In July 2001, a few years after my first encounter with the intersection of criminal law and international law at the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and for Rwanda (ICTR), I asked the following question at a lecture at Melbourne University:

While the political will to pursue war criminals was first lacking, is there, as some seem to fear, a danger that it will become relentless? If so, what effect will that have on the integrity of the complex aspirations and methodologies of criminal law as an instrument of social control in a democracy?

After 11 September of the same year, the question acquired added acuity as I assumed that it would be not just war criminals but also international terrorists that the criminal law framework, domestic and international, would now be pursuing. I obviously was gravely mistaken in my concerns. The pursuit of terrorist suspects seems to have little to do with criminal or international law as we know it. Hence the real questions: What is it then about? Under what legal framework, if any, does it purport to operate and who is accountable to whom?

The role that investor conduct plays in applying the fair and equitable treatment standard is relatively unexplored. On the basis of conceptual analysis, and emerging international judicial and arbitral case law, this article suggests that investor conduct is an important consideration. Investor duties are being accepted in relation to the avoidance of unconscionable conduct, the reasonable assessment of investment risk in the host country, and a duty to operate an investment reasonably. These requirements may be said to lead to a new limit upon the fair and equitable treatment standard encapsulated in the phrase ‘Caveat Investor’.

The current international law applicable to the cooperative development of petroleum resources imposes few procedural requirements on States. In the event of a failure to agree, they may choose to make further efforts at developing cooperative arrangements, or go ahead independently anddevelop the resource. Recent bilateral agreements in the North Sea and the Caribbean seek to move beyond the cooperation established under bilateral delimitation treaties. They indicate a willingness to design innovative legal frameworks in which different, sometimes diverging interests may be managed. Nonetheless, early experience suggests that, in the event of a breakdown, unilateral action may follow.

This article provides a thorough analysis of the employment contract in comparative European private law and Community law. It argues that a common concept of employment contract should prevail in European private law. In that respect, the autonomous and broad interpretation which has been given to the term ‘worker’ in Community law could be a basis for adoption of an autonomous concept of the employment contract in European private law.

A fair trial is a basic element of the notion of the rule of law,1 and the principles of ‘due process’ and ‘the rule of law’ are fundamental to the protection of human rights.2 At the centre of any legal system, therefore, must be a means by which legal rights are asserted and breaches remedied through the process of a fair trial in court, as the law is useless without effective remedies.3 The fairness of the legal process has a particular significance in criminal cases, as it protects against human rights abuses. Hence, constitutional due process and elementary justice require that the judicial functions of trial and sentencing be conducted with fundamental fairness, especially where the irreversible sanction of the death penalty is involved.4

The rights and obligations of Parties … include a series of policies and measures aimed at protecting and promoting the diversity of cultural expressions, approaching creativity and all it implies in the context of globalization, where diverse expressions are circulated and made accessible to all via cultural goods and services.

Burundi, a small State in Eastern Africa, has been suffering a repetitive cycle of interethnic violence since its independence in 1962. Tensions were ongoing, but never reached the scale of the Rwandese massacres of 1994. The Burundian conflict thus received less international attention. Hardly any academic writing exists on human rights violations in Burundi.1 International efforts to counter impunity remained half-hearted.

There has been a spate of litigation before constitutional and human rights courts challenging restrictions on wearing religious dress in state schools as an infringement of religious freedom rights.1 These cases implicate deeper constitutional issues pertaining to State-Religion relations, religious pluralism and expressions of religious identity in the public domain of multicultural societies. Within Europe, this problem relates to the issue of integrating immigrants into national society and preserving secular political orders. The European Court of Human Rights in Leyla Sahin v Turkey2 [‘Sahin’] noted that within democratic societies, opinions ‘reasonably differ widely’ on State-Religion relations, reflected in the diversity of national approaches. For example, the 2004 French law banning ostentatious religious symbols from public schools,3 embodying a strict, doctrinaire secularism, contrasts sharply with the more accommodating liberal approach where British schools pragmatically offer students alternative uniforms to satisfy religious dress codes for public modesty. The English Court of Appeal in Shabina Begum v Governors of Denbigh High School4 [‘Begum’] held, in applying the Human Rights Act,5 that the school as a state institution was obliged to consider the claimant's religious rights under Article 9(1) of the European Convention of Human Rights [ECHR], and to justify its school policy under the Article 9(2) limitation clause. The United Kingdom is ‘not a secular state’6 as statute provides for religious education and worship in schools.

A technological revolution is transforming society in a profound way. If harnessed and directed properly, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have the potential to improve all aspects of our social, economic and cultural life. ICTs can serve as an engine for development in the 21st century, and as an effective instrument to help us achieve all the goals of the Millennium Declaration’ (Kofi Annan )1

The policy decision to replace the United Nations (UN) Commission on Human Rights (CHR) with a new UN Human Rights Council (HRC) was taken by governments at the September 2005 World Summit and adopted as a General Assembly (GA) resolution on 15 March 2006.1 This brought an end to the CHR's chequered 60-year history.2 The membership, structure and aims and procedures of the new HRC underwent months of intense discussion between States in the lead up to the adoption of this resolution. The purpose of this note is to explain the various proposals explored in the shaping of the HRC and the extent to which the resolution bringing it into being responded to weaknesses perceived in the CHR. Since almost every reference to the CHR came to be prefaced by the term ‘discredited’ since 2005, the question is to what extent the reasons for the loss of legitimacy in the CHR were actually addressed in the crafting of the new HRC.

The Republic of Cyprus became independent on 16 August 1960 with the conclusion of three agreements between Cyprus, Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom: the Treaty of Establishment,1 the Treaty of Guarantee,2 and the Treaty of Alliance.3 Due to limited space, this article will not consider the troubled history of the new Republic the structures of which were literally shattered by an unworkable and dysfunctional Constitution a few years only after its establishment and which eventually led to the Turkish invasion and continuing occupation of one third of its territory.4 Rather, this article intends to focus on recent legal developments provoked by Turkey's refusal to recognize the Republic of Cyprus, a Member State of the United Nations and as from May 2004 a Member of the European Union, in the context of Turkey's own aspirations to become an EU Member State.

1. The adoption of the 1994 Convention on the Safety of United Nations and Associated Personnel (‘the Convention’)1 was a response to rising casualties among UN peacekeepers and other personnel as a result of their increasing deployment to dangerous situations following the end of the Cold War. It requires States parties to: prohibit attacks on UN personnel and others associated with UN operations; prosecute or extradite perpetrators of such acts; take all appropriate measures to ensure the safety of such personnel; and promptly release any who are captured or detained.