After almost 50 years in existence in a variety of different forms, the EU finally has an express proposal on the table dealing with the potential withdrawal of a Member State. Article 59 of the draft Constitution states that any Member State may now ‘decide to withdraw from the European Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements’.1 The Member State would have to formally notify the European Council of this decision. The Council and the Member State would then enter into negotiations on a mutually agreeable basis for withdrawal, including a framework for the future relationship between the EU and the Member State. The results of this negotiation would require approval by a qualified majority of the Council after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.2 In any event, withdrawal would occur not later than two years following the notification unless extended by agreement between the Member State and the European Council.3

The right to property was accorded the status of a human right as a result of its incorporation in international human rights instruments in the second part of the twentieth century. The right has acquired special importance as part of the freedom of the individual, his economic autonomy in modern democratic societies and generally as a significant element for the development of the individual's personality.1 Its recognition as a separate human right and its legal protection on an international level was the result of gradual efforts. It is still in the process of further legal elaboration, as regards both its scope and effect, by legal theory and jurisprudence.

At independence in 1966 Botswana, like most former British colonies, adopted a Constitution which included a Bill of Rights. Whilst this tried to reconcile the needs of maintaining public order with that of protecting human rights, it did not entirely remove some of the vestiges of authoritarianism and discrimination that had been associated with the preceding colonial administration. Since independence, the country has had to grapple with many problems caused by constitutionally sanctioned discrimination in many areas of its social, economic, and political life. Despite some half-hearted, improvised and short-term solutions, the problems just would not go away.

The raison d'être of ASEAN was a political one,1 to secure the region's peace, stability, and development. Against all odds, the founding members, namely, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand signed the ASEAN Declaration on 8 August 1967. Brunei was admitted in January 1984, Vietnam in 1995, which was followed closely by Laos and Myanmar in 1997. Thirty-two years later, on 30 April 1999, ASEAN formally encompassed all ten countries of South-East Asia by admitting Cambodia.2

From Bosnia to East Timor, and now Iraq, property rights have been at the centre of many of the problems that individuals face in the aftermath of armed conflicts. The importance of a fair, transparent and effective property rights policy, as an element of post-conflict recovery and development, can hardly be overrated. Clear and undisputed property title plays a fundamental role in the economic recovery from conflict and is a prerequisite to attract foreign investment. The protection or restoration of property rights is closely linked to the return of refugees and displaced persons, the protection of human rights and the restoration of the rule of law. Because land is life in many war-torn societies, property rights violations tend to affect all parts of the surviving populations.

The distinction between substance1 and procedure2 is central to conflict of laws methodology. It cannot be determined what law governs a particular issue until, crucially, that issue has been characterized as substantive, on the one hand, or procedural,3 on the other. The distinction is the fulcrum, or axis, of the choice of law process.

A feature of the new law of the sea introduced by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOS Convention),1 was the capacity for coastal states to assert vast maritime claims over waters adjacent to their coastlines. A continental shelf could be claimed out to a minimum of 200 nautical miles,2 while the newly recognized Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) also extended out to 200 nautical miles.3 The continental shelf had previously been recognized under the 1958 Geneva Convention on the Continental Shelf4 and so the extension of coastal state sovereign rights over the seabed and subsoil was consistent with already existing law of the sea principles. However the EEZ, which gave to coastal states sovereign rights over the living and non-living resources of the sea-bed and adjacent waters,5 was a new initiative of the LOS Convention and represents one of the most significant contemporary expansions of state sovereignty. By contrast with the extended continental shelf, which did not affect any significant pre-existing activities on the sea-bed, the new EEZ had a major impact upon fishing activities. As coastal states around the world eagerly proclaimed EEZs, waters previously considered high seas areas available for fishing6 were now within the reach of state fisheries’ jurisdiction and control. The result has been that under contemporary international law those waters available for the exercise of the high seas ‘freedom’ of fishing,7 have gradually been reduced. This new regime, in combination with parallel initiatives to regulate some aspects of high seas fishing activities, has meant that ‘legal’ fishing on the high seas is now subject to extensive regulation.

