In 1989 the United Nations General Assembly voted to convene a Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) to be held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, with the highest possible level of participation. One of the major items on the agenda—many maintain, the highest priority—is a treaty to cope with climate change. Toward that end, the Assembly established the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee, which was to try to finish drafting an effective framework convention on climate change in time to be signed at the conference.

The much-neglected field of international sports law is changing significantly. From a patchwork of hard and soft law cultivated by the Olympic Movement, a more structured pattern of international administration and dispute resolution is emerging. Trends include the exercise by transnational sports organizations of greater and more uniform authority over athletes and athletic activity; improved mechanisms for resolving disputes and appealing decisions within those organizations; and a modest inclination toward arbitration and adjudication of disputes. Also, attention has shifted within the arena of international sports from political issues to social, economic and organizational issues and toward applying principles of procedural and substantive fairness to resolving disputes. These trends in administration and dispute resolution are interrelated. As the organizations that directly regulate sports activity become more intrusive, they generate expectations and entitlements that require more stable and equitable rules and procedures of enforcement.

The material in this section is arranged according to the system employed in the annual Digest of United States Practice in International Law, published by the Department of State.

Alan J. Kreczko, Deputy Legal Adviser of the Department of State, appeared before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on April 8, 1992, to testify in support of various pending treaties, among them four extradition treaties: the Extradition Treaty between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, signed at Nassau on March 9, 1990; the Protocol Amending the Treaty on Extradition between the United States of America and Australia, signed on September 4, 1990, at Seoul, Republic of Korea (where the Asia-Pacific Attorneys General Conference was being held); the Supplementary Treaty to the Treaty between the United States of America and the Federal Republic of Germany concerning Extradition, signed at Washington on October 21, 1986; and the Second Supplementary Treaty on Extradition between the United States and Spain, signed at Madrid on February 9, 1988.

The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia consisted of six republics (Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia) and two autonomous regions (Kosovo and Vojvodina). Its overall population was recently estimated as 23.69 million. There were 8.14 million Serbs, 4.43 million Croats, 1.75 million Slovenes, 1.73 million Albanians, 1.34 million Macedonians and 1.22 million “Yugoslavs,” as well as a variety of other minorities.

Slovenia has a population of 1.94 million, 90 percent of whom are ethnic Slovenes. There are small minorities of ethnic Serbs, Croats and Hungarians.