On 22 November 1996, the Council of the European Union adopted a framework regulation and agreed to joint action to ‘protect’ the interests of the European Union and its citizens against the extraterritorial application of legislation by non-member states. These measures were adopted in response to the extraterritorial application of certain measures by the United States, concerning trade with and investment in Cuba, as well as investment in Iran and Libya. These United States measures apply to all natural and legal persons irrespective of their nationality, residency, or place of activity. Thus, even nationals of a member state of the European Union residing and active in the European Union must comply with the United States measures. The enactment of this legislation marks a new episode in the on-going battle between the United States and the European Union over the frontiers of a state's (or an international organization's) jurisdiction to prescribe. This time, however, the European Union counteracted by the adoption of measures which can partly be characterized as retorsion measures and partly as countermeasures. The adoption of these measures by the European Union raises questions with respect to the legitimacy of the retorsion measures and the legality of the countermeasures.

In its first issue of 1996, the Leiden Journal of International Law published an Editorial from the hands of René Lefeber and David Raič. In it, their main contention is that even if the Chechen people might not have had a right to external self-determination before December 1994, it acquired such a right due to Russia's massive and indiscriminate use of military force in December 1994. This right to external self-determination, so they claim, entails a (correlative?) right to secession.

We agree with André de Hoogh that the Chechens did not possess a right to external self-determination prior to the massive indiscriminate use oi military force by Russia in December 1994. At no point have we argued or suggested otherwise. Hence, up to December 1994, the Chechen claim did indeed not meet the conditions set by paragraph seven of the Friendly Relations Declaration. However, the Friendly Relations Declaration needs to be interpreted in view of usus and opinio iuris. In other words, one has to analyse how this paragraph has developed in customary international law. According to our analysis of the law of self-determination, the emergence of a right to external self-determination depends on two cumulative conditions, viz. 1) the serious and persistent violation of the right to internal self-determination and 2) the exhaustion of all total and international peaceful remedies by the people concerned to effectuate its right to internal self-determination. These conditions must be deemed fulfilled if the parent state seriously and massively violates the fundamental human rights and freedoms – in particular by an arbitrary violation of the right to life – of the persons belonging to the people concerned.

The issue of whether an international judicial forum may entertain the claim of a dual national against a state to which he owes allegiance, is an old one. What is new, however, is the challenge by the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal of the traditionally held view that, in the absence of a clear mandate and where customary international law is exclusively invoked, the forum may not do so. Such a claim is admissible, says the Tribunal, provided the claimant is able to demonstrate: (a) that at all relevant times his “dominant and effective” nationality was the one on which he now relies; and (b) that the rights in question, those for the asserted breach of which he seeks redress, were not secured because of his other, non-dominant, nationality. Leaving for another day the questionability of the challenge, the present article offers to examine some of the more important aspects of the second test, as expounded and applied by the Tribunal.

Independence and impartiality of the judiciary is a conditio sine qua non for confidence in, and the authority and success of, any judicial procedure. This article takes a close look at the voting patterns of the judges of two influential international tribunals: the International Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. To what extent do national judges (and judges ad hoc, in particular) vote consistently with the position of their national governments? By conducting a factual analysis of the voting behaviour of the judges, the present paper aims at drawing some tentative conclusions on the fulfilment of the requirements of independence and impartiality in the operation of these two distinguished courts. Of all influences to which men are subject, none is more powerful, more persvasive or more subtle than the tie of allegiance that binds them [judges] to the land of their homes and kindred and to the great sources of the honors and preferments for which they are so ready to spend their fortunes and to risk their lives.

The European Social Charter (ESC) was signed in 1961 and has been in force since 1965. Protecting 19 fundamental rights, it was conceived as the counterpart, in the field of social and economic rights, to the European Convention on Human Rights. However, it was considered to have several shortcomings as a human right instrument, namely a slow, confusing and government-controlled monitoring mechanism as well as a list of protected rights that was incomplete. This last criticism was partly met by the Additional Protocol to the Charter of 1988, which guaranteed four additional rights. However, an informal Ministerial Conference on Human Rights held in Rome on 5 November 1990 acknowledged that one had to go further. The ministers invited the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe to take the necessary steps for a detailed study of the role, content, and operation of the European Social Charter with a view to giving it a new impetus. In response, the Committee of Ministers authorized the convening of an ad hoc committee, the Committee on the European Social Charter (the so-called “Charte-Rel Committee”). It was instructed to make proposals for improving the effectiveness of the Charter and, in particular, the functioning of its supervisory machinery. In carrying out its task, the Committee consulted the international representatives of management and labour, including the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and the Union of the Confederations of Industry and Employers of Europe (UNICE), as well as the International Labour Organization (ILO) at all stage.

