There have been many occasions since the inception of the United Nations when it has been found useful to establish nonmilitary areas. A nonmilitary area is one from which all potential combatants, weapons, military equipment, and military installations are excluded and from which no hostile acts or activities in support of or related to the conduct of military operations may be undertaken. In addition to being of historical interest, demilitarization is again being implemented in Sinai and will almost certainly be resorted to in Namibia and other places in the future. Demilitarization thus gives rise to important questions: By whom may such zones be established? What purposes are they intended to serve? What are the implications for state sovereignty? Do such zones have any status for states not parties to the agreements establishing them or for the United Nations and its agencies? And how effective has the supervisory system been?

A striking feature of our times is that private individuals and corporations are engaging increasingly in activities that may result in significant accidental damage to the transnational environment. The international community has responded to this phenomenon by strengthening the transnational accountability of the private actors. Significant efforts have been made to obtain wide international acceptance of the principle of “equal right of access,” that is, the right of the actual or potential victim of transnational pollution to have recourse, for the purposes of both prevention and compensation, to the national authorities that exercise jurisdiction or control over the private actor concerned. A similar endeavor is discernible towards ensuring, at least in certain cases, that the private actor will maintain minimal financial resources for compensating victims of accidental transnational pollution damage.

Since the 19th century, governments have joined to create specialized international organizations to control the effects of new technologies and to regulate increased economic ties between nations. The number of such organizations has increased dramatically since the Second World War, and it is likely that this approach to international problem solving through permanent, specialized agencies will continue. Yet for nations to act effectively in concert, the organization through which they act must command the respect of its members, and they must abide by the organization’s decisions. Moreover, the way in which these decisions are made—the formal procedures and informal practices followed by the organization’s members—will have a direct and immediate effect on the members’ observance of them. Even the generally accepted substantive rules of an organization are not likely to be observed if they are perceived as arbitrarily applied without proper voting safeguards.

The International Court of Justice has examined the seizure and detention of United States diplomats and members of their staff by a group of militant “students” in Tehran from the point of view of international law. But it is also of interest to inquire into the legal status of these acts under Islamic law, which the Islamic Republic of Iran adopted with its Constitution of 1979, and under Islamic international law, which is used here to mean that aspect of the Shari’a and its practice by Islamic countries toward other countries.