international law

Intellectual property law doesn't protect the traditional knowledge and folklore of people, including indigenous peoples like American Indians. The problems vary: Who is the identifiable author or inventor if it's part of a group's culture? When did the work come into being if it's part of an oral tradition that changes? How can localized knowledge about the healing benefits of particular plants be patented if that use is already in the public sphere?

The World Intellectual Property Organization will be taking up international instruments aimed at protecting traditional knowledge and folklore from misappropriation, Intellectual Property Watch reports. Those instruments will be considered by the WIPO's General Assembly in September.

Intellectual Property Watch reports that "a panel addressing negotiators this week at the World Intellectual Property Organization asserted the property rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities over traditional knowledge and genetic resources and called on delegates to draft an international instrument compliant with their internationally recognised rights." The WIPO meeting took place this week.

James Anaya, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous People, "criticised a proposal to exclude from disclosure requirement traditional knowledge in the public domain, and considered that databases or similar mechanisms might be useful but may not always be culturally appropriate, for instance where customary laws forbid disclosure to non-community members," Intellectual Property Watch further reported.

Europe has reached an agreement to protect traditional knowledge held by indigenous peoples, according to an agreement on Balkans.com: "The regulation will oblige users, such as private collectors and companies, academic researchers or scientific institutions, to check that genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge have been accessed legally and that the benefits are shared fairly and equitably, on the basis of mutually agreed terms."

The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services, which was established in "April 2012 with a mandate to assess the state of the world’s biodiversity and ecosystems," is going to intergrate the knowledge of indigenous peoples into eco-policy, according to a Thomson Reuters Foundation report. Unlike other international fora, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, do not engage indigenous communities in order to shape their work, the foundation report also says.

The U.S. Senate has not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, including a vote in December 2012 that failed by five votes, The Interdependent reports. The convention was modeled after the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. The Senate likely will consider the convention again this year, The Interdependent further reports.

"Both U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power and Secretary [of State John] Kerry have argued that the treaty’s benefits occur not through changing any U.S. laws or even spending U.S. resources, but rather by encouraging other countries to follow U.S. leadership in terms of the ADA—legislation that is widely recognized as among the world’s highest standards for protecting the rights of the disabled," The Interdependent also notes.

The United Nations has called on countries, including the United States, which use drone strikes for counterterrorism purposes to comply with international law, The Dawn, a newspaper in Pakistan, reports. The resolution was sponsored by Pakistan.

It is the first time the United Nations has spoken on the issuse of remote-controlled drones, The Dawn reprots.

The United Nations adopted a resolution, sponsored by Brazil and Germany in the wake of the revelation that the United States was eavesdropping on leaders in those countries, supporting the protection of Internet privacy, the BBC reports. The non-binding resolution affirms that '"the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online,'" the BBC further reports.

The hope of such non-binding international measures is that they will influence international norms.

The Washington Post's Robert Barnes reports on oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court on where custody proceedings should be held in international custody disputes. While the case is the third the justices have heard about the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction in four years, this current case involves an issue of first impression: "The Hague Convention says that if a motion is filed within 12 months of the abduction, the child must be returned to the country of origin. But after that, a judge may consider whether a child has become 'settled' in his or her new home, and whether it would not be in the child’s interest to be uprooted again for custody hearings. [Father Manuel Jose] Lozano couldn’t file the motion before the 12-month deadline because he didn’t know where his daughter was. He is asking the court to find that the 12-month period does not start until a parent locates the missing child."

The Washington Post reports on the criticism that the International Criminal Court is facing in Africa: "The 11-year-old court of last resort was set up to take on some of the world’s most heinous crimes. But its choice of cases has frustrated African leaders, who say that comparable crimes elsewhere in the world are being ignored and that race is a factor in the decision-making. With Kenya’s president and deputy president on trial, African leaders are pushing for changes that some ICC advocates say would undermine the court completely. At stake is the future of a court whose creation was touted as a major breakthrough in ensuring that those who commit crimes against humanity do not escape justice — a dream that African nations, more than any other region in the world , signed up for."