On 22 February 2002, Jonas Malheiro Savimbi, who led the UNITA rebel movement during the bloody armed conflict in Angola and who had battled to take power by force since Angola's independence from Portugal in 1975, was killed in a gun battle with the Angolan Army. During the Cold War, Savimbi was a proxy for the United States against the then-Marxist government of Angola. But after the end of the Cold War, he lost international support for rejecting peace efforts. He was accused of perpetuating a bloody internal conflict to advance his own interests and was exposed to international sanctions. Meanwhile, the government of President José Eduardo dos Santos moved closer to the United States.

The 27-year-long armed conflict is believed to have killed approximately one million people and driven four million others from their homes, creating a humanitarian crisis. In addition, the conflict destroyed almost all of the country's infrastructure, and effectively disrupted every effort by the government to start the long desired national reconstruction after independence, and the building of prosperity for the nation's children.

The September 11 attacks and the ensuing military operations in Afghanistan have raised a multitude of complex and disturbing problems for the existing humanitarian normative order. Much of the legal scholarship on recent events concerning Afghanistan has focused on the issues of the legal status of captured Taliban and Al Qaeda soldiers under humanitarian law, their detention conditions at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba and the inadequacy of procedural safeguards for judicial proceedings of the proposed Military Commissions under the US Presidential Order and the Department of Defence Order. This paper takes a somewhat different approach, looking first at the legal characterisation of the armed conflicts in Afghanistan since 6/7 October 2001 and particularly the internecine hostilities that have continued since the apparent end of the war, before examining the status of combatants and that of prisoners of war. Clarification of the nature of the armed conflicts and of the scope of application of the rules on prisoners of war is essential for disentangling the legal quagmire surrounding the controversy over the legal status of both Taliban and Al Qaeda soldiers under the jus in bello.

Throughout its extensive history, the doctrine of belligerent reprisals has caused controversy and provoked debate, none more so than in the Twentieth Century, with its unprecedented developments in the codification of the laws of armed conflict. Belligerent reprisals are prima facie unlawful acts taken against a party to an armed conflict that is violating the law for the purpose of coercing that party to cease its unlawful conduct. Owing to this law enforcement function, belligerent reprisals have historically been treated as lawful acts, provided that they have been carried out in observance of a number of established principles. The rules laid down in international humanitarian law have increasingly limited the scope for taking reprisals by excluding certain categories of persons and objects from being the lawful targets of reprisal actions. While palpable disagreement exists regarding the customary status of the law pertaining to belligerent reprisals, more fundamental dispute arises in relation to the desirability of the actual institution of belligerent reprisals itself.

Probably more has happened in the past five years to the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide than in the previous 50, that is, in the half-century following its adoption by the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948.

Indeed, for the first five decades of its existence, the Convention was largely ignored by lawyers, viewed by most of them — as Georg Schwar-zenberger famously remarked — to be ‘unnecessary when applicable and inapplicable when necessary’. Over the years there had been attempts to apply the ‘g-word’ to a wide range of atrocities and gross violations of human rights, including those of China in Tibet, of Iraq against the Kurds, of the United States in Vietnam as well as towards its African-American and aboriginal populations, of Pakistan in Bangladesh, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and Israel in Lebanon. But in each of these cases, some interpretative flair was required in order to stretch the definition to fit the crimes, and the efforts were not always very convincing. In 1990 scholars Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn wrote that ‘the wording of the Convention is so restrictive that not one of the genocidal killings committed since its adoption is covered by it’.

Dragged reluctantly into the debate over Khmer Rouge accountability, the United Nations Secretariat has spent the last five years attempting to find a mutually acceptable judicial structure to try the leaders of the former government of Cambodia for international crimes committed between 1975 and 1979.

