Approximately 11 current and incoming members of the ILC from Chile, Ivory Coast, Latvia, Kenya, Finland, New Zealand, Mexico, Portugal, Senegal, Sierra Leone and United Kingdom presented on the current and future work of the ILC. The Chair of the Commission, Prof. Dire Tladi, and several special rapporteurs leading the work on critical topics, presented their works to which State delegates from the US and Sierra Leone as well as leading academics and practitioners responded.
Panel discussions covered a variety of critical international legal topics. The focus, in the first place, was on the topics peremptory norms of general international law (jus cogens) and protection of the environment in relation to armed conflicts. Following multi-year studies of those topics, the ILC completed its work on those issues and forwarded the final outcome to the UN General Assembly this year. The symposium provided a welcome to opportunity to reflect on those final outcomes. The discussions then turned to immunity of state officials from foreign criminal jurisdiction, which has been the longest running topic in the ILC in recent times, dealing with questions of how international law expects national courts to address issues of immunity from prosecution of State officials alleged to be involved with the commission of atrocity crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture, apartheid and enforced disappearances. The symposium then shifted gears, from looking at the past, to looking toward the future. The focus on the future work of the ILC concerned the place of subsidiary means, in particular, the role of judicial decisions and scholarly works in the sources of international law and the international legal framework on piracy and armed robbery at sea. The latter two topics were added to the program of work in May 2022 and will be debated by the ILC in 2023.
“It was a great honor for FIU Law and CILPA to host this timely symposium with some of those considered to be on the ‘who’s who list’ of international law,” said Dean Antony Page. In his opening remarks for the symposium, Dean Page underlined the importance of the “I” (that is International) in FIU. He explained that the symposium was one of several initiatives reflecting FIU Law’s support for the ILC and the idea of a rule-based international legal order that it promotes on behalf of the United Nations member states and the international community. He cited as examples the 2018 ILC symposium which led to publication of a special issue of the FIU Law Review, and the FIU International Law Externship which sends FIU Law students as legal assistants to ILC members in Geneva supervised by Professor Charles C. Jalloh (himself a member and special rapporteur of the ILC).
Professor Jalloh, who was the symposium convener and happened to be named the first Distinguished University Professor from the College of Law in October 2022, expressed warm appreciation to Dean Page for his and FIU Law’s continued support for his work and institutional commitment to advancing the rule of law in international affairs through principled support for the work of the ILC. Although logistical constraints limited the number of present and incoming ILC members who could be invited to physically attend, Professor Jalloh also was grateful to all the jurists from the US and around the world who participated in the symposium, as well as to the CILPA and the College of Law staff and students for “their excellent assistance helping put together such an excellent conference which has been well received by the ‘invisible college of international lawyers.’”
The ILC consists of 34 members elected by the UN General Assembly. It is the principal legal expert body of the United Nations, assisting members states with the promotion of the codification and progressive development of international law. Learn more about the ILC and CILPA.