This article seeks to complicate conventional understandings of the way in which IMF conditionality operates in relation to North/South relations. It begins with a genealogy of how the Fund became involved in lending to the South and argues that the Fund was transformed from an essentially monetary institution concerned with the industrialised states to a surveillance organisation directed at providing information about the South to the North. The article then explores what discursive functions the Fund might be performing in the context of the relationship between North and South. In this regard the author identifies two major themes underlying IMF discourse, both of which suggest that an underlying sense of danger of the South is felt by the North, and that this sense of danger replicates older fears. The author then argues that the discursive practices employed to address these fears resonate with older discursive strategies and considers why the reoccurrence of these “technologies of empire” might be problematic. It concludes with some (tentative) suggestions about how we might productively disrupt the colonial continuum of which these discursive practices seem to form part. There is a disturbing tendency in the Western Academy today to divorce the study of discursive forms from the study of other institutional forms, and the study of literary discourses from the mundane discourses of bureaucracies, armies, private corporations, and nonstate social organizations. […] [I]f the postcolony is in part a discursive formation, it is also true that discursivity has become too exclusively the sign and space of the colony and the postcolony in contemporary cultural studies. To widen the sense of what counts as discourse demands a corresponding widening of the sphere of the postcolony, to extend it beyond the geographical spaces of the former colonial world.

As the most serious war crimes (grave breaches) should not be left unpunished, the 1949 Geneva Conventions contain an unusually worded obligation to either prosecute such a suspected war criminal or to hand him over to another country to be tried there (aut judicare aut dedere in stead of aut dedere aut judicare). Fifty years on, less than one in six of the parties to the Conventions have established universal jurisdiction over grave breaches which is necessary to prosecute a suspect if he was to be found in their country. An assessment and classification of the Conventions, national laws, prosecutions and practical obstacles. But if, what God forbid, these Conventions should ever have to be applied, they must be obeyed.M.W. Mouton, Diplomatic Conference, Geneva 16 July 1949

Libya filed two separate applications on 3 March 1992. In the applications, Libya contended that it had not been possible to settle this dispute by negotiations and that the parties unable to agree on the organization of an arbitration to hear the matter. It accordingly submitted the disputes to the Court on the basis of Article 14, paragraph 1, of the Montreal Convention. Libya refers in the applications to the charging of two Libyan nationals, by the Lord Advocate of Scotland, and by a Grand Jury of the United States, respectively, with having caused a bomb to be placed aboard a Pan-am flight, which bomb subsequently exploded, causing the aeroplane to crash. Libya contends that the United Kingdom and the United States, respectively, by rejecting the Libyan efforts to resolve the matter within the framework of international law, including the Montreal Convention, are pressuring it into surrendering the two Libyan nationals for trial. In this connection, Libya refers to Article 1 of the Montreal Convention, according to which the charge constitutes an offence, and to the several other articles of that Convention which are relevant to Libya's alleged right to jurisdiction over the matter and the prosecution thereof. Libya alleges that these obligations are breached by the United Kingdom and the United States respectively.

Territorial and boundary disputes provide a major part of the work of the International Court. The author considers how cases of this kind come to the Court and the issues of jurisdiction and justiciability they represent; explains how, when the Court decides such cases, it establishes the facts and applies the law; and, finally, discusses the question of implementation and the factors which determine the effectiveness of judgments. He concludes that in territorial and boundary cases, as elsewhere, the Court's decisions serve both to resolve specific disputes and to develop the law, while also highlighting the political context of international adjudication.

On 2 August 2000, Trial Chamber III (Judges May (Presiding), Bennouna and Robinson) dismissed Dragan Kolundžija's motion for severance of counts and/or bifurcation of trial, filed on 22 May 2000. Dragan Kolundžija requested in the motion that the Trial Chamber first hear and determine the charges dealing with crimes allegedly committed by the accused inside Keraterm, followed by either a separate trial (‘severance’), or a separate phase of trial (‘bifurcation’), addressing the issues surrounding the crimes allegedly committed outside Keraterm camp. The Trial Chamber dismissed the motion and argued that the defence proposal was impractical and that there was no good reason to conduct the trial in two separate phases.

During the Twenty-second Plenary Session the Judges of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) decided to amend eight Rules of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence (Rules).

This article gives an account of the support provided by the British Government of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. In 1999, the author was the UK Kosovo War Crimes Co-ordinator, and was responsible for providing information and assistance to the ICTY Prosecutor.

The ICTY Trial Judgment in the Prosecutor v. Tihomir Blaškić is the first judicial decision to explicitly address unlawful attack charges. This article reviews the judgment focusing on how the trial chamber addressed individual criminal responsibility, unlawful attack charges, the crime against humanity of persecution, and the relationship between the two offences. The author observes that the decision contains little legal analysis but a review of the factual findings sheds light on legal assumptions. In particular, the findings indicate a willingness to accept that indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks might provide evidence of attacks essentially directed against civilians, a tendency to regard ad hoc ill equipped resistance to an attack as equivalent to no resistance, and a tendency to evaluate the lawfulness of an attack on the basis of what happened after the attack as well as during the attack.

While the Statute of the International Criminal Court guarantees to suspects and accused the right to be defended in person or through legal assistance, it contains little guidance as to the extent to which this most fundamental right will be provided. In order to ascertain how broadly it should be applied, the authors examine the application of the right by the ad hoc international criminal tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. The authors note that the defence-orientated approach taken by the ad hoc Tribunals to the right to be defended in person or through legal assistance not only conforms with international obligations, but also in many respects goes beyond that required by international human rights law. It is, therefore, crucial that the ICC listens to the experience of the ad hoc Tribunals and adopts similar, if not identical, rules and regulations relating to the qualifications, conduct and assignment of counsel.

Human rights law is often regarded as a discipline with aspirations of being an autonomous, self-contained regime within the general corpus of international law. Recent debates concerning reservations in the area of treaty law have reinforced views which claim the governing prinicples of human rights law depart – if not contradict – general rules of international law. By examining a landmark decision of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights which declared the recent purported Peruvian withdrawal from its compulsory jurisdiction invalid, against the background of general international law, the author aims to demonstrate that far from deviating from the general rules of the Vienna Convention of the Law of Treaties, this decision supports the view that human rights law is neither insulated from general international law nor divorced from the principle of sovereignty. For the principle of sovereignty has a twofold character: it is the fundament but also the limit of freedom of action by a state.

The referendum of 30 August 1999 constituted a historic exercise of the right to self-determination by the people of East Timor. It rejected autonomy within Indonesia and chose to go forward on the path towards independence. Proponents of autonomy complained that they had been barred from participating in the process, and that Timorese staff had systematically told or forced people to vote for independence. However, there is no evidence that the referendum was corrupted through systematic bias on the part of local staff members. The outcome of the referendum, 78.5% in favour of independence, must be accepted as an accurate reflection of the will of the people of East Timor.