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5391. Neutrality – A Survivor?

Author:
Maria Gavouneli
Publication Date:
02-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
Nicolas Politis argued in 1935 that the law of neutrality was obsolete, a product of the international anarchy of the times, doomed to be replaced by a new centralized international community. His vision of the League of Nations ended in the fire of World War II but his prediction proved to be mostly true. In the collective security system created by the UN Charter and its prohibition of the use of force, the traditional rules of neutrality do not find scope of application. Yet, transposed into fundamental principles of humanitarian law, they continue to rule over peace-keeping and humanitarian operations. In addition, they complement the existing rules for military action mandated by the UN Security Council, especially during operations at sea. He was essentially right: the institution had to change and it has changed.

5392. Kimberley N. Trapp, State Responsibility for International Terrorism.Problems and Prospects

Author:
Helmut Philipp Aust
Publication Date:
02-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
Ten years after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the priorities of world politics now appear to shift to different topics and themes. Accordingly, it is time for international lawyers to identify whether the international fight against terrorism has an enduring legacy. The monograph by Kimberley Trapp will be of particular help for this endeavour with respect to the allocation of state responsibility for international terrorism.

5393. Ralph Zacklin, The United Nations Secretariat and the Use of Force in a Unipolar World. Power v. Principle

Author:
Günther Auth
Publication Date:
02-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
Global governance has been the buzzword for many internationalists for quite some time now, and the United Nations has been one of the primordial focal points in controversies about global order. This prominence of the UN has been especially remarkable in the context of deliberations about the legality and legitimacy of military force. For, despite the growing importance of the US as the world's most capable superpower, internationalists have not been muted by voices stressing the impossibility of successfully grappling with power-based interests and high-political considerations of predominant states through international law and organization. The emergence of a unipolar moment, a constellation supposedly characterized by a high concentration of military capabilities and widespread scepticism as regards the fruitfulness of multilateralism in the US has rather enticed many commentators to ponder all the more seriously the potential role of multilateral institutions, such as the UN – as a mediating structure vis-à-vis national interests, as a legitimacy-conferring agent the main function of which it is to rationalize the regime of the great powers, or as a potential counterweight to US-American unilateralism. The author of the book under review adds to this list as he endeavours to show that, after the end of the Cold War in 1990, the Secretariat of the UN repeatedly championed views that brought it into conflict with the US and other influential member states of the UN. Based on his own experience as a staff member in the Office of Legal Affairs since 1973, as the Director of the UN Secretariat's Office of Legal Counsel since 1988, and as an Assistant Secretary-General for Legal Affairs of the United Nations from 1998 to 2005, he delivered The Sir Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures at Cambridge University in 2008, in which he made a strong point for an independent role for the UN Secretariat as regards questions concerning the legality and legitimacy of military force.
Political Geography:
United States and United Nations

5394. Daniel H. Joyner, Interpreting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

Author:
Dieter Fleck
Publication Date:
02-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
The 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which was extended indefinitely in 1995, provides a comprehensive legal structure of rights and obligations designed to protect mankind from nuclear aggression and accidental extinction. Yet its implementation takes place in a political environment of uncertainties and controversies. The still existing universality gap, an apparent implementation gap (Iran), and the absence of effective measures towards general and complete nuclear disarmament – which are to be seen against the background of the global challenge that non-state actors are getting access to weapons of mass destruction – call for urgent and effective measures to increase implementation of the NPT and ensure compliance with its rules. Any of these measures at first requires an interpretation of the Treaty.
Political Geography:
Iran and Beijing

5395. Anne Orford, International Authority and the Responsibility to Protect

Author:
Ramesh Thakur
Publication Date:
02-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
Rwanda's three-month 1994 genocide that killed 800,000 people was not prevented due to a failure of political will, not lack of military capacity. Then in Kosovo in 1999, NATO did take forceful action in the name of humanitarian intervention, but without UN authorization. Both incidents triggered legal and political controversies, as a consequence of which Secretary- General (SG) Kofi Annan pushed for a new doctrine which would allow the international community to take timely and effective action against humanitarian atrocities.

