Kafka's short story In the Penal Colony depicts the visit of a European traveller to a cruel penal colony. The author uses the story to explore current issues concerning torture. Her particular focus is on the interrelation between torture and empire, and on the limits of humanitarian reform. Kafka is instructive in puncturing the pretensions of humanitarianism, and in pointing up the inescapable uncertainties, absurdities, and complicities associated with it.

This article considers the effectiveness of rights-based approaches to the problem of world hunger. Given that inadequate food supply may be the result of complex, structural problems outside the control of particular staes and authorities, can advocacy based on the right to food significantly improve world food security? To answer this question, this article considers one particular structural factor which contributes to world hunger, namely the operation of the international economic system. It concludes that, at both a theoretical and a practical level, human rights discourse is ill-suited to achieve the fundamental structural change to this system necessary t improve food security. This represents a significant limitation on the effectiveness of the right to food. As a result, an alternative legal approach is suggested, namely using a legal principle of ‘food sovereignty’ to ensure that the international system as a whole operates to support the food needs of its population.

The introduction explains how this essay articulates the issue of ‘justice after war’ from the point of view of just-war theory, and how such a view can and ought to impact upon international law, for instance by inspiring the eventual development of a new treaty, or Geneva Convention, exclusively concerned with issues of postwar justice. In the body of the essay, attention is first given to explaining why just-war theory has traditionally ignored, or even rejected, jus post bellum. Second, argument is made as to why this ignorance and rejection must be overcome, and replaced with information and inclusion. Third, principles drawing on traditional just-war theory are constructed and defended, for jus post bellum in general and for forcible postwar regime change in particular. Finally, several remaining challenges are addressed, seeking to dissolve doubts and strengthen resolve towards working for progress on this vital and topical issue of jus post bellum.

This article seeks to examine whether the International Court of Justicehas developed jurisprudence on international humanitarian law and whether this has exerted any influence on the decisions adopted by other international courts and tribunals. In so doing, it revisits the issue of the value ofjudicial decisions under international law. Finally, it reveals that despite the non-operation of the rule of stare decisis in international law, the Court's jurisprudence on international humanitarian law has been a persuasive precedent for other international courts and tribunals.

The UN Security Council, as ‘parent body’ of the two ad hoc Tribunals, never introduced explicit rules on how to compensate accused persons for violations of their rights imputable to the Tribunals' organs. Notwithstanding the absence of such rules, a series of decisions by ICTYand ICTR chambers show the willingness of these institutions to address such violations when they occur. In doing so, the Tribunals appear to have followed some of the same principles on responsibility of international organizations as are being elaborated by the International Law Commission (ILC). By analysing these parallel processes, the author suggests that the elaboration of rules by the ad hoc Tribunals in the field of human rights violations and the codification by the ILC of rules on international responsibility, although distinct in aim and scope, might mutually benefit each other andshed some light on the difficulties of applying such principles in practice.

Two recent ICSID cases, CMS v. Argentina and LG&E v. Argentina, diverge on the application of necessity under customary international law. The LG&E tribunal affirmed that Argentina's financial crisis amounted to a state of necessity. On virtually identical facts, CMS had reached the opposite conclusion 18 months earlier. This unhealthy split of opinion highlights the fact that necessity is ill-suited to financial crises. The state of necessity is at best a crude defence, appropriate as long as international law in this area remains underdeveloped. Lack of payment capacity will strike a better balance between host country and investor interests in future sovereign debt crises. This defence is also more amenable to adjudication by national courts and international tribunals.

On 2 February 2007 the Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General unveiled a comprehensive proposal for a supervised independence of Kosovo with a view of clinching the last chapter of the dismemberment of Yugoslavia. This proposal constitutes a further attempt by the international community of states to bridle the volatile and unpredictable phenomenon of statehood. The state of Kosovo that is envisaged by the Status Settlement is to be endowedwith all the features that are nowadays seen as indispensable for the establishment of a modern government apparatus, a tendency that had already beenobserved in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina or East Timor. The proposed regulation of statehood in this case, however, proves to be of an unprecedented extent. Against that backdrop, the article grapples with the legal questions revolving around the independence of Kosovo, including secession, recognition, succession, international supervision, self-determination, and membership of international organizations.

The concept of democracy has long fuelled controversy among international legal scholars, especially concerning its definition. This article is an attempt to single out three constitutive elements of democracy that have been subject to extensive scrutiny in the practice of electoral assistance and the more comprehensive peace-building and state-building missions that the UN has taken up or supported since the end of the twentieth century: freeand fair elections, freedom of association – with emphasis on the freedom to establish political parties – and freedom of expression. In doing so, this paper examines the role and the importance of each of these three constitutive elements in the practice pertaining to post-conflict reconstruction of Kosovo, East Timor, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Books and Articles in the Field of the Prevention and Peaceful Settlement of International Disputes (Spring 2007). Compiled by Ingrid Kost exclusively from materials available at the Peace Palace Library, The Hague

Rachel Murray, Human Rights in Africa: From the OAU to the African Union, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004, ISBN-13: 9780521839174, ISBN-10: 0521839173, 349 pp., £50.00 (hb).

M. Mubiala, Le Système régional Africain de Protection des Droits de l'Homme, Brussels, Bruylant, 2005, ISBN 280272021X, 299 pp., €65.00.

Jack L. Goldsmith and Eric A. Posner, The Limits of International Law, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN-13: 9780195314175, ISBN-10: 0195314174, 272 pp., £11.99 (pb).

Thomas J. Schoenbaum, International Relations: The Path Not Taken. Using International Law to Promote World Peace and Security, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,2006, ISBN-13: 9780521681506, ISBN-10: 0521681502, 320 pp., £16.99 (pb).