Description

INTERNATIONAL LAW

Assignment Description:

Please identify and discuss one of the international law issues raised by the Chagos Case

(Mauritius vs the UK). You must demonstrate knowledge and skills to:

– Identify a topic for legal analysis from an international law perspective. The topic must be related to sources of international law, subjects of international law, title to territory and/or self-determination.

– Identify, find and review scholarly and primary sources, demonstrating effective use of databases and other written sources. You may also use relevant audio-visual materials.

– Provide arguments well-founded in international law to advance your ideas.

– Write a well-structured and well-referenced paper.

– Evaluate the authority and relevance of different sources of information,

including peer’s work. Possible topics:

CHOSE ONE TOPIC ONLY:-

• Legality of the decolonisation process. Rules applicable to assess this question.

• Relevance of customary rules and others regarding uti possidetis juris/territorial integrity in determining the status of Chagos prior and after decolonisation

• Legal status of the Agreement between the UK and Mauritian Representatives of the country.

• Possible grounds to claim the invalidity of the agreement.

• Legal basis to defend or deny the existence of the right to self-determination of Mauritius in this scenario.

• Legality and legal nature/status of the agreement between the USA and UK

• UK Declaration to ‘revert’ Chagos to Mauritius: analysis of unilateral acts as binding obligations in general and in this scenario

As explained in class, it is not a good idea in general to focus or even superficially address the topic of the Marine Protected Area and the dispute over this.

Instead, you are addressing international law of the sea without understanding the basics and without having had the opportunity to learn anything about that huge field of international law.

This means you are not only not showing your knowledge in the area of law we are assessing you. You are also showing the (logical) lack of understanding over topics we have not covered.

Please bear in mind what it is we are trying to evaluate: you understnad sources/subjects/right to self-determination/whatever sub-topic you decide within this and your research skills.

Plus your ability to provide good references and articulate well-founded arguments in international law.

As it is, and for the purpose of this exercise, this essay would not ‘pass’.

There is a lot of confusion that demonstrates you don’t understand well sources of international law, nor the right to self-determination.

You must read (or reread) the chapters of your handbook related to sources and subjects of international law, raising whatever questions you may have with me.

The materials uploaded on line (videos by myself, prof.. Schabas and Prof. Castellino) should help too.

Once you have covered all materials we have recommended to read as essential in class and resolve your questions, you can address the topic directly.

As it is now, you would probably ‘fail’ the essay because we are assessing your knowledge of sources and subjects and there is evidence of lots of confusion.

Your selection of secondary sources is very good and shows you have good instinct to select those. However, they also show you seem to have ‘google’ at random without fully understanding the underlying topics.

Start with the dispute over the Marine Protected Area that was resolved by the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea and where decolonisation was not addressed. But now you move to the International Court of Justice.

FOCUS AND DISCUSS ABOUT:-

-Whether or not the right to self-determination was already customary law at the time of Lancaster agreement.

-Uk claiming is that by the time that Mauritius and the uk signed the 1975 agreement there was no yet a customary law about self-determination. Mauritius and many other state that intervene in that case mainly from African union claim the contrary they say “sorry but no” from the moment in 1960 and later in 1970 the general assembly approve this resolution on decolonisation the right to self-determination already existed, and not only already existed it was already (jus conges) was already a Peremptory norm of international law, so any agreement between Mauritius and the uk that was contrary to that rule “ jus conges “ was

invalid already in 1975.

-Self-determination was customary law at the time but no a peremptory norm.

Use Primary Sources, Example:-

-Judgement

-Written proceeding

-Position of the African union, position of the UK and the position of Mauritius

-UNGA Resolutions on self-determination.

– Shaw book Chapter 5 and 9

-ICJ Advisory opinion