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Juridisk Bacheloreksamen
Winter exam 2018/19
International Law
Assigned written individual assignment, 1 day
December 18, 2018 at 12:00 noon – December 19, 2018 at 12:00 noon

The Faculty of Law draws your attention to the fact that cheating at examinations is currently very
much in focus.

Therefore, the relevant rules applying to cheating at an examination are mentioned below:

Rules of disciplinary precautions towards students at the University of Copenhagen

Clause 4, sub-clause 2:

In cases of assumed cheat at an examination observed by the administrators of the examination, by the exam-
ination supervisors or by the subject teacher, the Head of Staff-Student Study Committee makes an investiga-
tion of the case.

The procedure for the investigation is as follows:

The subject teacher is asked to make a statement and, if possible a statement from the examination supervisors.
Hereafter, the student is asked to make his/her statement.
If the Head of the Staff-Student Study Committee finds the assumption of cheat reasoned the case will be
Clause 5, sub-clause 1:

Rector may sanction as follows:

1. Give a warning
2. Dismissal from the examination
3. Dismissal from the University in a limited period of time or permanently

The complete set of rules (in Danish) can be found at KU-net Studieordning og regler

The Faculty of Law

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Bachelor exam
International Law
Autumn/ winter 2018/19
Ordinary exam

24 hours take-home exam, in total 18 pages, including appendices

Papers must be written in English and may not exceed 11,700 characters, excluding spaces
Papers must stipulate the number of characters

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The Republic of Sardonia is a small island state in the Mediterranean Sea, not far from the North African coast.
Sardonian culture and civilisation has been shaped by a variety of very diverse influences from around the
Mediterranean basin, but successive governments have sought to anchor it within Europe. While not a member
of the European Union, the country is a member of the Council of Europe. Throughout history, its natural
beauty and clement weather have attracted people from far and away. In 2017, Sardonia began to receive a
different kind of visitor. A succession of very hot summers and the resurgence of bloody conflict across parts
of sub-Saharan Africa and in the Middle East created a massive migratory push that had people moving up to
North Africa where they would embark on often unseaworthy vessels to take them across to Europe. Because
of its proximity to the African continent, Sardonia was, for most, the destination of choice.

The vessels would aim to land on the southern shores of Sardonia. Many, if not most, of the vessels sank before
they reached their destination. In some instances, the shipwrecked people were rescued by passing ships and
brought to Sardonia where many of them claimed status as refugees.

As the weather got warmer in the first spring months of 2017, the numbers of people that landed on Sardonian
territory increased dramatically. The government, led by the Sardonian People’s Party under the leadership of
the charismatic Alessandro Ferro, was taken completely by surprise. A make-shift camp was soon organized
where the boat people were gathered together. Here, they were cared for and received medical attention. It
soon became clear that the situation was untenable. The government decided that something had to be done.
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Ferro saw the crisis as an opportunity to promote himself and his party that ran on a tough anti-immigration
platform. At the same time, he was conscious of the need to placate international opinion which, he reckoned,
would be stirred up by measures that seemed to ignore basic considerations of humanity. Ferro pushed through
national legislation that forbade all ships, whatever their origin, to dock in any Sardonian port carrying boat
people and to let the boat people disembark anywhere on Sardonian territory. Anyone caught violating the law
would be subject to heavy fines and, potentially, to a prison sentence (see appendix A).

Ferro also initiated negotiations with Shlimane Moussa, leader of The Tyrrhenian Freedom Alliance (TFA), a
local group of radical insurgents that were fighting the government of Tyrrhenia, a North-African country from
where most of the boats carrying people to Sardonia disembarked. Using very brutal methods, Moussa, a for-
mer general in the Tyrrhenian army, operated out of the north of the country, from the strip of the coast, from
where most of the boats departed for Sardonia.
Negotiations between Ferro and Moussa went smoothly. Within a matter of days, an agreement was signed
about an operation that would be called Salus a Mare [Safety at Sea]. The agreement implemented the work
of a group of Sardonian experts that Ferro had commissioned. It stipulated that the TFA would patrol the waters
close to the coastline of Tyrrhenia so as to intercept vessels carrying boat people. Patrolling would be done
according to a schedule that the Sardonian group of experts had worked out on the basis of studies of where
and when boats would disembark from the Tyrrhenian coast, and what routes they were most likely to take.
The agreement further stipulated that Sardonia would provide patrol boats to the TFA and bear the cost of
patrolling the waters (see appendix B).