In response to a request for aid from the Cambodian government in June 1997, the UN originally came down in favour of establishing a third ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal. Taking that proposal as a starting point, this paper documents the series of events leading the Organisation towards unwilling participation in potentially unjust domestic trials after Cambodia's refusal of the UN proposal. Each time the negotiations seemed to have broken down, the UN and Cambodia came under pressure from certain Member States to return to the negotiating table. Beset with its responsibility in supporting the Khmer Rouge after the Vietnamese invasion in 1979, the UN compromised successively concerning the nature of the court (part 3) and its structure (part 4). A consensus finally seemed to have been reached in July 2000, when a UN negotiating team left Phnom Penh with a draft Memorandum of Understanding concerning ‘significant international co-operation’ in trials before ‘Extraordinary Chambers’ of the Cambodian courts (the ‘draft MOU’). However, the law finally promulgated on 10 August 2001 in order to set up these Chambers (the ‘Tribunal Law’) was not entirely consistent with the terms of the draft MOU, the exact legal status of which then became a bone of contention (part 5).

More than ten years have passed since the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on 25 May 1993. What was perceived then as being quite a scandalous step has come to seem somewhat normal both for international and criminal lawyers. The creation of the International Tribunal was a surprising move mainly for three reasons. First, from a public international law point of view, the UN Charter does not explicitly authorise anything like a ‘judicial intervention’ as a possible means to react to an international conflict and establish peace and security. Second, given that international criminal law at that time was hardly codified, the legality of prosecutions was questioned in view of the principle nullum crimen sine lege. Third, the procedural system of an international criminal prosecution was unclear.

The shock concerning the first problem was reduced by the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) shortly thereafter, and was later overcome by institutionalising ‘judicial intervention’ by Article 13(b) of the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The second problem was solved by the first judgment of the Appeals Chamber of the ICTY itself.

With the attacks of 11 September 2001 very much casting their shadow, 2002 was a year in which issues concerning both the jus in bello and the jus ad bellum occupied centre stage in international law and relations and dominated the news agenda, but often in a way that promoted confusion and misinformation rather than greater understanding of the law, and, as the year progressed, frustration and despair rather than optimism.

Transnational terrorism was cemented as the declared pre-eminent security concern of many states, and, as a consequence, full speed into the ‘global war on terror’ (hereinafter GWOT), the integrity of international humanitarian law, human rights law and international law in general, including the role of international organisations such as the United Nations, came under increasing challenge. Focal points of rancorous, polarised debate were the fact and the conditions of detention of persons, including minors, at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; the applicability and relevance of international humanitarian law in the context of the terrorist threat and the counter-terrorist response; the perceived conflict between human rights and national security; the coming into being of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the US's almost obsessive opposition to it; and, as the year drew to a close, the spectre of the use of force against Iraq without Security Council authorisation by an increasingly belligerent United States and a handful of its allies.

Societies emerging from political turmoil and civil unrest associated with gross violations of human rights and humanitarian law face the crucial question of how to deal with these atrocities and put the past in its place. Since the 1980s, this problem has been a major preoccupation of international law and scholarship. The traditional responses include outside intervention in such states pursuant to Chapter VII powers under the United Nations Charter, grants of conditional amnesty to perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity, grants of some form of unconditional amnesty, and prosecution of perpetrators.

Nowhere is this question more pressing than in Sierra Leone, which recently emerged from a ten-year civil war characterized by systematic, serious and widespread violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. The Government of Sierra Leone had to make a choice between these four traditional strategies for dealing with these pervasive human rights violations.

In May 1993, at the height of the wars in the former Yugoslavia, the United Nations' Security Council established the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). It did so in response to international outrage at evidence of war crimes being committed with impunity and on a scale unprecedented in Europe since World War II. The Statute empowered the ICTY to prosecute persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia since 1 January 1991, in accordance with its provisions.

The ICTY was established by the Security Council rather than the General Assembly because it was thought that the situation in the former Yugoslavia was too serious to wait for a lengthy ratification process. By characterising the war as a breach of the peace, the Security Council could act immediately under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Part of the international community's motivation in establishing the Tribunal was to prevent further war crimes being committed in the region, particularly against the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia.

