International law is broken, day in, day out

There is a lot of talk in the media today about the British breaking international law.
By Michael Clarke
Published 9th Sep 2020, 07:30 BST
Letter to the editorLetter to the editor
Letter to the editor

If we were to draw up a list of breaches of international law by countries we would never come to the end of it.

How many breaches of international is Israel guilty of not to mention the criminal behaviour by Nato since the Warsaw Pact was dissolved?

It doesn’t bear thinking about.

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I am not sure, incidentally, how serious the UK breach is or how often (or indeed if at all) countries make adjustments to their obligations under international law for legitimate or practical reasons.

I genuinely do not know but I’m not surprised that the British are going to make whatever changes are necessary to maintain the unity, as they see it, of the UK.

They were always going to do vis a vis Brexit what we did in the 1930s when we in Ireland re-wrote the Anglo-Irish Treaty unilaterally.

The latter was (presumably) a piece of international law too.

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In the meantime, we are breaking international law, day in and day out, by allowing the US to use Shannon to ferry their troops to or from war zones.

Nothing about that in the media.

Michael Clarke, Dublin

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Related topics:Northern IrelandNATOIsraelBrexit