Forthcoming in the Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law (27)
However, if a forcible implementation is required, the expelling state should provide the alien
with ‘a reasonable period of time to prepare for their departure, having regard to all
circumstances’.134
At last, the Commission also included a separate section of draft articles on the legal
consequences of expulsion, including an innovative right of readmission as a form of
reparation, a provision on state responsibility, and a re-statement of the right of the state of
nationality to exercise diplomatic protection on behalf of its expelled national.
B. ‘Too Much’ Progressive Development?
No doubt, the 2014 Draft Articles on the Expulsion of Aliens represented a commendable
initiative by the ILC to clarify and articulate a particularly sensitive area of international law,
especially by codifying settled norms on the human rights of non-nationals and progressively
developing others. Yet, they have been the subject of considerable criticism from both states
and academia, eventually becoming the Commission’s bête d’aversion.135 Commentators note
that some draft articles have failed to incorporate – or have even ‘regressively developed’136 –
rights firmly established in international migration law. In addition, some have questioned the
Commission’s decision to propose draft articles on an area already regulated by a large number
of bilateral, regional, and multilateral treaties. In fact, though the draft articles try to fix this
issue through various ‘without prejudice’ clauses, the ways these may prevent and resolve
conflicts between different bodies of law remain uncertain. 137
134
Ibid., at 30–32.
This ‘contentiousness’ is illustrated by the initial inability of the UNGA to endorse, or even take note of, the
draft articles, but to merely take ‘note of the recommendation of the International Law Commission contained in
paragraph 42 of its report on the work of its sixty-sixth session, and decided to continue the consideration of the
recommendation at the seventy-second session of the General Assembly (2017)’. See UNGA Res. 69/119,
‘Expulsion of Aliens’ (18 December 2014).
136
W. Kidane, ‘Missed Opportunities in the International Law Commission’s Draft Articles on the Expulsion of
Aliens’ (2017) 30 Harvard Human Rights Journal 77-88, at 83–88.
137
Forteau, ‘A New “Baxter Paradox”?’, at 4–5.
135
34
Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4816199