This article examines attribution of conduct and responsibility in peace support operations, which is, and will continue to be, a troubling subject of international law. It particularly examines two specific questions: what is the proper test for attribution of conduct, and whether and, if so, how dual attribution of conduct and responsibility can be established in international joint operations? As regards the former question, a brief critique of the major case law and documents recently dealing with attribution of conduct and responsibility in peace support operations shows that Behrami and Saramati poses a serious obstacle to determining the most suitable test without any confusion, thus there is a strong need to radically depart from this decision of the European Court of Human Rights. With respect to the latter, the meaning of the 'effective control' criterion, which is to be the basis for dual attribution in joint military missions, ought to be clarified. In this respect, the Mustafić and Nuhanović judgments delivered by The Hague Appeal Court and the Supreme Court of the Netherlands, to which the article pays special attention, are exemplary – to the extent that the latter did not conflate the notion of dual attribution of conduct with that of (dual or) multiple attribution of responsibility – and these judgments can be seen as a source of inspiration for the future application of the ‘effective control’ standard in practice.

In a speech before the Sixth (Legal) Committee of the United Nations General Assembly a few years ago, the representative of Israel, Dr. Jacob Robinson, pointed out that the area to which international law was applicable had expanded enormously in recent years owing to the emergence of many independent States. “Although these States had only recently gained their independence, they were the heirs to ancient civilizations and some way had to be found to combine their ancient traditions with the body of international law as developed in modern times”, he said. In drawing attention in this way to the problem of fusing ancient legal traditions to the main stream pf modern public international law, Dr. Robinson was giving expression to what has been a feature of the philosophical development of international law ever since it emerged during the seventeenth century. Without questioning the postulate of the universality of international law (although the term itself is subject to many, and at times irreconcilable, or at least conflicting, interpretations), it is generally recognized that international law, both in its substantive rules and in its procedures, is on the one hand influenced by, and on the other may, indeed must, draw upon, the general legal experience of mankind. Positive acknowledgment of these tendencies is found in Article 9 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice which enjoins that the body of judges as a whole shall assure the representation of the ‘main forms of civilization and the principal legal systems of the world’, a formula which, whatever other purposes it was designed to serve, also draws attention to certain features of what might be termed the intellectual elements of public international law, and as such, as is being increasingly recognized, it has wider implications.

The aim of all debt restructuring programmes covered by the term menu approaches was the return of deeply indebted developing countries to the financial markets by means of a debt reduction policy substantially in conformity with market principles. At the same time, the provision of the new credits needed in order to finance the structural adjustment was to be ensured by a differentiation in the classes of creditors, as can be seen in the trend towards securitization of claims. However, the Mexico Agreement concluded at the beginning of February 1990 revealed the lack of interest of most commercial banks in supplying new credits. This was only to be expected, in view of the heavy losses of the commercial banks on credits to ailing Third World countries. Evidently, the creditor banks will only be willing to become involved in fresh money commitments if they are granted preferential payment from the foreign exchange earnings secured by the transactions or if they are offered a privileged position in the innovative arrangement of corporate finance products. This is the case, for example, in regard to participation in debt-equity programmes, debt-for-bond swaps or financing on the capital market.

This article examines the legal status of armed forces present in friendly foreign territory with a special focus on criminal jurisdiction. Traditionally, this issue has been considered from the perspective of public international law in which immunities play an important role. However, this perspective does not fully cover the criminal jurisdiction provisions in the international agreements dealing with the status of visiting forces (Status of Forces Agreements). This article introduces military operational law as an additional perspective to better understand this specific approach of Status of Forces Agreements.

“The inhabitants of a territory not under occupation who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading troops without having had the time to organize themselves into regular armed units are entitled to be regarded as belligerents provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.”

This definition of the levée en masse as “the spontaneous springing to arms of the population in defense of the country”, still valid today, is based on the idea of the French Revolution, embodied in the Proclamation of the National Convention of 16 August 1793 which, as regards the enfranchised citizen, laid down inter alia “tout citoyen est soldat quand il s'agit de combattre la tyrannie”; a concept that stood in contradiction to the then current calculable “cabinet wars” conducted by the State, in which to the recruited subject used by the army, itself a tool of the State, was allocated only the role of a passive object, the remainder of the population being considered, in Ford's term, as “quantité négligable”.

