The International Court of Justice delivered its judgment on April 16, 2013, in Frontier Dispute (Burkina Faso/Niger), a case submitted by special agreement or compromis and jointly notified to the Court on July 20, 2010. The judgment was unanimous on all holdings in the operative part or dispositif, but nevertheless included a declaration by Judge Bennouna and separate opinions by Judges Cancado Trindade and Yusuf as well as Judges ad hoc Mahiou and Daudet. The judgment set forth the parameters within which the border between Burkina Faso and Niger will be demarcated and, as such, should contribute to peace and stability in the region. This case is also notable for what was not decided; despite a clause in the compromis requesting the Court to “place on record” the parties’ agreement regarding the border in two sectors, the Court declined to include the agreement in the judgment’s dispositif, finding for the first time that a matter submitted to it did not constitute a dispute.

When Yasin Al-Kadi, a Saudi businessman and alleged terrorist financier, prevailed at the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and secured the lifting of economic sanctions that had been imposed against him since 2001, he opened a major gap in the multilateral legal framework for targeted economic sanctions. The framework dates to the late 1990s, was expanded substantially after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and now may be in decline, due in substantial part to the ECJ’s decision. The Kadi case rests on a simple legal proposition: there must be evidence to support restrictions against an individual for his alleged misconduct. The dilemma for authorities that impose targeted economic sanctions is that while the evidence exists, it tends to be sensitive, often classified–particularly with respect to terrorism, but also in similar frameworks imposing sanctions against those involved in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or human rights violations–and the intelligence services that collect such information prefer to keep it closely held.

On May 29, 2013, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Court) issued its first pronouncement on abortion in the context of an order for provisional measures against El Salvador. The beneficiary was a young woman known as “B,” who suffered from lupus and whose fetus was determined to have anencephaly, a condition in which a major part of the brain is absent. The absolute criminalization of abortion in El Salvador prevented her doctors from terminating the pregnancy in order to protect her health, leading the Court to require the State to adopt the necessary measures in order for B’s doctors to perform the procedures they considered “opportune and desirable” to avoid irreparable harm to her rights to life, personal integrity and health.

On July 11, 2013, the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) adopted the UNCITRAL Rules on Transparency in Treaty-based Investor-State Arbitration (Transparency Rules). The new Transparency Rules are the product of three years of negotiations in UNCITRAL. The Transparency Rules will be available in two forms: (1) as part of the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules, for use in arbitrations conducted under those rules, and (2) as a free-standing set of rules, available for use in arbitrations conducted under other arbitral rules, such as the Rules of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), or in ad hoc proceedings. The Transparency Rules, as well as the new version of the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules that incorporates the Transparency Rules, will come into effect on April 1, 2014. The Transparency Rules are for use only in treaty-based investor-State arbitration – not in traditional commercial arbitration.

On June 27, 2013, delegates to a Diplomatic Conference of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) adopted the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled (Marrakesh Treaty). Governmental delegates and international disability rights advocates hope that the new instrument will increase access to information for millions of visually impaired people around the world, especially in developing countries.

In the past decade, Latin American States have begun to voice strong criticisms of the existing system for the settlement of disputes between foreign private investors and States through international arbitration based on investment treaties. Since the end of the nineties, said system has undergone an extraordinary development due to the direct right of action granted to foreign investors by investment treaties. Indeed, the great majority of the thousands of investment treaties existing today not only grant substantive protection to investments made by investors of one State party in the territory of the other State party to the treaty, but also contain investor-State dispute settlement provisions allowing investors to initiate arbitration proceedings against host States for an alleged breach of the treaty by the State. The practice of arbitration based on investment treaties has, however, generated many difficulties with respect to both the arbitral tribunals’ application of the substantive protections provided for in the treaties and to the functioning of the arbitration proceedings. In response to those difficulties, Latin American States are seeking to set up regional legal and political cooperation initiatives to create alternatives to the existing system. The Declaration of the 1st Ministerial Meeting of the Latin American States Affected by Transnational Interests (Declaration) adopted in Guayaquil, Ecuador on April 22, 2013 is one recent example of such initiatives.

On June 14, 2013, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (the Court), in the consolidated matter of Tanganyika Law Society and the Legal and Human Rights Centre v. Tanzania and Rev. Christopher R. Mtikila v. Tanzania, found that the government of Tanzania violated the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Charter) when it prohibited independent candidates from contesting presidential, parliamentary, and local government elections. The case provides insight into the trajectory of the Court and its approach towards the jurisprudence of other international and regional human rights organs.