NationStates Jolt Archive

Yeah, the title needs some work. I can't think of anything better at the moment, and that seems like a silly reason to delay posting a draft, so here goes:

The General Assembly,

DEFINING, for the purposes of this resolution, an ex post facto law as one which retroactively criminalizes any action which was legal at the time it was originally performed, or increases the penalties involved in such an action after the action has been performed,

ACKNOWLEDGING that ex post facto laws have historically been abused by tyrranical governments to wrongfully imprison their citizens,

NOTING the widely held belief that a citizen should not be punished for an action which was considered legal when that action was performed,

RESOLVES that no member nation may enact any ex post facto law within its domain.

Human Rights resolution, obviously enough. Mild/Significant or so.

I like it. It makes sense, I'm wondering why we haven't thought of it before. Well written.

Desdemona,
UN representative,
The Black New World
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Hmm. This is an excellent issue and not something I'd have thought of. In the absence of any inspiration for a better title, I just have one question: how would this affect governments trying to punish members of a previous government for their crimes?

An example: tyrannical government X enacts a law to round up all homosexuals/ immigrants/ whatever and put them in death camps, then does so (legally, under its own terms).
Tyrannical government X is then overthrown and replaced by democratic government Y, which seeks to put members of government X on trial. But their actions were legal under their own law... so government Y can't retroactively make them illegal.

This is just a thought... could such situations be better dealt with under international law instead?

We applaude the drafted proposal.
It is one of a view proposal which we can agree with.
It makes sense, is reasonable, well-written and it is an REALY an issue of Human rights and therefore an issue which can legitimatly considered an UN-issue.
We want to respond to the objections:

"An example: tyrannical government X enacts a law to round up all homosexuals/ immigrants/ whatever and put them in death camps, then does so (legally, under its own terms).
Tyrannical government X is then overthrown and replaced by democratic government Y, which seeks to put members of government X on trial. But their actions were legal under their own law... so government Y can't retroactively make them illegal."
Due to the fact that UN laws is above national law such national laws were in violation of them. The dictators can therefore be brought for trial because of breaking international conventions of human rights and UN resolution (law).
Therefore we don´t see any problem with that.
Furthernmore we want to add that in most dictatorship the "paper law" also gives rights and bans murderer and attacking of others. Dictators are actually were often even ignoring the laws of the country the rule.
But that isn´t even relevant because they are already in violation of international law and can be charged with.

Sincerely yours

Marc Smith, president of Kybernetia