On June 27, 2014, at the 23rd Ordinary Session of the Summit of the African Union held in Malobo, Equatorial Guinea, member states of the Africa Union adopted the Protocol on the Establishment of the African Monetary Fund (Fund).

Plan for the Fund is not new but dates back to the 1963 Charter of the Organization of African Unity (the predecessor to the Africa Union) as well as to the 1991 Abuja Treaty—the agreement that established the African Economic Community and put in place a framework for continental integration. The Constitutive Act of the African Union (Constitutive Act) adopted in 2000 also envisaged the establishment of the Fund. Annexed to the Protocol is the Statute of the African Monetary Fund (Statute). As envisioned in the Abuja Treaty, the Fund, together with continental institutions such as the Africa Investment Bank and the African Central Bank that are still in the pipeline, are critical to efforts to create a continental economic and monetary union in Africa.

On February 3, 2015, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rendered judgment in the case between Croatia and Serbia.1 Croatia had instituted proceedings on July 2, 1999 and claimed that during the armed conflict which erupted in 1991, Serbia had violated the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention). In its counter-claim, Serbia alleged that rather Croatia had violated the Convention, particularly during Operation Storm in 1995. This Serbian counter-claim was unanimously rejected. Croatia’s claim was also rejected, but with Judge Cançado Trindade and Judge ad hoc Vukas dissenting. The most vigorous disagreement between the judges did not concern the merits though, but rather focused on one remaining jurisdictional issue.

In the past decade, Latin American States have begun to voice strong criticisms of the existing system for the settlement of disputes between foreign private investors and States through international arbitration based on investment treaties. Since the end of the nineties, said system has undergone an extraordinary development due to the direct right of action granted to foreign investors by investment treaties. Indeed, the great majority of the thousands of investment treaties existing today not only grant substantive protection to investments made by investors of one State party in the territory of the other State party to the treaty, but also contain investor-State dispute settlement provisions allowing investors to initiate arbitration proceedings against host States for an alleged breach of the treaty by the State. The practice of arbitration based on investment treaties has, however, generated many difficulties with respect to both the arbitral tribunals’ application of the substantive protections provided for in the treaties and to the functioning of the arbitration proceedings. In response to those difficulties, Latin American States are seeking to set up regional legal and political cooperation initiatives to create alternatives to the existing system. The Declaration of the 1st Ministerial Meeting of the Latin American States Affected by Transnational Interests (Declaration) adopted in Guayaquil, Ecuador on April 22, 2013 is one recent example of such initiatives.

On December 12, 2013, the Fifth Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ or the Court) issued its decision in Frédéric Hay v. Crédit Agricole Mutuel de Charente-Maritime et des Deux-Sévres (the Hay decision), an important ruling on the rights of same-sex couples in the workplace. Certain provisions in a collective agreement allowed employees to claim particular benefits on the occasion of a marriage, but not on the occasion of the conclusion of a form of civil partnership. The Court found that, since at the relevant time homosexual couples were only permitted to enter into civil partnership and not marriage under French law, the impugned provisions constituted direct discrimination based on sexual orientation and were therefore prohibited by the 2000 Employment Equality Framework Directive (the Equality Directive).

On 20th September, 1967, the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish Governments each filed with the European Commission of Human Eights an application against the Greek Government in accordance with Article 24 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

After two years of negotiations, representatives of the United States and twelve Pacific island states signed a five–year regional fisheries treaty that sets forth conditions on U.S. fishing in the region and will guarantee U.S. purchases of at least $1.75 million worth of fishing licenses annually. At the same time, the U.S. fishing industry will provide $250,000 in annual technical assistance to help the island states develop their own fishing industries. The treaty will enter into force after ratification by the United States and ten of the Pacific signatory states. Parties taking part in the negotiations but which have not yet signed the treaty include Niue, Palau, Tonga and Vanuatu.