One of the controversial questions in the area of human rights has been that concerning the status of economic, social and cultural rights; and while the entry into force of the two Covenants in 1976 may be considered as conclusively establishing the status of these rights under international law some dissent on the matter continues to be expressed. Much of the debate on this issue has centered on the question whether economic, social and cultural rights are “true” rights or “legal” rights of individuals; and the fact that liberal Western philosophy and socialist philosophy give different answers to this question has inevitably invested the issue with ideological and political rivalry and prestige. In part, the heavy emphasis upon producing legal documents, such as resolutions, declarations and conventions has obviously contributed to the above preoccupation. That emphasis is understandable up to a point because the rule of law is clearly the most reliable way of protecting, or redressing the violation of, human rights, and the international instruments seek to strengthen the rule of law within states. Nonetheless, this preoccupation has perhaps contributed to the restriction of attention to legal factors, to the consequent neglect of the social context within which the rule of law inevitably has to be established. The unhappy result has been that, excepting the European Convention, human rights treaties have remained largely unimplemented, even by states for whom they have entered into force, and that they are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.

Since its adoption in 1998, the United States has criticized the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on several grounds. One of its major concerns is that its nationals, particularly officials and personnel participating in peacekeeping operations, could be brought to the Court, without US consent, on false charges advanced by enemies of the US. The US delegation unsuccessfully attempted to introduce new articles into the text of the Rome Statute before its adoption to guarantee the immunity of its nationals from the jurisdiction of the Court. Later at the meetings of the Preparatory Commission for the Establishment of the International Criminal Court (PrepCom) it failed to modify the Statute indirectly, through proposals to insert a provision into the Rules of Procedure and Evidence of the Court and subsequently into the Relationship Agreement to this effect.

The 1957 Treaty of Rome and its successor treaties have developed a Community legal system distinct from that of its constituent states, but ‘nevertheless intimately and organically tied to it in such a way that the mutual and constant respect for the respective jurisdictions of the Community and national bodies’ is essential for the proper attainment of Community aims. Although this sui generis Community structure has limited the sovereign rights of the Member States in ever-widening fields, it operates as severable yet dependant upon a backdrop of autonomous, self-contained and functionally independent civil codes of national private law. Because the integration envisaged by the original Treaty structure relies on market forces and is powered by economic drive, the ‘four freedoms’ guaranteed by this structure – namely, the free trans-border movement of goods, services, people and capital – remain attainable without the complete substantive uniformity of national laws. Still, with further integration encouraging increased interstate transactions, and few substantive matters falling exclusively within the generaljurisdiction of the Community, legal dilemmas referencing diverse national laws hinder the operation of the internal market. Rather than eroding the sensitive national bulwark of substantive private law, however, the Community has often chosen to enact common rules on the conflicts of law to determine the reach of Community measures and their intersection with national substantive laws.

The relationship between public international law and the domestic law of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is deeply rooted in the monistic tradition. According to the Dutch Constitution self-executing provisions of treaties and of resolutions of international organizations are binding upon natural and legal persons and have supremacy over national law, including the Constitution itself, Acts of Parliament and subordinate legislation. In this article the ways in which the Dutch courts deal with self-executing provisions, non-self-executing provisions and rules of customary international law are explored. For a long time the developments in the relationship between international and Dutch law have been dominated by the question of how to balance the separation of powers and the duty of the courts to apply public international law. But since the 1990s yet another problem has been gaining attention. There is growing concern about the question whether legal and natural persons are adequately protected by the Constitution against instruments of public international law (such as, for instance, decisions by UN sanctions committees) which may interfere with their basic rights, such as the right to a fair trial.

On June 14, 1993, just one year after an arbitral tribunal fixed the maritime boundary around the small French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, off Canada's Newfoundland, the International Court of Justice rendered its judgment on a closely analogous case concerning anew a relatively small insular feature lying opposite a much lengthier continental coast. A marked disparity in coastal fronts once more controlled the geographical context, so that proportionality was elevated by one of the parties to a dominant legal presumption. Yet again, equidistance crossed swords with equity, but hopefully suffered little from the Court's familiar ‘shadowboxing’ against Article 6 of the 1958 Continental Shelf Convention. One of the root causes of the dispute, the capelin fishing ground (capelin is a migratory species abundant in the areas between Jan Mayen, Iceland and Greenland), was shared out in equal halves, the judgment sending strong echoes of distributive justice in this respect. As for the boundary line, the Court evinced afresh its inventiveness with a view to equally apportioning satisfaction. The judgment marks a most-welcome rapprochement of Article 6 and equitable principles discourse, an affirmed restoration of equidistance, and a victory for often victimized small islands. Proportionality, as a test of the equitability of the solution, was ignored and seems now to have completed its life cycle. The Court's decision also amounted to what may be termed a premiere. Indeed, this is the first maritime delimitation case heard by the Court on the basis of a unilateral application relying on declarations under Article 36 paragraph 2 of the Statute.