While conflict management is an important part of any international treaty, it is particularly important in the case of the Chemical Weapons Convention, which will enter into force on 29 April 1997. Disarmament is the primary goal of the Convention and, therefore, by definition, it will encroach on the sovereignty and security interests of its state-parties. Negotiated by the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament over more than 20 years, the Treaty was finally approved by that body in September 1992 and endorsed by the UN General Assembly in December of that year. The Convention's provisions reflect the new world into which it was born. The regime established by the Convention to verify compliance with its terms is unprecedented in terms of its scope and depth, and because state-parties will have no right to refuse verification activities specified in the Convention. It is also unprecedented in that all state-parties are treated equally, unlike some other multilateral regimes related to the control of weapons of mass destruction negotiated earlier. Nonetheless, such an extensive regime, made possible by the politics of a post-Cold-War world, will inevitably encounter unexpected complications and unforeseen difficulties. This will be so particularly with respect to compliance and interpreting the results of verification activities; therefore, the provisions in the Convention for managing potential or actual conflict will be cruical for it to operate effectively.

On 17 June 1996, the United States Supreme Court denied a petition for certiorari submitted by counsel for Radovan Karadžić, the infamous Bosnian-Serb leader indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for various international crimes. Thus, the Court let the decision of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in the companion cases of Kadić v. Karadžić and Doe I and Doe II v. Karadžić, stand. The latter was a set of cases brought by Croat and Muslim citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the US courts against Radovan Karadžić after he was duly served process while in New York. The cases will now proceed, however slowly, with a trial on the merits, addressing the plaintiffs' claims concerning Karadžić's responsibility for acts of genocide; war crimes; torture; summary execution; related crimes against humanity; acts of rape; forced prostitution; forced impregnation; other cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment; assault and battery; sexual and ethnic inequality; and wrongful death. As remedies, the plaintiffs seek compensatory and punitive damages, attorney fees and, in one instance, injunctive relief.

In this article, special attention will be given to the recent judgment of the European Court of Human Right in the case of Akdivar and Others v. Turkey. Since 1985, a violent conflict has raged in the South-Eastern region of Turkey, between the Turkish security forces and sections of the Kurdish population in favour of Kurdish autonomy, in particular members of the PKK (Workers' Party of Kurdistan). Since 1987, 10 of the 11 provinces of South-Eastern Turkey have been subjected to emergency rule, which was in force at the time of the facts complained of. The main issue in this case concerned the fact that during this conflict, a large number of villages have been destroyed and evacuated by the security forces. According to the applicants, the alleged burning of their houses by the security forces constituted, inter alia, a violation of Article 3 (the prohibition of torture and inhuman treatment or punishment) and Article 8 (the right of respect for private life, family life, and home) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 (property rights).

On 8 July 1991, Qatar filed an application instituting proceedings against Bahrain in respect of certain disputes between the two states relating to sovereignty over the Hawar Islands, sovereign rights over the shoals of Dibal and Qit'at Jaradah, and the delimitation of the maritime areas of the two states.

On Wednesday 6 November 1996, the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council re-elected Judges Mohammed Bedjaoui (Algeria), Stephen M. Schwebel (United States), and Vladlen S. Vereshchetin (Russian Federation) as members of the Court. On the same date, Pieter H. Kooijmans (Netherlands) and José F. Rezek (Brazil) were elected as members of the Court as of 6 February 1997. Kooijmans and Rezek have replaced Judges Luigi Ferrari Bravo (Italy), who completed the late Judge Ago's term, and Mohammed Shahabuddeen (Guyana), who completed his nine year term.

