Legal Issues in the United Nations Compensation Commission on Iraq
This article is a comprehensive interrogation of the legality or otherwise of the United Nations Compensation Commission  (UNCC) on Iraq; its establishment, operations and manifestations as the very first war reparation facility adopted by the Security Council on the basis of Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, and making it binding on an aggressor State. The paper argued that the UNCC, which is an interesting example of the institutionalisation of the United Nations compensation mechanism, is unprecedented in the UN’s compensation experience, in many respect. Although the design of the UNCC, however, fell within the tradition of war reparation facilities, in some respect, its operations, particularly subjecting the whole economy of Iraq to international control violated Iraq’s sovereignty. The paper concludes that despite the lacuna, the design of the UNCC would serve as a model for future compensation schemes. Keywords: Iraq, Compensation, Reparation, United Nations, UNCC, International Law.
The United Nations Compensation Commission: Practical Justice, not Retribution
Over the decade of the United Nations Compensation Commission’s work, there has been voiced by some a vague sense that the UNCC, although created to give some justice to those directly injured by Iraq’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait, should instead be viewed as a part of the system of international economic sanctions. While it is true that any compensatory mechanism may be said to sanction the wrongful actor, the UNCC is not an economic sanction as that term is understood in international relations and law. Rather, the UNCC provides a measure of practical justice to those who suffered damage as a direct result of the crime of aggression. In this essay, the authors ask when it may be said that that which ostensibly is a compensation procedure partakes more of a scheme of retribution, and should be analysed in terms not of the adequacy of compensation to the victims, but rather of the extent of the punishment that is indirectly inflicted on the population of the wrongdoing state. Applying such an analysis, it is concluded that the UNCC should not be viewed as an economic sanction, but rather an institution that has delivered practical justice to millions of victims of Iraq’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait.
Deliberative Democracy and the Resource Curse: A Nationwide Experiment in Tanzania
Oil and gas discoveries in developing countries are often associated with short-sighted economic policies and, in response, calls to insulate resource management from populist impulses. We report on a randomized experiment testing methods to overcome this apparent tension between sound resource governance and democratic politics. Soon after Tanzania’s discovery of major natural gas reserves, we invited a nationally representative sample of voters to an intensive public deliberation of policy options featuring nationally recognized experts and small-group discussions. Democratic deliberation reinforced the public’s strong preference for rapid spending of gas revenues, but also increased support for various prudential and economically orthodox measures, including independent oversight of gas revenues, limits on government borrowing, and selling gas abroad rather than subsidizing fuel at home. These effects were driven by deliberation per se, rather than a pure information treatment, and show no evidence of contamination by facilitatoror peer-effects in group deliberations. www.cgdev.org Justin Sandefur, Nancy Birdsall, James Fishkin, and Mujobu Moyo