The measures agreed between Ferro and Moussa soon proved to be effective. With the patrol boats working
round the clock, the number of vessels that made it into Sardonian territorial waters shrank drastically and,
with it, the number of boat people that landed on Sardonian shores. The people on the boats that were inter-
cepted were taken to TFA-controlled territory where they were interned in detention centres until a determina-
tion of their nationality could be made. Rumours circulated that conditions of life in the detention centres were
very harsh, in keeping with the general conduct of the TFA, and that the boat people were subject to different
treatment, depending on what could be ascertained about their political affiliations.

Where returning the boat people to their state of nationality, or to the place they had transited through, was
deemed to be safe, this was done without delay. In this way, the TFA managed to keep the number of boat
people residing its detention centres at any point in time down to an absolute minimum. In Sardonia, Ferro
capitalised on the success of the measures and went on to win a landslide victory at the general elections.
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Salus a Mare did not completely deter people from embarking on boats bound for Europe. In the early spring
months of 2018, as the weather got warmer, two large vessels, each carrying more than a hundred people,
departed from the Tyrrhenian coast, headed for Sardonia. The first ship managed to evade the patrol boats that
formed a ring around the outer edges of the Tyrrhenian territorial waters. It soon got into very heavy seas and
capsized. All of the crew and about half of the boat people onboard were able to save themselves onto rafts.

After a few days, the rafts were spotted by a Spanish ship, the San Pedro, that collected as many shipwrecked
people as it could hold. It then set course for Spain. It was intercepted 240 nautical miles from the Sardonian
coast by a lone TFA patrol boat that had strayed beyond the perimeter of the Salus a Mare operation. The crew
of the patrol boat boarded the San Pedro and asked to be given details about the people on board. Amongst the
crew was a Sardonian commanding officer who had been seconded to the boat for the purpose of supervising
the Salus a Mare operation. With him were two gunmen of the Sardonian navy who were manning the small
cannons. Upon learning the final destination of the Spanish ship, the patrol boat escorted the San Pedro into
Spanish territorial waters.

The other vessel, the Liberty, which was unregistered, set course for Sardonia. It was intercepted on the high
seas by a small warship of the Sardonian navy that flagged it down. Careful to keep his ship distant from the
Liberty, the captain of the warship addressed it through a loudspeaker from the deck of the warship, enquiring
about the people that were on board. The captain of the Liberty truthfully explained about the boat and the
people it was carrying, after which the Sardonian captain arranged for a TFA tugboat to come across and tow
the vessel back to the Tyrrhenian coast.

On the basis of the information given above, the appendices to this text, the materials available on Absalon,
and the textbook, please consider the following three questions:

1. Is the legislation introduced by Ferro compatible with the international obligations of Sardonia pur-
suant to art. 98 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and art. 33 of the Conven-
tion Relating to the Status of the Refugee
2. Does the Salus a Mare operation give rise to the international responsibility of the Republic of
Sardonia?
3. Irrespective of how you answer question 2, do the actions taken in relation to the San Pedro and the
Liberty engage the obligations of the Republic of Sardonia under ECHR?

In answering Question 2, the student should assume the TFA to be a non-state actor.
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Appendices
- Sardonian Law n. 269/09 (A)
- Bilateral agreement between Sardonia and the TFA (B)
- Excerpt from the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) (C)
- Excerpt from the Convention Relating to the Status of the Refugee (D)
- Excerpt from HIRSI JAMAA AND OTHERS v. ITALY (E)