From the outset, it is important to establish the meaning of “cabotage”, though, as so often happens, different meanings are possible. To recall what the German delegate to the General Conference on Communication and Transit, held in Barcelona in 1921, rightly observed in this connection: “In international law, by ‘cabotage’ is understood the transport of goods or passengers from one port in a country to another port in the same country. According to European international law ‘petit cabotage’ is spoken of when it is a question of ports situated on the same sea, and ‘grand cabotage’ when the ports are situated on different seas. Maritime transport from Bordeaux to Marseille is ‘grand cabotage’, from Bordeaux to Nantes or to Le Havre is ‘petit cabotage’. Consequently, in European international law, the word ‘cabotage’ is only applied to maritime navigation …”. … The cabotage question with which we are dealing here is quite different. It is not cabotage properly so called, and I am glad that in the Draft Convention we do not speak of ‘cabotage’, but of ‘local transport’…

A Yugoslav commentator on the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) – concluded on 1 August 1975 in Helsinki – recently wrote: “By indicating the ways of real and all-round active and peaceful coexistence in Europe, the Helsinki Document automatically rules out any ‘co-existence’ between the ‘spirit’ of Helsinki and the ‘spirit’ of Yalta”.

The signature of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 marked the birth of the International Labour Organisation (ILO); the ILO Constitution formed Chapter XIII of the Treaty.

On 10 June 1977, at Geneva, the representatives of ninety-seven States, of the Holy See and of three national liberation movements put their signatures to the Final Act of the Diplomatic Conference on the Reaffirmation and Development of International Humanitarian Law Applicable in Armed Conflicts. This event brought to a formal close a Conference which had commenced its work in 1974, and which had, in the course of four consecutive annual sessions deliberated, negotiated, and more or less satisfactorily resolved a large number of often delicate issues of humanitarian law.