The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia consisted of six republics (Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia) and two autonomous regions (Kosovo and Vojvodina). Its overall population was recently estimated as 23.69 million. There were 8.14 million Serbs, 4.43 million Croats, 1.75 million Slovenes, 1.73 million Albanians, 1.34 million Macedonians and 1.22 million “Yugoslavs,” as well as a variety of other minorities.

Slovenia has a population of 1.94 million, 90 percent of whom are ethnic Slovenes. There are small minorities of ethnic Serbs, Croats and Hungarians.

The reunification of Germany raised a variety of public international law questions that have been subjected to extensive scholarly review in Germany, where the interest is naturally intense. This report is designed to bring before American and other international lawyers the basic facts and issues pertaining to that important event.

The bilateral treaties concluded by Poland and Germany on November 14, 1990, and June 17, 1991, are an ideal illustration of the political and social changes in Central Europe. They were intended to constitute a turning point in the relations between the two neighbors, enemies for centuries that are now starting to construct a common future.

An election was held on December 5, 1991, to fill the casual vacancy on the International Court of Justice that resulted from the death of Judge T. O. Elias of Nigeria. Bola Adesumbo Ajibola, also of Nigeria, was elected to complete Judge Elias’s term for a two-year period from January 1992.

On May 22, 1992, the United Nations General Assembly admitted three new members—Slovenia, Bosnia and Hercegovina, and Croatia—all of them, in the past, constituent republics of Yugoslavia. Since June 1991, these three republics—as well as Macedonia—have seceded from the Yugoslav federation, which leaves only the two remaining republics—Serbia and Montenegro—to claim the name of Yugoslavia, as well as its rights and international status, including membership in the United Nations.

On September 26, 1991, the International Court of Justice issued an Order recording the discontinuance by Nicaragua of the proceedings in Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua and the removal of the case from the Court’s list. Nicaragua had expressed its wish to discontinue the proceedings against the United States in a letter to the Court of September 12, 1991, in which it cited agreements between the two countries “aimed at enhancing Nicaragua’s economic, commercial and technical development to the maximum extent possible.”