5396. P.G. McHugh, Aboriginal Title. The Modern Jurisprudence of Tribal Land Rights

Author:
Katja Göcke
Publication Date:
02-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
The recognition of aboriginal title – i.e., land rights not derived from the Crown/government but rooted solely in the use and ownership of the land by indigenous peoples since time immemorial – is probably the greatest achievement of indigenous peoples in their decade-long struggle to de - fend their land and culture. Since indigenous peoples define themselves as a people through their genealogical connection to certain areas, the realization of the right to own, use, and live on their ancestral territories has always been at the centre of their struggle for the recognition and enforcement of their rights. Ownership of and control over their ancestral land and its resources are not only considered a significant contribution to solving the terrible social and economic problems indigenous peoples are facing. A considerable degree of self-management and control over land and natural resources is also regarded as essential to the indigenous peoples' survival as peoples and the preservation of their distinct culture. Yet until the 1970s the rights of indigenous peoples to their ancestral lands were almost completely ignored by states and international law. The loss of indigenous peoples' control of and ownership over these lands during colonization was regarded as a historical and irreversible fact by national governments. When from the 1970s onwards courts in several common law jurisdictions began to hold that the indigenous peoples' customary tenure had indeed survived the acquisition of sovereignty by the Crown and continued to exist as a burden on the Crown's radical title to the land, the national governments were – after years of inactivity and neglect – finally forced to act and to enter into negotiations with indigenous peoples to settle the indigenous peoples' land claims. In the 1990s, United Nations human rights monitoring bodies and regional human rights courts picked up the aboriginal title idea, thereby placing indigenous peoples' issues and concerns on the international agenda and providing indigenous peoples with additional leverage against their respective governments. The recognition of inherent indigenous land rights not only enabled indigenous peoples to retain and regain ownership and control over land and resources, but it also became the platform for the recognition of other indigenous rights, in particular, the right to self-determination and the right to autonomy. Hence, through the recognition of the aboriginal title doctrine, indigenous peoples were not only brought to the attention of their respective governments, but they also became recognized as actors – and no longer as mere subjects – on the national as well as on the international level.
Political Geography:
United Nations

5397. Kate Parlett, The Individual in the International Legal System. Continuity and Change in International Law

Author:
Andreas Müller
Publication Date:
02-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
Whether and where to locate the individual in the universe of international law has become a standard question for the discipline. While in the 19th and still in the early 20th centuries international legal doctrine could not see in the human person anything other than a mere object of international law, at the beginning of the 21st century, the individual presents itself as habitué of international law with major treatises dedicating a substantial number of pages, if not whole chapters to the topic. The last hundred years have thus witnessed a remarkable development which has shifted the individual's place in international law from the utmost periphery of the discipline to perhaps not its centre, but at least to its inner circles.

5398. José E. Alvarez and Karl P. Sauvant et al. (eds), The Evolving International Investment Regime. Expectations, Realities, Options

Author:
Julien Topal
Publication Date:
02-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
Jose Alvarez and Karl Sauvant have compiled an interesting and diverse set of 12 essays from authors representing scholarly, NGO, and legal practitioners' perspectives on the international investment regime. The essays are based on papers presented at the second Columbia International Investment Conference of 2007. They are complemented by an insightful introduction from the editors, a sketch of the 'context' (Jeffrey Sachs), and a report on the debates ensuing at the conference (Andrea Bjorklund).

5399. The Second Wave

Publication Date:
02-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
No abstract is available.

5400. All Azimuth A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace

Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
The Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
International Relations theory is in crisis: it does not appear to have been successfully accumulating in an integrated manner. Despite abounding theories and concepts aiming to explain what happens globally and to draw lessons for improvement, casualties continue to pile up, and the world is not becoming a safer place to live in. Our supposedly revolutionary new concepts and approaches still tend to remain 'event driven', and in fact follow things that happen in the field, rather than precede them. One needs only to look at the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Arab Spring for recent reminders of this shortcoming.
Political Geography:
Arabia