Contemporary international conflicts are witnessing an increasing involvement of civilians — such as, for example, suicide bombers — in the conduct of hostilities. Unlike regular soldiers, however, whose job it is to fight, civilians are not allowed to participate in combat and may be tried under ordinary criminal law for such activity. The question that this paper will attempt to answer is whether in the case where their engagement may lead to gross violations of humanitarian principles, they may be additionally subject to war crimes proceedings pursuant to international humanitarian law (IHL).

In order to assess the applicability of the war crimes' regime to civilians, this paper will be structured as follows. Part 2 will define who is a civilian. Part 3 will examine the position of international jurisprudence and doctrine on the question whether civilians may also be liable for war crimes and under what conditions. The fourth part will draw the conclusions.

There have been significant developments in recent years in the efforts to reduce the death, injury and suffering caused by anti-personnel landmines. These weapons are regarded as one of the major threats to civilians once an armed conflict has ended. Anti-personnel mines have killed and injured large numbers of men, women and children and slowed the rebuilding of war-affected countries. The longterm and indiscriminate effects of these weapons led to the adoption in 1997 of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-personnel Mines and on their Destruction.

Anti-personnel mines, however, are one part of a broader problem. Modern armed conflict leaves behind a wide array of explosive ordnance which, like antipersonnel mines, causes large numbers of civilian casualties and has severe socioeconomic consequences for years, and sometimes for decades, after the hostilities end. Until recently, international humanitarian law contained very few requirements to lessen the impact of these ‘explosive remnants of war’ (ERW).

The territory of Western Sahara has an area of about 280,000 sq. km and approximately 250,000 inhabitants, known as Sahrawis. It is situated in the north-west of the African continent, where the Sahara Desert meets the Atlantic Ocean, and has a coastline of more than 1,000 km. In the north, Western Sahara has a common border of 443 km with Morocco, and in the south and west it is bordered by Mauritania (1,561 km). The territory also has a short common border of 42 km with Algeria. The climate is predominantly that of the desert: hot and dry in summer, cold in winter, with little or no rainfall. In the coastal regions vegetation may be abundant. While the Sahrawis were originally nomads, most of the population now lives in small towns and villages. The economy is based on agriculture and fishing, primarily destined for local consumption. Rich phosphate deposits are the main export commodity. There seem to be oil deposits off the Atlantic coast.

Although the promotion of international humanitarian law (IHL) in academic circles is a relatively new activity for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), it has made rapid progress since the mid 1990s. Today, the organisation is following up on university-related activities in some 130 countries around the world. Overseen and harmonised by the ICRC headquarters in Geneva but implemented primarily by operational and regional delegations in the field, the ICRC's programmes targeting university professors and students are notable for their variety and diversity. Nevertheless, the organisation has made a concerted effort to ensure that all such programmes further the same broad objective and operate according to the same principles of action. In the second section of this paper, we examine the issues related to including IHL courses in the regular curricula of the universities and faculties concerned and present the modus operandi adopted by the ICRC on the basis of ‘lessons learned’. In the third section, we highlight the ICRC's experience of promoting IHL in academic circles in the Russian Federation. Section 4 draws some conclusions.

Belgium was variously praised, criticized and ridiculed for its 1993 law (as amended in 1999) giving it universal jurisdiction over war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The invocation of this law against Israeli and US defendants provoked an unprecedented conflict with Israel and serious tension with the United States of America in 2003. After months of diplomatic incidents, economic threats, provocative complaints and political debate, Belgium's controversial anti-atrocity law was repealed on 5 August 2003, ten years after entering into force. Even in the international legal community, real understanding of what happened in this legal laboratory is not common. This article is not a neutral study, but a contribution from an actor and a privileged witness.

The First Special Session of the Conference of the States Parties to Review the Operation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (the First Review Conference) was convened by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) from 28 April to 9 May 2003 in The Hague, the Netherlands. This article examines the mandate of the Review Conference, as stipulated by the Chemical Weapons Convention (Convention or CWC), the preparations undertaken by the OPCW and its Member States, the issues that could have been raised, and those that were addressed in the Political Declaration and the Report adopted by the First Review Conference.