In recent years many countries have experienced acts of violence committed for political ends, which have been termed terrorist. Some such acts are committed entirely within one country with a view to affecting domestic policy in that country, as is the case with the much publicized activities of radical groups in Italy and West Germany; others have international implications. The country of commission may be a convenient stage for an act whose primary target is the government of another, as when Palestinians took Israeli athletes as hostages during the Munich Olympics in 1972. The action may be planned to involve other countries as well, perhaps with a view to influencing their relations with the country which is the terrorists primary target, as with the South Moluccans who have committed acts of violence in the Netherlands. Sometimes attacks are launched in one country from a base in another, as with the Palestinians' incursions into Israel. Whether the violence is national or international, the terrorists often seek and usually achieve dramatic publicity. Though the number of people physically affected may be small, the psychological impact may be considerable. Besides, these acts are seen as attempting to weaken the authority of a government, or a system of government. It is not surprising, then, that governments should wish to take, and to be seen to take, active steps to meet this challenge. The Council of Europe's Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism (hereafter the European Convention) is one of a number of recent attempts at international co-operation in fulfilment of this wish.

Originally it was suggested that I write about ‘rusty’ treaties – by which was meant ‘old’ treaties that have not been terminated – and their continued relevance in view of the principle of rebus sic stantibus, now enshrined in Article 62 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties 1969. I did not relish that. There would be problems of definition: when can a treaty be said to be ‘old’? Also, I remain sceptical about the usefulness of the fundamental change principle, being of the view that it is of little real importance. Although invoked many times, so far no international tribunal has applied it. The editors therefore kindly agreed that I could instead write about treaties of a universal character, in that they are open to universal participation, but which are ‘limping’.

In an article published in this Journal in 1962, entitled “Some Trends in the Political and Legal Thinking on the Conquest of Space”, the present writer endeavoured to examine whether in the statements and attitudes of statesmen and in the ideas and suggestions of international lawyers, the emergence of certain trends towards the ends and purposes of space exploration and the creation of some order in this new field of human activity, could be detected.

Structures at sea which are described by the term “artificial islands” have, notwithstanding great diversity in form, three characteristics in common. They are exclusively the work of man, surrounded by water and used for work on a fixed place. As such they “occupy” more or less permanently a certain part of the sea. One can interpret the term more narrowly and understand by it only structures made by man from natural sources to form a piece of land, surrounded by water which rises above it at high tide. Prof. François 4 distinguishes in this way between: “artificially shaped elevations of the seabottom which have an essential island character” and, “permanent, bottom-based installations”. He regards the first category as territory and attaches to it a territorial sea, which the second group does not have. In positive law there is no room for François' distinction because international law recognises only naturally formed islands as islands in the legal sence. Until recently the distinction was in practice not important because the building of “islands” in this narrower sense was not undertaken and academic opinion did not regard such construction as probable. Events, however, have changed this.

On 25 November 1981 the General Assembly of the United Nations by its Resolution 36/55 adopted the Declaration on the Elimination of all Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination based on Religion or Belief (hereinafter referred to as the Declaration). In doing so it has – albeit only partly – fulfilled a wish which it had expressed in 1962 during its 17th Session in a resolution by which the General Assembly requested the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to ask the Commission on Human Rights(the Commission) to prepare a draft declaration on the elimination of all forms of religious intolerance, to be submitted to the Assembly for consideration at its eighteenth session, and a draft international convention on the elimination of all forms of religious intolerance, to be submitted to the Assemblyif possible at its nineteenth session and, in any case, not later than at its twentieth session.

A state's denunciation of a treaty with the sole objective of re-acceding to it with a reservation may be interpreted as circumventing the prohibition of the late formulation of reservations enshrined in Article 19 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. This article addresses five cases where the denunciation of and re-accession to a treaty was at least considered by certain states and whose analysis promises to clarify the legal characteristics of this practice. One instance involved such a practice being discussed by the Swiss Federal Tribunal in the context of the amendment of the Swiss interpretative declaration to Article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights. Another instance involved Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana with regard to the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. A further situation arose when in 2002 Sweden denounced and re-acceded to the Council of Europe Convention on the Reduction of Multiple Nationality and on Military Obligations in Cases of Multiple Nationality with the aim of excluding the obligations contained in Chapter I of this treaty. The last case analyzed in this article is Bolivia's denunciation of and re-accession to the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. The aim of this article is to offer a critical appraisal of this practice under international law. The article argues that the European states' position differs from the generality of states. In addition, states may include specific provisions on the possibility of denouncing and re-acceding with a reservation when they draft their treaties. States may review more systematically the treaty action and object to practices that are not compatible with the reserving states' good faith treaty obligations. And the ILC may include this topic into its work programme, for example, when updating the Guide to Practice on Reservations to Treaties.