A number of issues relating to the finality of arbitration awards in the face of arguments based on public and fraud were addressed by the Court of Appeal in Westacre Investments Inc. v. Jugoimport—SDRP Holding Co. Ltd.20 The claimant had obtained an arbitration award in its favour in Switzerland which it was seeking to enforce in England. The dispute referred to arbitration concerned a claim for payment of commission. The commission was due under a contract through which the claimant assisted the defendant to obtain a contract for the supply of military equipment to Kuwait. It was alleged in the English proceedings that this contract was invalid since the commission payment in fact amounted to a bribe to a member of the Kuwaiti government. The issue of bribery had been raised before the Swiss arbitral tribunal, but the majority of the tribunal found that they were not required to investigate this issue if the parties led no evidence to prove that it had taken place. The contract between the parties was therefore found valid and binding. An appeal to the Swiss Federal Tribunal was lodged by the defendant for an annulment of the arbitral award. The Federal Tribunal concluded that the nature of its competence to review arbitral proceedings required it to base its decision on the facts found by the Tribunal. It therefore confirmed the award. The defendants then tried to raise the same bribery issue in the enforcement proceedings in England.

Of the thousands of Taliban and al Qaida fighters captured in the recent conflict in Afghanistan, just under 500 are held by US forces, including some 300 at the Guantanamo Bay base, Cuba.1

The Northern Ireland Peace Agreement1 was concluded following multi-party negotiations on Good Friday, 10 April 1998. It received 71 per cent approval in Northern Ireland and 95 per cent approval in the Republic of Ireland in the subsequent referenda held on Friday 22 May, the day after Ascension. To some, it must have seemed that the timing was singularly appropriate following 30 years of “The Troubles”, which were perceived as being between a “Catholic minority” and a “Protestant majority”. While there are some minority groups identified by their religious affiliation that do require rights relating only to their religion, such as the right to worship in community,2 to practise and profess their religion,3 to legal recognition as a church,4 to hold property5 and to determine its own membership,6 some minority groups identified by their religious affiliation are properly national or ethnic minorities–religion is merely one factor which distinguishes them from the other groups, including the majority, in the population. One example of the latter situation is to be seen in (Northern) Ireland where there is, in fact, untypically, a double minority: the Catholic-nationalist community is a minority in Northern Ireland, but the Protestant-unionist population is a minority in the island of Ireland as a whole.7 The territory of Northern Ireland is geographically separate from the rest of the United Kingdom. The recent peace agreement addresses a whole range of issues for Northern Ireland, but included are, on the one hand, rights for the populations based on their religious affiliation, their culture and their language and, on the other, rights with respect to their political participation up to the point of external self-determination. It is a holistic approach. Like any good minority rights agreement,8 it deals with both standards and their implementation and, like any good minority rights agreement, it is not a minority rights agreement but, rather, a peace settlement.

International sanctions have grown in use significantly since they were deployed in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990.1 In the decade since the Kuwait crisis, economic and other measures not involving the use of force have been deployed by the international community against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro),2 Libya3 Rwanda4 Haiti5 Liberia,6 Somalia,7 Sudan,8 Sierra Leone,9 Angola,10 Eritrea and Ethiopia11 and, most recently, Afghanistan.12 International sanctions today derive—principally13—from a single source: the Security Council acting on the powers delegated to it by Member States under Article 41 of the UN Charter. However, while the sanctions contemplated by Article 41 have proved to be of continuing relevance in an increasingly interdependent world, the circumstances which enhance the potency of economic sanctions as a means of responding to an international crisis also increase the risk of loss by innocent States. The increased willingness of the Security Council to use its binding authority to impose economic sanctions has raised important questions both as to the cost of economic sanctions to implementing States, and the limits on the Council's powers.

The ECtHR is in the process of refining its conceptual tools for determining the responsibility of the States Parties to the ECHR acting in execution of a Security Council resolution. Where the implementation of resolutions involving the use of force is concerned, the Court's recent case law has shown a shift towards systematic acceptance of the extraterritorial scope of the ECHR. As to whether the conduct in issue should be attributed to the States Parties or to the UN, the Court now makes a clear distinction between operations authorized by the Security Council and UN peacekeeping operations. The implementation of UN economic sanctions will be addressed differently according to whether or not the respondent State is a member of the EU. The criterion of ‘equivalent protection’ is only applicable in the former scenario. And in any event, it needs to be applied cautiously on a case-by-case basis. As regards the enforcement of economic sanctions by non-EU Member States, the Court tends to interpret Security Council resolutions in a manner consistent with the obligations deriving from the ECHR. More generally, the Court's approach is oriented towards systemic harmonization rather than towards normative conflict.