The subject of this article is the current state of administrative law in the context of the European integration. It will indicate the prospects for development of administrative law offered by the Convention on the Future of Europe, and its proposed European Constitution, as well as the enlargement of the EU which has taken place. The focus is on rules and general principles of European administrative law. They constitute the main sources of administrative law—written rules as well as unwritten judge-made law, and both the development of these sources and their mutual influence are subjects of the present article.

The last decade has seen the rise of a potentially significant development in the Asia-Pacific region in regard to human rights—the establishment of National Human Rights Institutions (particularly Human Rights Commissions) in numerous States.2 National Human Rights Commissions (hereafter NHRC) established in compliance with United Nations standards have been established in Australia, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, New Zealand, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.3 In many of these States, however, human rights abuses are still widespread and serious. The establishment of NHRC, which generally do not have the power to make enforceable decisions, could easily be derided as an attempt by governments to create a fac.ade of respect for human rights while failing to take the enforcement of those rights seriously.4 While this criticism has a degree of validity, NHRC have played a constructive, if limited role, in the promotion and protection of human rights in the Asia-Pacific region.

Images of widespread looting were the first to come from Baghdad following the entry of US forces into the Iraqi capital city in April 2003. In particular, it is hard to forget the powerful images of smashed display cases, empty vaults, and desperate staff in the Iraqi National Museum. Worse still, the National Library was burnt down. The looting of the Iraqi National Museum took place between 8 April, when the security situation prompted staff to leave the museum, and 12 April when some of them managed to return. Despite early pleadings with US forces to move a tank to guard the museum gates, US tanks did not arrive until 16 April.1 Cynics would say that the protection of the Oil Ministry appeared to take priority at the time.2 Early reports estimated that around 170,000 items went missing from the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad.3 This figure was completely exaggerated and the Bogdanos enquiry established that over 13,000 items had been stolen and about 3,000 recovered by September 2003.4 This article seeks to determine to what extent the US can be held legally responsible for the looting, and then to examine the international legal framework in place to facilitate the recovery and return of the items stolen from the Iraqi National Museum and other Iraqi cultural institutions

International human rights bodies with responsibility for monitoring the implementation and enforcement of rights protected by human rights treaties are usually empowered to indicate interim, or provisional, measures of protection in cases of urgency in order to safeguard the rights and persons of victims of alleged violations of human rights.1 Whether State parties are obliged to comply with a request for interim measures of protection has been the subject of some debate. The purpose of this note is to examine the issue of the binding force of interim measures of protection in the United Nations human rights system in light of the views of the Human Rights Committee (hereafter the Committee) in Piandiong, Morailos and Bulan v The Philippines.2 Before doing so, however, we need to recall briefly the Committee's role in securing the rights of the individual.

The preamble to the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage 1972 (the ‘World Heritage Convention’),1 adopted 30 years ago, testifies to the conviction of the States Parties ‘that deterioration or disappearance of any item of the cultural…heritage constitutes a harmful impoverishment of the heritage of all the nations of the world’.2 It speaks of the recognized ‘importance, for all the peoples of the world, of safeguarding this unique and irreplaceable property, to whatever people it may belong’3 and declares ‘that parts of the cultural…heritage…of outstanding interest…need to be preserved as part of the world heritage of mankind as a whole’.4

The European Union's 1999 Financial Services Action Plan (the FSAP), an ambitious reform agenda of forty-two measures, was designed to provide the regulatory underpinning for a single deep and liquid capital market, in which pan-EU market actors are regulated by their home Member State under harmonized rules. This single capital market would lower the cost of capital, unlock funding sources for companies, and increase returns on savings, while widening choice and stimulating competition in the pan-EU financial services industry. After a surge of legislative activity over the last months of 2003 and through early 2004, the FSAP is on track for timely completion in mid-2004, as called for by the March 2003 Brussels European Council. The closing of the current session of the European Parliament in spring 2004, combined with a sharp political focus on the financial markets post-Enron and in the wake of Parmalat, has concentrated EU attention both inter-institutionally and in the market place on delivery of the outstanding measures.1 With the adoption of the cornerstone Financial Instruments Markets Directive in April 2004, the FSAP is now, in large part, complete. Implementation should be achieved across the EU by 2006.

