04/02/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly agreement under international law, or a unilateral declaration of the Philippine government to the international community that it would grant to the Bangsamoro people all the concessions therein stated. Neither ground finds sufficient support in international law, however. The MOA-AD, as earlier mentioned in the overview thereof, would have included foreign dignitaries as signatories. In addition, representatives of other nations were invited to witness its signing in Kuala Lumpur. These circumstances readily lead one to surmise that the MOA-AD would have had the status of a binding international agreement had it been signed. An examination of the prevailing principles in international law, however, leads to the contrary conclusion. The Decision on Challenge to Jurisdiction: Lomé Accord Amnesty[180] (the Lomé Accord case) of the Special Court of Sierra Leone is enlightening. The Lomé Accord was a peace agreement signed on July 7, 1999 between the Government of Sierra Leone and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a rebel group with which the Sierra Leone Government had been in armed conflict for around eight years at the time of signing. There were non-contracting signatories to the agreement, among which were the Government of the Togolese Republic, the Economic Community of West African States, and the UN. On January 16, 2002, after a successful negotiation between the UN SecretaryGeneral and the Sierra Leone Government, another agreement was entered into by the UN and that Government whereby the Special Court of Sierra Leone was established. The sole purpose of the Special Court, an international court, was to try persons who bore the greatest responsibility for serious violations of international humanitarian law and Sierra Leonean law committed in the territory of Sierra Leone since November 30, 1996. Among the stipulations of the Lomé Accord was a provision for the full pardon of the members of the RUF with respect to anything done by them in pursuit of their objectives as members of that organization since the conflict began. In the Lomé Accord case, the Defence argued that the Accord created an internationally binding obligation not to prosecute the beneficiaries of the amnesty provided therein, citing, among other things, the participation of foreign dignitaries and international organizations in the finalization of that agreement. The Special Court, however, rejected this argument, ruling that the Lome Accord is not a treaty and that it can only create binding obligations and rights between the parties in municipal law, not in international law. Hence, the Special Court held, it is ineffective in depriving an international court like it of jurisdiction. "37.In regard to the nature of a negotiated settlement of an internal armed conflict it is easy to assume and to argue with some degree of plausibility, as Defence counsel for the defendants seem to have done, that the mere fact that in addition to the parties to the conflict, the document formalizing the settlement is signed by foreign heads of state or their representatives and representatives of international organizations, means the agreement of the parties is internationalized so as to create obligations in international law. elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/47263 46/203