In a small note which Peter Kooijmans wrote to me in answer to a letter in which I congratulated him with his election as Judge in the International Court of Justice – the first Netherlands Judge in the Court after World War II apart from Professor Riphagen who only served as a Judge ad hoc in the Barcelona Traction, Light and Power Company Ltd. case – he stated that he considered himself to be a privileged man. Privileged, because the new position would allow him to continue to remain active in the field of international law considerably beyond the retirement age of 65 which applies to professors of international law and most other people in The Netherlands. Privileged, I would like to add, also in another respect. Very rarely it will be given to one person in his lifetime to fulfil so many different honourable positions in the field of international law and international relations at such a high level of responsibility as has been the case with Peter Kooijmans: Professor of public international law, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, State Secretary (Staatssecretaris) for Foreign Affairs, in particular disarmament matters (1973–1977), Minister for Foreign Affairs and, finally, Judge in the International Court of Justice.

Human rights constitute a challenge that Peter Kooijmans never refused or will refuse, both in his academic and government activities. For a long time he has been in the forefront of those who have struggled for the promotion and protection on human rights for everyone, everywhere in the world. As he said himself: “I myself would not have devoted so much of my time to the cause of human rights […] if I had not believed it to be a just cause and worthy task.“ The issue of human rights first became a major concern for him when he was State Secretary for Foreign Affairs (1973–1977), when he had the Dutch foreign policy within the United Nations (including human rights questions) in his portfolio. It was during that period that the United Nations was gradually changing its course, by shifting the emphasis from standard setting in the field of human rights to supervision over the implementation of international human rights norms. He was then working in the shadow of Max van der Stoel, Minister for Foreign Affairs, who was himself an outspoken protagonist of international human rights. It was Max van der Stoel who, after he had again become Minister for Foreign Affairs during the shortlived Van Agt II cabinet (1981–1982), requested Peter Kooijmans to succeed him as Chairman of the Netherlands' delegation to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, the main political organ of the United Nations in the field of human rights. With his usual sense for realism, Kooijmans once described this Commission as “a crooked stick to make straight stroke”.

When Peter Kooijmans took up his position as judge in the International Court of Justice on 6 February 1997, a formal end came to a career of about 30 years of teaching public international law in the Netherlands. This is why the Leiden Journal of International Law has asked me to write a few words about the work and person of Peter Kooijmans as a teacher of public international law, a task which I accepted with great pleasure, also on behalf of other staff members who have worked with Peter Kooijmans for many years.

The dichotomy of reason and passion is so deeply embedded in the construction of what is ‘legal‘ that it seems difficult even to imagine an international law that would not be entrenched in it. The very identity of international law seems based on its capacity to set itself on the side of reason, in opposition to the passionate, the irrational. Is not reason practically synonymous with order, and passion with chaos? And what is law for if not to bring about order, and to allow exit from our slavery under passion? Is not reason what is universal and objective, while passion is particular and subjective? And is it not then the case that a law pretending to universality must perforce align itself with the forces of reason?

On 11 July 1996, the International Court of Justice, in its third Substantive decision and first Judgment in respect of the dispute brought before it by Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia or BH) against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Yugoslavia or FRY) under Article IX of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, dismissed all the preliminary objections that had been raised by Yugoslavia, as well as several additional bases of jurisdiction invoked by Bosnia. The Court also found that it had jurisdiction to adjudicate upon the dispute and that the application filed by Bosnia on 20 March 1993 was admissible. It thus positioned itself, over three years after the application had been filed, to resume the proceedings to consider the case on its merits, though still on an somewhat lcisurely schedule.

Tadić (indictment of 13 February 1995)

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) is specifically charged in its Statute with the protection of victims and witnesses. This mandatory consideration is also reflected in its Rules of Procedure and Evidence (‘the Rules’). As a newly created international judicial organization, the 18 months since the very first decision granting protective measures for victims and witnesses was issued have been highly influential in identifying and laying down the basic principles upon which such protection may be granted within the context of the unique legal framework of the ICTY. The completion of the first trial has enabled the ICTY to put those principles into practice and evaluate them over a six-month period. This article will focus mainly on the experiences gained from the Tadić trial, with reference to other cases for completeness.