Matter of Fact — Issue 2
The Russian Foreign Ministry announced on 20 August that Russia is the sole guarantor of Ukraine's sovereignty. This is not a joke.
The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has announced the purchase of robot dogs for use in immigration enforcement operations. The dogs are equipped with cameras and sensors that can detect chemicals and would be used in situations considered unsafe for human officers. ICE plans to spend up to $2 million on the purchase. In other news, the United States recently ranked below fifty other countries in a UNICEF assessment of child wellbeing.
The European Convention on Human Rights entered into force on 3 September 1953. In the seventy-three years since, it has helped countless people across Europe seek justice at home and in Strasbourg. Five EU member states — Denmark, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Greece — have agreed on a common model for facilities to be built outside EU territory, to be financed by EU taxpayers, in countries not yet disclosed, under conditions not yet agreed, to house asylum seekers whose applications have been rejected and who cannot be returned to their countries of origin. The ministers described the facilities as not "a prison" or "a detention camp" but places where "partner countries give irregular migrants a new chance." The Convention remains in force. The facilities are expected to be operational by 2027.
At the Seoul Defence Dialogue on 8 September, a military attaché from the Chinese Embassy in Seoul passed a note to the Philippines' Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro while he was speaking about the importance of international law for smaller nations. The note asserted that China's rejection of the 2016 South China Sea arbitration ruling — in which an international tribunal found that China's claims to most of the South China Sea had no legal basis under international law, a ruling China has refused to recognise — was, in Beijing's view, entirely consistent with international law. Teodoro read it aloud to the room. He described it as "actual coercion, bullying and aggression." He noted that China had signed the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea before losing the case. He kept the note as a memento. He expressed the hope that the person who sent it would "not suffer in a gulag for it."