THE UK’s special envoy on media freedom, Amal Clooney, has written to Westminster to resign her role in protest over the Government’s plans to break international law.
The international lawyer, who married actor George Clooney in 2014, said she had “no alternative” but to resign as the Government had made it “untenable” for her “to urge other states to respect and enforce international obligations while the UK declares that it does not intend to do so itself”.
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Clooney, who specialises in human rights and international law and represents high-profile clients such as Julian Assange and Nobel-prize winner Nadia Murad, added that the Government “threatens to embolden autocratic regimes that violate international law with devastating consequences all over the world”.
In a letter to the Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, she wrote: “I have been dismayed to learn that the Government intends to pass legislation – the Internal Market Bill – which, if enacted, would, by the Government’s own admission, ‘break international law’.
“I was also concerned to note the position taken by the Government that although it is an ‘established principle of international law that a state is obliged to discharge its treaty obligations in good faith’, the UK’s ‘parliament is sovereign as a matter of domestic law and can pass legislation which is in breach of the UK’s treaty obligations’.”
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Joanna Cherry last week called that UK position “a load of old mince”, while other legal experts deemed it “utterly risible” and “first-term, first-year undergraduate tosh”.
Clooney goes on: “Although the Government has suggested that the intended violation of international law is ‘specific and limited’, it is lamentable for the UK to be speaking of its intention to violate an international treaty signed by the Prime Minister less than a year ago.
“Out of respect for the professional working relationship I have developed with you and your senior colleagues working on human rights, I deferred writing this letter until I had had a chance to discuss this matter with you directly. But having now done so and received no assurance that any change of position is imminent, I have no alternative but to resign from my position.”
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