On 12 May 2000, Judge Claude Jorda, President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), on behalf of the Judges of the ICTY, filed with the Secretary-General a ‘Report on the Operation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.’

In his years as Deputy Registrar (1984–1987) and Registrar (1987–2000), Eduardo Valencia-Ospina made outstanding contributions to the work of the International Court of Justice.

During the Twenty-second Plenary Session the Judges of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) decided to amend eight Rules of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence (Rules).

The bombing of Kosovo was a crude manifestation of a clash of immanent world-views. The negative of a pre-1945 horizontal and bilateral international structure by a post-1945 vertical and multilateral structure is beginning to produce a new structure, a structure of international social order, a third dimension which contains and surpasses the other two. The International Court, itself an institutional relic of an horizontal and bilateral world, is not well placed to assert social responsibility over the arrogant public-realm power which is being wielded in the name of international social order.

This article discusses the contribution made by the jurisprudence of the Yugoslavia Tribunal to the articulation of the body of international humanitarian law that applies to all armed conflicts, regardless of whether they are international or internal. The Tadić Jurisdiction Decision rendered by the Appeals Chamber in 1995 set the stage for a substantial “rapprochement” of the regulatory content of war crimes committed in international and internal armed conflict, using Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions as the main vehicle. The first judgements have contributed greatly to the expansion of the body of “Geneva law” applicable to all armed conflicts. More recently, the Tribunal has started to examine cases of armed conflicts per se, in which perpetrators have been charged with violation of the “Hague law”, i.e., the law relating to the conduct of hostilities. The end result of this development will be elaboration of a common core of Geneva law and Hague law applicable to all armed conflicts that have reached the threshold of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

In February 2000, two distinguished judges, Judge Christopher G. Weeramantry and Judge Stephen M. Schwebel, resigned from the International Court of Justice as respectively Vice-President and President. Both men left a clearly recognizable stamp on the Court's case law, although their trademark was very different. What they had in common, however, was that they wrote a great number of highly interesting and thought-provoking opinions, sometimes of considerable length. In this article, the intention has been to let both judges speak for themselves as members of the Court, as representatives of the judicial branch which they both held in high esteem.

Following the detention of Damir Došen by SFOR on 25 October 1999, Trial Chamber III (Judges May (Presiding), Bennouna and Robinson) scheduled an initial appearance hearing to take place on 1 November 1999. However, the accused was unable to attend the hearing. The initial appearance hearing was subsequently held on 8 November 1999, during which the accused pleaded ‘not guilty’ to all counts charged against him in the amended indictment, as confirmed on 30 August 1999.

This article gives an account of the support provided by the British Government of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. In 1999, the author was the UK Kosovo War Crimes Co-ordinator, and was responsible for providing information and assistance to the ICTY Prosecutor.

Following the detention of Dragoljub Prcač by SFOR on 5 March 2000, the accused pleaded “not guilty” to all counts charged against him in the amended indictment, dated 8 March 2000, at his initial appearance hearing on 10 March 2000.

The powers accorded the prosecutor by the Rome Statute have been the subject of much recent debate. Critics contend that the ex officio powers for triggering jurisdiction allow for abuse. This however ignores the rigorous requirements of the Statute for the appointment of the Prosecutor. Moreover the limited danger posed is far outweighed by the need to provide for an independent, credible Prosecutor. The Prosecutor's power to forego investigation and prosecution where this serves the interests of justice has also been widely critiqued for inadequately accommodating amnesties in democratic transitions. It is argued that amnesties which adhere to internationally accepted guidelines are consistent with the interests of justice and that the prosecutor may therefore defer to domestically enacted amnesty processes.

On 16 November 1999, during the Twenty-first Plenary Session of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the Judges chose Judge Jorda as the new President of the ICTY. Judge Jorda took over the presidency from Judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, who left the ICTY at the end of the first term of her presidency. A French national, President Jorda has been a Judge at the ICTY since January 1994. Since October 1995, he has been the Presiding Judge of Trial Chamber I of the ICTY.

