Pro-democratic intervention in current international law: the case of The Gambia in January 2017

Kreß, Claus; Nußberger, Benjamin

doi:10.1080/20531702.2017.1338466

Cited by 12 publications

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“…418 Furthermore, any invitation of the incoming (or actual) president of The Gambia needed to contend with the verbal and physical actions of ECOWAS, as well as other actors, before it was even given and, to this extent, it is worth heeding the assessment that Resolution 2337 was 'elegantly formulated to express support for the possibility of a military solution called for and threatened by Senegal, ECOWAS and the [African Union]'. 419 identified as part of the mission; rather, 'a legal framework for the provision of this assistance was envisaged' and, Italy maintained, '[t]his framework should . .…”

Section: Pro-democratic Interventionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intervention and the Problematisation of Consent

Kritsiotis

2023

Armed Intervention and Consent

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and the United Kingdom followed. 1 For his part, President Maduro regarded these developments as a 'gringo coup' inspired by the United States, which he was determined to repel. 2 He responded by closing the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington D.C.; Guaido ´, in turn, appointed Carlos A. Vecchio as 'Ambassador of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to the United States of America'. 3 * I am indebted to my two interlocutors in this enterprise -Olivier Corten and Greg Fox -as I am to Erika de Wet and to Achilles Skordas for their detailed engagement with an earlier version of this chapter. My warm appreciation must also be expressed to Anne Peters and to Christian Marxsen, both of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, for their very kind invitation to participate in this fourth Trialogue in the series.

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Section: Pro-democratic Interventionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intervention and the Problematisation of Consent

Kritsiotis

2023

Armed Intervention and Consent

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“…272 He became president only after hastily swearing the oath in Senegalese territory. 273 It is difficult to state an opinion on the legality of this act under Gambian law, but one cannot help harbouring a few doubts 274 particularly as another oath was later sworn on 18 February 2017, in the capital Banjul, at the national festival celebration. 275 And we might add that Adama Barrow's first political act was to consent to an outside military intervention in The Gambia.…”

Section: Problems Raised By the Invocation Of Intervention By Invitat...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Intervention by Invitation

Corten

2023

Armed Intervention and Consent

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At first sight, securing consent for outside military operations is an attractive argument inasmuch as it appears to make such interventions incontrovertibly lawful. As the text of Article 2(4) of the 1945 Charter of the United Nations indicates, the prohibition of the use of force relates only to military interventions conducted by one state against another state. 1 If we argue a contrario, an operation conducted with the consent of the state in question is not prohibited under the Charter insofar as it is not an infringement on any state's political independence or sovereignty. 2 Accordingly, there would be no need for one state to justify or excuse any such intervention at the invitation of another state. Under the classical conception of international law, a state is represented by its government, and if that government invites another state to intervene in its territory, then such action is in the area of cooperation. 3 The effects of consent are therefore decisive: they tip the situation out of the domain of the use of force and into the domain of friendly relations.The existence of an invitation may also make it possible to escape the intricate debates that beset other aspects of ius contra bellum. This is a familiar point. For example, controversy has arisen -especially in recent years -over the possibility of invoking self-defence when interpreting the meaning of Article 51 of the UN Charter with respect to non-state groups. 1The ´odore Christakis and Karine Bannelier, 'Volenti non fit injuria? Les effets du consentement a `l'intervention militaire', Annuaire franc ¸ais de droit international 50 (2004), 102-37 (112-13). 2 James Crawford, Second Report on State Responsibility, 30 April 1999, UN Doc. A/CN.4/498/ Add.2, 12-13, para. 240(b). 3 See, e.g., UN Security Council (UN SC) Resolution 387 of 31 March 1976, recalling 'the inherent and lawful right of every State, in the exercise of its sovereignty, to request assistance from any other State or group of States'.

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“…The fact that the Council nonetheless welcomed ECOWAS’ military intervention suggests that the legal basis for the intervention ‘is to be found outside the system of collective security established by the UN Charter’ (Kreß and Nussberger, 2017: 244), leaving the right to intervention by invitation as the only remaining possible legal rationale for ECOWAS’ operation. However, as explained earlier, international law, at this point, does not know a right to request the use of force by a president in exile who has never been in effective control of the state in question.…”

Section: The Case Of the Gambiamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The case of The Gambia might therefore possibly trigger an expanded understanding of the concept of intervention by invitation to include invitations issued by heads of state who are not, and never have been, in effective control of ‘their’ state. Kreß and Nussberger, for instance, suggest that the UNSC’s endorsement of Barrow as the legitimate President of The Gambia could furnish ‘a further precedent for the willingness of the international community to give precedence to democratic legitimacy over the effective control of government in a small number of borderline cases’ (2017: 250).…”

Section: The Case Of the Gambiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi-level Approaches to Countering Unconstitutional Changes of Government in Africa: Implications for the Rule of Law

Reinold

2019

Journal of Asian and African Studies

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This article assesses the impact of multi-level approaches to the problem of unconstitutional changes of government (UCGs) on the rule of law at the national and global level. Based on a single-case study of the 2016 Gambian UCG, this article concludes that multi-level governance tends to strengthen the rule of law at the national level, but only if certain conditions are met. These include an agreement about the rules of the road regulating how the different layers of governance interact – subsidiarity v. precedence for organizations from higher levels of governance – and the definition of a common purpose. Such unity of purpose is easier to attain if the (geo)political stakes of a crisis are relatively low, the prospects of success of a military intervention high, and if the perpetrators of the UCG have forfeited their legitimacy both locally and globally. This prevents them from exploiting institutional rivalries and shrinks their space for diplomatic manoeuvre and thus their ability to use forum shopping for their benefit. If these conditions are met, then multi-level responses to UCG will strengthen the rule of law at the domestic level, while at the same time potentially undermining the rule of law at the global level.

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Pro-democratic intervention in current international law: the case of The Gambia in January 2017

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

Intervention and the Problematisation of Consent

Intervention and the Problematisation of Consent

Intervention by Invitation

Multi-level Approaches to Countering Unconstitutional Changes of Government in Africa: Implications for the Rule of Law

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