The rapid deterioration of the environment has become a threat to the survival of mankind and concerted action of all states is required in order to overcome the current problems. The perplexing question that arises is whether and how the notion of sovereignty can face up to the global environmental challenge? It is therefore important to reconcile the concept of sovereignty with the need for a global approach to problems of an environmental nature. This approach furthermore needs to take account of the dynamics of the North-South relationship. In this article the author introduces the notion of ‘custodial sovereignty’ as a solution to the problem.

Over the last couple of years, international lawyers have hotly debated the correct way to apply Article 31, paragraph 3(c) of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Discussions have focused on the meaning of ‘the parties’. Traditionally this expression has always been interpreted in the stricter sense of all parties to the interpreted treaty. Voices are now raised suggesting a broader interpretation. According to this view, the correct meaning of ‘the parties’ is the two or more parties to a specific dispute. Given that the two interpretations of Article 31, paragraph 3(c) will often be mutually exclusive, international legal literature provokes a review of the possible reasons that give us ground to adopt them. This article provides such a review. It arrives at the conclusion that only the stricter interpretation can be seriously defended as being correct. First, only the stricter interpretation agrees with the clear ordinary meaning of Article 31, paragraph 3(c). Secondly, even assuming that the ordinary meaning of the provision is ambiguous, a strong case can be made in favour of the stricter interpretation using other data of interpretation, such as the context, the object and purpose of the treaty, and the preparatory work.

This article examines the centrality of domestic location in transitional justice, using the example of the removal of the Charles Taylor trial from the Special Court for Sierra Leone's base in Freetown to The Hague to illustrate what is lost when trials are removed from the survivor population. While transitional criminal trials are usually justified on the basis of their ability to herald the return of the rule of law, the emergence of hybrid courts and the principle of complementarity demonstrate a growing realisation that purely international paradigms of transitional justice do little to normalise court processes that are at the core of the rule of law. This article argues that the transfer defeats the distinctive rule of law reconstruction potential of hybrid courts which emphasizes the integration of local staff and voices into the transitional justice process to make it more relevant to the survivor community and to inculcate international norms and practice. It does so for two reasons. Firstly, the transfer of the trial from the local population impairs the suggested ability of hybrid courts to legitimize the idea of resolving disputes through the domestic courts. Secondly, the removal risks undoing positive advances made in earlier SCSL trials by compounding the local perception that these advances are the product of international dominance of the court, and in the process undermines local confidence that these advances are sustainable or applicable domestically. Though the Taylor removal was arguably unavoidable, cataloguing what has been lost will be of relevance in future when decisions about the location of a trial are made under the ICC's complementarity regime.

Introductory Note [by the Board of Editors]

The massacre of an estimated 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men by Bosnian Serbs after the fall of the Srebrenica enclave in July 1995 is the largest mass murder in Europe after the Second World War and will be remembered as the most gruesome crime committed during the war in the former Yugoslavia. Although the area was declared a safe haven by Security Council Resolution 819 of 16 April 1993 and despite the presence of about 400 Dutch peacekeeping soldiers (Dutchbat), the international community of states was unable to protect Srebrenica.