After more than two decades of war and foreign interventions, including the recent US-led military campaign following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, Afghanistan has now entered a period of transition and rebuilding. It joins a host of other countries — from South Africa to Sierra Leone to East Timor — seeking to move from a repressive and violent past to a future based on democracy, the rule of law and respect for fundamental human rights and international humanitarian law. Afghanistan presents one of the most confronting case studies of ‘transitional justice’, what Teitel has described as the issue of how societies deal with their ‘evil pasts’.

As the United States, assisted by a number of its allies, continues to mount asymmetrical attacks against terrorists and their supporters, the centrality of technology to ‘future war’ is becoming increasingly apparent. In a matter of months, US Forces successfully routed, with almost no hostile fire casualties, a battle-hardened and ruthless adversary in a combat environment that frustrated the potent Soviet army for a decade. Operation ENDURING FREEDOM follows close on the heels of Operation ALLIED FORCE, the 1999 NATO campaign that defeated, without friendly casualties, the Yugoslav military. In that conflict, as in the most recent one, exploitation of technological wherewithal proved a decisive factor in determining the victor.

‘Sentencing is an art and not a science’. This statement of Lord Lane expresses, with all due respect, what sentencing should not be. Although it cannot be denied that the process of determining a sentence is far from being a mathematical exercise, the result of which can be verified or falsified by reference to some unquestionable law of nature, both the legislator and the judiciary must strive for the development of a law of sentencing which is based on a comprehensive set of statutory provisions. The very term ‘law of sentencing’ indicates that the meting out of a sentence is more than the exercise of a skill that only judges are vested with. The use of the term ‘art’, conversely, to describe sentencing gives the impression that the act of sentencing is beyond objective understanding and control. When we speak of art, we acknowledge that while views on the outcome can be manifold, objective criteria for a ‘correct’ assessment are few: there's no accounting for taste. This is unacceptable when looking at the significance of the law of sentencing for the pursuit of various sentencing purposes. To base the determination of the sentence on legal grounds enhances the review possibilities with regard to sentencing judgments. This contributes to an even sentencing practice, which in turn leads to just and comprehensible sentencing judgments. Such a practice is necessary in order to achieve public acceptance of the criminal justice system in general and of sentencing verdicts in particular. Such acceptance is imperative for the achievement of several sentencing purposes, especially that of affirmative (or positive) general prevention.

On 12 December 2002, the international community celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the opening for signature of 1977 Protocol II Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts. In view of today's armed hostilities around the globe, this anniversary raises the questions whether international humanitarian law provides substantive regulation protecting civilians in non-international armed conflicts; whether such legal protection is effectively countering the sufferings of the civilian population and what are now the main challenges for the international community vis-à-vis internal armed conflicts.

After 24 years of occupation by Indonesia and nearly 500 years of Portuguese colonisation, East Timor gained its independence on 20 May 2002 when the United Nations formally handed over the reins of power to a popularly elected President. Justice for the immense suffering of the people of East Timor while under Indonesian rule is a major issue for the local and international communities. Of particular importance is the question of individual criminal responsibility for atrocities committed during the last year of the occupation, when the weeks following the referendum on independence held on 30 August 1999 saw unparalleled devastation wreaked upon the civilian population and infrastructure.

Much has been written about transitional justice in the circumstances of organised states progressing towards democracy. Another category of transitional justice demanding equal study and resolution has, however, emerged. That is the interim administration of justice in the vacuum of the disrupted state following traumatic internal conflict, usually involving war crimes and crimes against humanity. Two things are characteristic of this circumstance: first, the requirement for a deployed international military force to do ‘something’ about fundamental law and order while waiting for the civil administrative ‘cavalry’ to arrive; second, the fact that a civil administrative element will eventually have to take over from the military and will also be required to do ‘something’ about the immediate law and order problem but in a manner that leads into the long term reconstruction and ‘end state’ process. In the future, this environment may also include the operation of the International Criminal Court (ICC), where many issues of jurisdiction, investigation, prosecution and the impact on long term rehabilitation will need to be managed.

The defining moments of 2001, the terrorist attacks of September 11 against the United States of America, marked a turning point in international law and relations. By their scale and audaciousness, overnight they helped to propel the issue of international terrorism to the top of the international security agenda and particularly that of the USA, with consequences for many branches of international law, including the jus ad bellum, the jus in bello, international law relating to terrorism, international human rights law and international criminal law, that were just beginning to be felt as the year closed.

Terrorism is said to be a substitute for conventional — or classic — warfare. And the response to terrorism is now called a ‘war on terrorism’. Acts of terrorism have always been with us and so has war. Since time immemorial, warfare has been subject to legal regulations: the laws of war. Their foundations can be retraced to age-old practices established to mitigate the effects of recourse to violence when conflicts could not be resolved by peaceful means. These rules used to belong to customs observed by belligerents as a matter of course. Today, international treaties are the main source of the rules governing humanitarian aspects of the conduct of war: the Geneva Conventions for the protection of war victims of 12 August 1949 and their two Additional Protocols of 1977. Is international humanitarian law relevant to the horrors of modern warfare and, in particular, to terrorism? And does it sufficiently take into account the interest of states in combating terrorism?

On 23 October 2002, a group of about 50 Chechens seized a Moscow theatre and held hundreds of people hostage, threatening to shoot their captives and blow up the building if Russian security amassed outside the theatre attacked. Their demand, that the operations mounted by the Russian army in Chechnya cease, was not taken into account by the authorities who, from the outset, declared that they would not negotiate. The crisis was brought to an end when special troops stormed the theatre, using gas in order to incapacitate the hostage-takers, and averted the detonation of a massive explosion that might have killed all the hostages. Up to 40 Chechens were killed as well as 129 theatregoers.

On 14 February 2002, the International Court of Justice (the Court) delivered its judgment in the case concerning the Arrest Warrant of 11 April 2000. In this case, the Court had the opportunity to take an authoritative stance on, and to contribute to the development of, two major questions in the field of immunities and jurisdiction of contemporary international law: do Ministers for Foreign Affairs enjoy immunity against prosecution by national courts of another state for crimes under international law, and how far can a state go in granting universal jurisdiction to its domestic courts?

On 5 December 2001, a conference of High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention concerning the application of international humanitarian law in the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem, took place in Geneva.

The 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) was opened for signature on 10 October 1980 and entered into force on 2 December 1983 (six months after the deposit of the twentieth ratification). Following several years of virtual obscurity, interest in the CCW increased in the early 1990s, partly as a consequence of greater interest in the potential of the CCW in reducing the inhumane consequences of anti-personnel landmines (APLs). This led to the convening of the First Review Conference (Revcon) in 1995/6. One of the decisions taken by the first Revcon was that a second Revcon should be convened within five years to review the operation of the CCW. This indicated that for many states the CCW had come to assume a greater importance than they had accorded it during the preceding 15 years, as well as their acceptance that APLs and other weapons covered by the CCW warranted closer attention. In the lead-up to the second Revcon, which was convened in December 2001, major issues under consideration included the scope of the CCW and Explosive Remnants of War (ERW), including cluster bombs and other forms of unexploded ordnance not covered by existing international law, and strengthened provisions relating to antivehicle landmines (AVMs).

This article examines the control system under the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict 1954 (the Convention) and its Second Protocol (the Protocol). It is divided into three parts. Part 1 introduces the control system and provides some examples of its implementation; Part 2 focuses on the evaluation of the control system during a recent review of the Convention; and Part 3 compares the control system under the Convention with that under the Second Protocol to the Convention.