The prospects for international administrative law and the international administrative legal system in the future and particularly in the next century will be determined to a large extent by how much importance the world attaches to international organisations and particularly to the maintenance of an independent international civil service as a means of securing international peace and security, promoting development and fostering international co-operation. Not only must there be a change in the current attitude of certain governments towards international organisations as a means to this end but there must also be a more sanguine approach to the singular importance of an independent civil service in the process. What can be said about the international administrative legal system and international administrative law in the future must be conditioned necessarily to a large extent by assumptions made about what is going to happen in the future to both international organisations and the civil service.

This article seeks to present an integrated conception of sustainable development, with particular emphasis on the contribution of international human rights law and theory. Part II considers a structural conception of sustainable development. Part III considers parallels between sustainable development and self-determination. Part IV provides some general reflections on international environmental law and international human rights law in terms of analogous concepts, principles and systems. What similarities are there and what differences? Part V considers the progress made towards recognition of a “human right to the environment”. Part VI considers how international environmental claims could be brought within the existing international human rights complaint systems. Part VII analyses the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in the Lopez Ostra case (1994), the leading case on environmental claims to have reached that Court.

In November 1995 a draft resolution was presented to the 28th General Conference of UNESCO which, among other matters, dealt with the organisation's future activities in the field of the underwater cultural heritage.1 In conjunction with this resolution, the text of a draft Convention for the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage prepared by the International Law Association (ILA) was presented to the General Conference as the possible basis for a new international convention on the subject.2 Annexed to this draft Convention text was the Charter for the Protection and Management of the Underwater Cultural Heritage prepared by the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS)3 to accompany the ILA draft Convention and serve as a set of criteria of good practice to be applied by States parties to the Convention. The General Conference adopted the draft resolution without any change and this therefore forms the basis for future deliberations within UNESCO over this issue, the question whether to draft an international convention on the basis of the ILA draft text having been a central part of the deliberations. Subsequent to the adoption of the resolution, meetings have been held between UNESCO and various bodies with an interest in the issue (such as the International Maritime Organisation and the International Oceanographic Commission as well as the UN Law of the Sea office). Following these consultations, it was agreed to hold a joint meeting of representatives of these organisations with chosen experts in order to examine the ILA draft Convention along with any other material relevant to a new legal instrument for the protection of the underwater cultural heritage.

The Association of South East Asian Nations1 (ASEAN) was formed on 8 August 1967. Inter alia, the five founding members of ASEAN agreed in the Bangkok Declaration to “accelerate … economic growth … in the region, … to promote regional peace … and … to promote active collaboration and mutual assistance in matters of common interest in the economic … and administrative fields”.2

This article discusses the European Commission's and European Court of Justice's control of member States' privatisation operations under the State aid and free movement rules. In particular, it is concerned with the question whether and to what extent such control is compatible with the EC Treaty' s “neutrality” towards member States' choices as to the private or public character of their national economies.

Part III of The Private International Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1995 entered into force on 1 May 19961. As from that date2, the choice of law rules for tort developed in the common law will be abolished, in respect of most causes of action in tort3, and will be replaced by statutory rules of a radically different character4. The new choice of law rules essentially provide that, as a general rule, the law applicable to a tort is the law of the country5 in which the events constituting the tort in question occur6. This general rule may be subject to displacement where, in the light of a comparison between the significance of the factors connecting the tort with the country whose law is applicable under the general rule, and the significance of the factors connecting the tort with another country, it appears substantially more appropriate for the applicable law to be the law of that other country7. The express abolition of the common law rules is (with one significant exception)8 effected by section 10 of the Act. That section provides: the rules of the common law, in so far as they—

(a) require actionability under both the law of the forum and the law of another country for the purpose of determining whether a tort or delict is actionable; or

(b) allow (as an exception from the rules falling within paragraph (a) above) for the law of a single country to be applied for the purpose of determining the issues, or any of the issues, arising in the case in question,

are hereby abolished so far as they apply to any claim in tort or delict which is not excluded from the operation of this Part by section 13 below.

In U.S. v. All Funds on Deposit in Any Accounts Maintained in the Names of Meza or de Castro1 the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed that US federal courts have jurisdiction, in civil proceedings brought by the US government, to order the forfeiture to that government of funds held in English bank accounts. An understanding of this decision requires some background in US forfeiture law and also in the history of the particular proceedings.

The ouster of the Siad Barre regime in January 1991 and the civil war which followed led to a complete breakdown of law and order in Somalia. The human tragedy of the situation has been well publicised; less well known is the complete collapse of the institutions associated with constitutional governance and the administration of justice in Somalia, namely the federal and regional governments, legislatures, courts, the police and prisons.

Recent cases before the High Court of Australia have raised the question as to the appropriate degree to which international law should influence Australian law and politics.1 Crucial to the reasoning in the leading judgment of the landmark 1992 Mabo case,2 by which the Australian judiciary recognised for the first time a native title to land, was the finding that Australia had not been terra nullius at the time of colonisation. The leading judgment accepted the categorisation of Australia as a settled colony which had been established by the Privy Council in Cooper v. Stuart.3 In this judgment Lord Watson had held that Australia, as a “settled” colony, had received transplanted British law “except where explicitly changed or considered irrelevant”.4 This had given rise to the assumption, confirmed by Milurrpum v. Nabalco Ltd (the Gove Land Rights case of 1971) that, since no legal rights to land of indigenous people existed in British law and none had been explicitly acknowledged in relation to Australia, no basis existed for their later recognition.5 The leading judgment in Mabo went on to declare, however, that the notion that British law had been transplanted into a settled colony had been based on the assumption that the “indigenous people of a settled colony were … without laws, without a sovereign and primitive in their social organisation”.6 Since “the facts as we know them today” do not “fit this theory” the leading judgment asserted there to be “no warrant for applying in these times rules of the English common law which were a product of that theory”.7

In 1976 the United Kingdom ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and extended it to Hong Kong. Under the Covenant the United Kingdom assumed an obligation to submit periodic reports to the Human Rights Committee on the measures it has adopted to give effect to the rights recognised by the Covenant and on the progress made in the enjoyment of these rights.1 The United Kingdom has submitted four periodic reports on Hong Kong, in 1978,2 1988,3 19914 and 1995.5

The Security Council established the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (the Tribunal) by Resolution 827.1 It “determined” that the widespread and flagrant violations of international humanitarian law in the territory of the former Yugoslavia constituted a threat to international peace and security. Resolution 827 is a Chapter VII resolution. The Council “decided” that all States shall co-operate fully with the Tribunal and its organs and that they shall “take any measures necessary under their domestic law” to give effect to the resolution and obligations which arose under the Statute of the Tribunal.

The object of this short note is to draw attention to a decision of the Special Commissioners of Inland Revenue (the Commissioners) which deals with the liability for income tax of officials of an unrecognised State.1 Section 321 of the Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1988 (the Taxes Act) provides exemption from liability for income tax for foreign consuls in the United Kingdom and for “an official agent in the United Kingdom for any foreign state, not being … a Commonwealth citizen”. An “official agent” is a person, other than a consul, “who is employed on the staff of any consulate, official department or agency of a foreign state”.