Yesterday was Friday and we ended up going back to the Peace Palace for a tour. The Peace Palace holds five institutions, including the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which we spent most of the tour talking about. The court was established in 1899 at the First World Peace Conference. It has 111 members with hearings held in secret, unlike the ICJ, ICC, etc. The two arbitrators each have a judge, and there is a 3rd judge who is prom a neutral party and serves as the president of the arbitration. The court oversees mostly financial cases.
In fact, the Peace Palace was built primarily for this court. Countries that are signatories contributed money toward the building of the Palace, and Andrew Carnegie also gave a substantial amount of money. Many countries also give gifts when they join the PCA. The reason that it’s in Den Haag is that it was easily reachable both by land and by sea. The Netherlands was also already becoming the hub for international law.
Currently, the PCA is overseeing the Abyei case between the government of Sudan and the SPLM. It is being held in secret, though, as all PCA cases are, and the public has no information on how the case is going. Things may drastically change if South Sudan becomes its own state, and, further, if it signs onto the PCA as a member state.
We learned more about the International Court of Justice, which also resides in the Peace Palace. In 1946, the ICJ replaced the Permanent Court of International Justice, which had been put in place by the League of Nations. The ICJ stands as the principal judicial organ of the UN, focusing mostly on border conflicts and treaty violations. Judges are chosen by the UN General Assembly every nine years, It hears five to six cases per year, each case lasting about five years.
Conclusions made by the ICJ between two states are binding, but advice is not. In the case of Israel v. Palestine, Israel did not listen to the advice of the ICJ. Accountability is ensured mostly by diplomatic measures, although this has not often been an issue.
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After the tour, Erin and I bought stuff at Albert Heijn to make sandwiches and we ate in the hostel before napping and then heading to high tea with Flavio and Bryan. We decided not to head to the ICC, because with their lunch break, we would have caught only about 45 minutes of the trial if we were lucky. And we definitely needed the sleep.
We headed to the Courthouse in this swanky pat of Den Haag for tea, and had an excellent time with Flavio and Bryan. They’re really bonding with us. We talked about everything from Harry Potter to youtube videos to trans issues to gender and sexuality. It was awesome.
Then, we grabbed dinner at this Turkish place at Hollands Spoor station and headed to Leiden (also spelled Leyden, apparently). Not much was going on their, but we went to this Australian bar for a bit, and then a coffeeshop called Paradise Coffeeshop, I believe, which is now one of our favorites. We had an awesome time, and then headed back to Den Haag where Erin and I slept forever. Boy, did we need to sleep bank. We got up at 9, headed to breakfast, slept some more, and then left for Delft!
More soon,
Mac
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