Chapter V (Part 1) of the ILC&s1 Articles on State Responsibility2 contains sixcircumstances which, when invoked justify, or excuse,3 the commission of acts that are otherwise unlawful against another State.4 The circumstances attenuate or remove responsibility entirely. These circumstances are namely: consent (Article 20), selfdefence (Article 21), countermeasures (Article 22), force majeure (Article 23), distress (Article 24), and necessity (Article 25). Nonetheless, Article 26 of the ILCASR states that ‘[n]othing in this Chapter precludes the wrongfulness of a State which is not in conformity with anobligation arising under a peremptory norm of general international law.’

In its judgment of 3 February 2003, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) declared the application submitted by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) for revision of its 1996 judgment concerning the Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, inadmissible.1 The Court found that the request for revision was not based on the ‘discovery’ of a ‘fact’ and, therefore, one of the conditions of Article 61 of the Statute of the Court was not satisfied. This commentary will appraise the decision by examining the formal and substantive criteria for revision, a rather neglected and underused process.2

One of the better qualities of Karel Wellens's recent monograph on remedies against international organizations is that, at least nominally, his is a lengthy plea for a constitutional approach towards international organizations.1 Whereas traditionally international lawyers (and much of international law perhaps as well) would approach organizations from a functional perspective,2 in Wellens's view such an approach is no longer advisable, if it ever was: it would fail to do justice to, eg, human rights considerations, as it would often be open to organizations to argue that its functional interests ought to prevail over human rights considerations.3

By any measure the single most important development across the field of Community competition law during the period under review (Spring 2001–Autumn 2003) is the adoption of Regulation 1/2003, by which the Pope abandoned the Vatican for the embrace of the Free Presbyterian Church. Regulation 17 has been the bedrock of the enforcement of the Community rules since 1962.1 Fundamental changes to it, first proposed by the Commission in 1999,2 were so startling as to be likened to ‘a lifelong devout Catholic suddenly converting him/herself to Protestantism’.3 Yet they were adopted by the Council in late 2002, and published early in 2003 as Regulation 1/20034—the Council here, maybe, missing a trick in not waiting a fortnight so as to adopt it as Regulation 17/2003. The new regulation is to apply from 1 May 2004—the date also scheduled for the formal accession of the ten new Member States.

In May 2003 the United Nations General Assembly approved an agreement between the United Nations and the Cambodian government (UN Agreement) providing for United Nations assistance in the establishment and operation of ‘Extraordinary Chambers’ within the domestic court structure of Cambodia.1 The UN Agreement is the result of a lengthy process of negotiation between the United Nations and the Cambodian government, with the intervention of several interested states.2 The final agreement reflects a compromise between the need to address impunity and the need to preserve Cambodian sovereignty.

The International Court of Justice is not a human rights court but it does hear human rights cases.1 This is hardly remarkable. As Professor Ian Brownlie has pointed out ‘[h]uman rights problems occur in specific legal contexts. The issues may arise… within the framework of a standard-setting convention, or within general international law.’2 Because human rights treaties normally have their own dispute settlement procedure, the situations in which the International Court of Justice is more likely to have to grapple with human rights issues lie within the realms of general international law or in non-human rights specific treaty provisions, which may, nevertheless, raise such issues. In addition, some human rights treaties, such as the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 1948, contain provisions specifically referring disputes to the International Court of Justice.3 Thus, it should come as no surprise that the Court has been involved in a number of cases involving human rights questions.

Trade marks remain hugely important for the economy of the Community. Enlargement has brought a steep increase in filings for the Community Trade Mark, and the new rate of applications seems likely to be maintained. As always, a balance must be struck between the Community's priorities, and those of the trade mark holder. Considerable harmonization of Community trade mark law has already been achieved by legislative means. There is an abundance of new case law, giving detailed and practical guidance for the interpretation of these measures. As a result, those using trade mark systems throughout the Community will benefit from increased consistency and depth of understanding in the application of the regime. The wider international scene will be given welcome recognition by the Community's accession to the Madrid Protocol. The Community's position on international exhaustion remains essentially unchanged, although the matter is still a controversial one.