherwise requires authentication].

CSU’s Center for Election Integrity is in the forefront of making Ohio the national leader in transparent, legal, efficient, and accurate elections. Transport the Center for Election Integrity to Russia, and there’s a good chance it might be shut down, along with the entire Cleveland State University.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports today that a Russian court in St. Petersburg closed down the European University of St. Petersburg [more on university], citing fire code violations. As the article points out, the University was targeted for political reasons under President Vladimir Putin. See Russian Court Shuts Down University That Offered Politically Sensitive Courses.

Concerns about election monitoring are far from being unique to Ohio. The European University of St. Petersburg conducted research on elections and offered a course on election law. The University also offered courses on human rights and democratic institutions. Russia’s presidential election is coming up on March 2^nd.

C-M Law students interested in learning more about law in Russia have the opportunity to attend the St. Petersburg Summer Law Institute in Russia from June 30 – July 26, 2008. [more]

Disturbing news stories have been pouring out of this east African country since the start of the tribal unrest following the Dec. 27, 2007 presidential elections. To catch up on the recent events, see the New York Times’ Times Topics page for Kenya, which provides an overview of the situation and brings together recent archived news stories.

To learn more about Kenya, try Portals To The World from the Library of Congress, which includes a section on Kenyan Government, Politics, and Law. More legal information about Kenya can be found at GlobaLex and WorldLII, see in particular Researching Kenyan Law [GlobaLex] and WorldLII’s Kenya page.

The situation in Kenya raises various human rights concerns, which are summarized on the country pages at Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. To find out what human rights treaties apply to Kenya and how the country has followed up on its reporting obligations, see bayefsky.com.

Are you writing a seminar paper or note this semester on an international law topic? If so, check out the Library's new research guide on international law. It's a general guide covering the basics of finding treaties, caselaw from international courts and tribunals, and books and journal articles on international law. It also includes sections on citing to international law sources (great for papers), deciphering confusing abbreviations, and studying for class.

The General Assembly of the United Nations has declared 2008 to be the International Year of Languages (it’s also declared 2008 the International Year of the Potato!!).

Linguist rights have long been included in the many basic human rights; especially protected are the linguistic rights of minorities. EISIL (Electronic Information System for International Law) has collected a handy page of primary documents, web sites and research resources on linguistic rights, which includes links to the 1996 Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights and the 1992 European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

The United States has likewise confronted the issue of linguistic rights, as exemplified by the 1923 U.S. Supreme Court case of Meyer v. Nebraska 262 U.S. 390. The plaintiff had been convicted under a Nebraska statute of unlawfully teaching the subject of reading in the German language to a ten year old student. The Court overturned the law, declaring it unconstitutional under the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment [Library of Congress web guide].

From their start less than a year ago, IntLawGrrls has been a voice of women who teach, work and practice international law. The bloggers on IntLawGrrls include professors at schools like UC Davis, American, Université de Paris and others. Along with posting on international law topics like Guantánamo and the WTO, IntLawGrrls post on issues such as the 2008 election, capital punishment, and women leaders. Many posts follow the “on this day in history” pattern like these posts on suffrage.

And, yes, there’s plenty of pink.

MEMRI (The Middle East Media Research Institute) can help you learn more about the Middle East through its print and TV media by bridging the language gap. MEMRI is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit research institution based in Washington, DC that provides timely translations of Arabic, Persian and Turkish print and TV media. In addition, MEMRI offers original analysis of political, intellectual, social and cultural trends in the Middle East.

The materials are organized by country or region (Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestinian Authority, Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Syria & Turkey), and by subjects such as U.S. and the Middle East and inter-Arab relations.

It’s the time of the year to catch up with developments near the North Pole, or more generally, the Arctic. Countries are trying to sort out who has the rights to explore the continental shelf around the Arctic, and exploit natural resources there.

Russia recently planted a flag in the Arctic sea bed to claim its rights, rights which Canada disputes. Russia Plants Flag under North Pole, BBC News Aug. 2, 2007. The dispute for rights has become more pressing, because melting polar ice caps have allowed for easier exploration, and there is interest in finding new sources of oil and gas. Russia Ahead in Arctic "Gold Rush"by Paul Reynolds, BBC News, Aug. 1, 2007. Many countries are involved in the dispute over various Arctic regions, including the United States, Canada, Norway, Russia, Denmark and Greenland. According to Reynold's article, the United States needs to ratify the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in order to help resolve the dispute.

 (More)

What's EISIL?

EISIL, the American Society of International Law's premier free online research tool, points you to the highest quality primary materials and the most authoritative websites and research guides on international law. It's a great place to start your international law research.

What's new?

EISIL's added a few new features to make researching international law online even easier. There's the EISIL Extra box that alerts you to recent items, a Recent Additions button that lets you seen the latest content up front, and the ability to save the results of your searches.

What about Bluebooking help?

Let's face it - google the name of any big name treaty -- say CITES - and you'll find the text of the treaty, no problem. But what about a decent Bluebook citation?

By clicking on More Information under any EISIL primary source, you'll find a field on Legal Citation. I won't guarantee it's 100% Bluebook, but it will sure get you on your way to writing a great citation. See this example for CITES in EISIL.

Looking for information on the environmental laws of Mexico, preferably in English? Or maybe you would like to find information on copyright laws in Germany? A great starting point for foreign law questions like these is Foreign Law Guide, an online bibliography by Reynolds & Flores. The database does not contain the full text of foreign laws, but rather, provides citations and web links. For each country, the database: (1) Lists the major legislative codifications, administrative regulations and court reports, and whether copies have been published in English. (2) Provides links to online sources, both free and for fee. (3) Lists legal subjects and citations to laws on that subject, as well as citations to secondary sources. (4) Briefly summarizes the country's legal system. This database is available both on campus and remotely with a CSU Id number and PIN.

The library's new subscription to Heinonline's Foreign and International Law Databases enables electronic searching over multiple titles previously available only in print. The titles are in pdf format, and may be printed or downloaded. Here is what is currently available:

Yearbooks - Yearbooks contain articles of current interest concerning the law of a foreign country and/or international law from a specific country's perspective. Yearbooks may discuss cases, legislation and treaties, and may even contain the text of new legislation.

Periodicals - including the Proceedings of the American Society of International Law (1907-2005)

US Law Digests on International Law - (through 1980. 1989-current available on the State Dept's web page.) The Digests, published by the U.S. State Department, provide current information on the views and practice of the U.S. Government in the arena of international law. Before 1973, the digests contained a comprehensive subject analysis. After 1973, the digests discuss only current international legal events.

International Tribunals/Judicial Decisions: Includes decisions from the Hague Permanent Court of International Justice and Reports of International Arbitral Awards.

Heinonline will periodically add new titles to this collection.

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