The Red Velvet Lawyer

A Hero in Qatar's Successful Resistance to the Blockade On June 5, 2017, four neighboring countries --  Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt -- imposed a blockade of land, sea, and air routes to and from Qatar.  In my book chapter , on Qatar's strategic and successful responses to the blockade, I discussed the role of the Hamad Port.  See Paula Marie Young, The Siege of Qatar:  Creating a BATNA that Strengthened the Tiny Country’s Negotiating Power , QATAR: POLITICAL, ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL ISSUES (Nova Science Pubs. 2019). In that chapter, I said: Access to alternative ports played a bigger role in Qatari planning. Its new Hamad Port, the largest port in the Middle East, opened for what appears to be a soft-launch in December 2016, with an accelerated opening of other facilities at the port shortly after the siege began. Qatar made a QR 27 billion ($7.3 billion) investment in the site. Port officials reported an intent to expand its capacity throu...

First Inter-State Communications Ever to be Submitted to a United Nations Treaty Body On August 29, 2019, The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination issued the following press release : Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination closes ninety-ninth session, adopts decisions on inter-State communications by Qatar against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination 29 August 2019  * * * The Committee had continued to deal with inter-State communications submitted by Qatar on 8 March 2018 against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and the inter-State communication submitted on 23 April 2018 by the State of Palestine against Israel. Those were the first inter-State communications ever to be submitted to a United Nations treaty body, stressed Ms. Izsák-Ndiaye. The Committee had decided that it had jurisdiction on the communications submitted by Qatar and had declared them adm...

High-Quality Scholarship  about Qatar In May 2019, Nova Science Publishers published Qatar: Political, Economic, and Social Issues (Haitham M. Alkhateeb ed.).  The book covers political, economic, and social issues as the name suggests. Chapters 2 to 6 feature my analysis of the Qatari response to the blockade by four neighboring countries - Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt. The book is available from Amazon in hard copy and from libraries in digital format. The Table of Contents, set out below, shows its broad coverage. Preface Chapter 1. Qatar's Nation Brand: Facing the Regional Challenges (Nawaf Al-Tamimi, PhD, and Azzam Amin, PhD, Journalism Program, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Doha, Qatar, and others) Chapter 2. Bustards, Bullies, Billions, and the Blockade: Applying Dispute Resolution Theory to the First Nine Months of the Siege of Qatar (Paula Marie Young, College of Law, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar) Chapter 3. Po...

Tit-for-Tat Legal Strategy As noted below, Qatar brought a complaint before the World Trade Organization alleging that the UAE had violated various international trade treaties by imposing a land, sea, and air blockade on Qatar along with neighboring countries Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Egypt beginning in June 2017. UAE then brought its own complaint .  It alleged Qatar had banned the sale of products imported from the UAE and struck UAE companies from a list of approved participants in infrastructure projects.  This past week saw developments in the second proceeding.  For the complete story from The Peninsula  Qatar , see here .  The following excerpt provides a summary of the developments.  The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ statement underlined that the UAE’s decision to withdraw its complaint so soon after initiating this dispute confirms that Qatar has, and continues to, uphold and comply with its obligations unde...

Goal Setting Words for 2019:  "Expert" and "Support" "The process of setting intentions and joyfully reflecting on them is how, over time, we transform extrinsic into intrinsic motivations, and thereby sustain the energy and purpose to live true to our best aspirations."  Thupten Jinpa,  Two Exercises for Turning Intention into Motivation . Starting in 2014, I began picking three words to remind me of my goals for the year. Chris Brogan gave me the idea. Here are his words for 2019 with some tips on choosing the words. Here he describes the word-choosing process as part of a broader planning process based on the following steps: The Big Story Vision Goals Plans and Milestones Daily Calendar Brogan says: You could argue which goes first, a vision or a big story. I’d accept either. But to me, a vision is a story told in goals, so I put it below the big story. The big story is that which we want to believe about our life and o...

Call for Papers Dear colleagues, Qatar University Press has asked me to move forward with a proposed book that addresses the legal consequences and solutions arising from the blockade imposed on Qatar by its neighboring countries.   The working title of the book is: “The Arab Gulf Conflict: Legal Consequences and Solutions.” It is my pleasure to invite you to contribute a chapter to the book.  Please email me at pyoung@qu.edu.qa for background information about the blockade. Topics I expect to discuss in the book include: A Dispute Resolution Analysis of the Causes of the Dispute. Arab Conflict Resolution Strategies. 2103 and 2014 Riyadh Agreements. Thirteen Demands and Six Principles. Do Gulf Countries have the Unilateral Legal Right to Impose Sanctions on Qatar? Legal Concepts of National Sovereignty Laws Governing Military Conflict. Laws Governing Efforts to Force a Change in a Country’s Leadership. Qatar’s Air T...

One Way the Blockade Effects  People and not Just Governments I am writing several book chapters for an upcoming book on the blockade of Qatar. In one chapter I described attacks on the media by the countries starting the blockade – Saudi Arabia, U.A.E., Bahrain, and Egypt. Among other things, the countries blocked Al Jazeera broadcasts and other media originating from Qatar. I stated that the media blockade serve at least two purposes. It keeps an opposing narrative about Qatar from reaching people in the blockading countries. It also limits access to programming popular with conservative Muslim audiences. In that chapter, I also described the Saudis relationship with sport broadcaster beIn Sports: Saudi Arabia also blocked access to the ubiquitous and highly popular, Qatar-financed, beIN Sports on June 13, 2018. The station has about 5,000 staffers working in 43 countries. The U.A.E blocked access for six weeks before restoring it on July 22, 2018. Police had eje...

The Gulf, the Arabs, and the World  Amid Current Developments On April 28-29, 2018, Al Jazeera held its 12th Forum providing an opportunity for leading scholars and other experts to discuss a variety of topics affecting the Arab world.  The website for the forum,  @aljazeeraform , provides additional information and links to the videos of each session.  You can follow the Twitter coverage at  #AJForum . As I noted in my first post in this series, I am working from my notes, so I apologize in advance if I incorrectly paraphrase the remarks of any speaker. I was also reliant on the quality of the translation services and their audibility. Therefore, I am happy to make any needed edits to this summary. For summaries of the other sessions see: Opening Session Session 2: Iran and the Gulf Session 3: Change in the Region? Session 4: Changing Alliances in the Arab World Session 5: Palestine and the "Deal of the Century" Session 6: The M...

Let the Experts Speak on this Topic From the beginning of the siege of Qatar, the blockading countries -- Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Bahrain, and Egypt -- anchored their narrative about Qatar in a way that arguably would trigger the passions of a Western audience. Qatar, they asserted, financed terrorists, sheltered terrorist leaders, and supported Islamic radical movements throughout the region.  Qatar, on the other hand, consistently denied these claims.  It also publicly condemned 2017-18 terrorist attacks in Qatif, Pakistan, Egypt, Manchester, Tehran, London, Bahrain, Somalia, Barcelona, Jeddah, Peshawar, Kabul, and Benghazi. I am in the process of writing three articles about the siege of Qatar.  I spent the week-end closely examining these allegations.  I have found two reports worth reviewing:  Country Reports on Terrorism 2016, U.S. Dept. of State (July 2017), available at https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/272488...