On 4 October, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Justice upheld the General Court’s annulment of a Council Decision concluding an Amendment to the EU-Morocco Association Agreement. It did so on the grounds that the EU Commission and Council had failed to obtain the consent of the Saharawi people and thereby violated their right to self-determination. This brings to an initial close a long line of cases concerning EU trade agreements with Morocco purporting to apply to the territory of Western Sahara. Western Sahara is a non-self-governing territory that has been occupied by Morocco since its invasion in 1975. The Saharawi are the recognized holders of the right to self-determination. The cases are brought by the Western Saharan national liberation movement and UN-recognised representative of the Saharawi people, the Front Polisario, and have been discussed on the pages of this blog on numerous occasions (here, here, here, here, here, and here).
Self-Determination
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EJIL: The Podcast! Episode 27: Preoccupied – The ICJ’s Palestine Advisory Opinion
In this episode, Dapo Akande, Marko Milanovic and Philippa Webb are joined by Yuval Shany, and discuss the recent advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem. The hosts and their guest explore the Court’s reasoning on how violations…
ICJ Delivers Advisory Opinion on the Legality of Israel’s Occupation of Palestinian Territories
Yesterday, the International Court of Justice delivered its groundbreaking advisory opinion on the Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem. (The Court’s opinion and all of the individual opinions of the judges are available here.) The bottom line of the AO is that the…
Is the Prohibition of Forcible Annexations of Territory a Jus Cogens Norm?
International law prohibits states from forcibly acquiring the territory of other states. But does this prohibition of the annexation of territory have the status of a peremptory or jus cogens norm? The question is unsettled. In the recent set of submissions to the International Court of Justice in the advisory opinion proceeding…
Towards A United Kurdistan: Prospects for Kurdish Self-Determination
A century has elapsed since one of history’s most hypocritical, enduring, and consequential betrayals of principle. Following World War I (WWI) and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, an independent Kurdistan was about to emerge. In Europe the Treaty of Versailles had implemented the principle of self-determination for ethnically-defined peoples, giving birth to new nation-states. Likewise in the…