The ICTY Trial Judgment in the Prosecutor v. Tihomir Blaškić is the first judicial decision to explicitly address unlawful attack charges. This article reviews the judgment focusing on how the trial chamber addressed individual criminal responsibility, unlawful attack charges, the crime against humanity of persecution, and the relationship between the two offences. The author observes that the decision contains little legal analysis but a review of the factual findings sheds light on legal assumptions. In particular, the findings indicate a willingness to accept that indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks might provide evidence of attacks essentially directed against civilians, a tendency to regard ad hoc ill equipped resistance to an attack as equivalent to no resistance, and a tendency to evaluate the lawfulness of an attack on the basis of what happened after the attack as well as during the attack.

Two additional agreements have been concluded on the enforcement of sentences of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). On 25 February 2000, an agreement was concluded between the Government of the French Republic and the United Nations on the enforcement of sentences of the ICTY. Thus, France thereby became the first permanent member of the Security Council to conclude such an agreement. A month later, on 28 March 2000, another agreement was concluded between the Kingdom of Spain and the United Nations. Both these agreements will enter into force upon notification to the United Nations by the respective states that the necessary national legal requirements have been met. Previously, agreements have been concluded with the following states: Italy, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Austria.

While the Statute of the International Criminal Court guarantees to suspects and accused the right to be defended in person or through legal assistance, it contains little guidance as to the extent to which this most fundamental right will be provided. In order to ascertain how broadly it should be applied, the authors examine the application of the right by the ad hoc international criminal tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. The authors note that the defence-orientated approach taken by the ad hoc Tribunals to the right to be defended in person or through legal assistance not only conforms with international obligations, but also in many respects goes beyond that required by international human rights law. It is, therefore, crucial that the ICC listens to the experience of the ad hoc Tribunals and adopts similar, if not identical, rules and regulations relating to the qualifications, conduct and assignment of counsel.

The Čelebići Trial Judgment, rendered by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia – the first ever to involve the joint trial of more than one accused – considers numerous important issues, from the method of interpreting international criminal law, the meaning and interrelationship between Articles 2 and 3 of the Statute, the character of the armed conflict and the status of “protected persons”, to many difficult questions surrounding the heinous acts perpetrated in Čelebići Camp. This comment analyzes the reasoning of the Trial Chambers to critically evaluate the significance of this fascinating case for the future development of international criminal law doctrine.

The difficulties surrounding the entry-into-force of the CTBT, which have become more pressing after the refusal of the American Senate to ratify the treaty, have their origin in divergent perceptions of different groups of states about the relationship between the NPT and the CTBT in terms of non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament. Still, preparations for the implementation of the treaty continue unabated. It can be upheld that given the current legal status of the CTBT there already exists a prohibition on the carrying out of nuclear test explosions anywhere for all States Signatories of the CTBT, at least as long as they have not indicated not to become a Party to the treaty.

Crimes against humanity were first defined, for the purposes of the Nuremberg Trial, in 1945. Since then, numerous international legal texts have incorporated the concept, the latest being the Rome Statute of the ICC, 1998. The different texts offer diverse definitions of crimes against humanity, which are traced in the article. Although the precise outlines of the crimes change from one definition to another, it is clear that the core has crystallized as an integral part of customary international law. In the Tadić case, the ICTY had to address several crucial issues relating to crimes against humanity. The judgments on appeal will serve as precedents for the removal of the linkage between crimes against humanity and armed conflict, the exclusion of isolated attacks against civilians and the irrelevance of the personal motives of the defendant.

The statute of the newly established international criminal court provides for command responsibility; the vicarious liability of civilian and military officials for the internationally proscribed conduct of their subordinates. The interpretation of this provision requires an understanding of the doctrine's complex and convoluted evolution. The Geneva Protocol of 1977 created a measure of uniformity. The Geneva Protocol, along with the Delalić decision of the trial chamber of the Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, likely will inform the interpretation of command responsibility under the statute of the International Criminal Court.

Human rights law is often regarded as a discipline with aspirations of being an autonomous, self-contained regime within the general corpus of international law. Recent debates concerning reservations in the area of treaty law have reinforced views which claim the governing prinicples of human rights law depart – if not contradict – general rules of international law. By examining a landmark decision of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights which declared the recent purported Peruvian withdrawal from its compulsory jurisdiction invalid, against the background of general international law, the author aims to demonstrate that far from deviating from the general rules of the Vienna Convention of the Law of Treaties, this decision supports the view that human rights law is neither insulated from general international law nor divorced from the principle of sovereignty. For the principle of sovereignty has a twofold character: it is the fundament but also the limit of freedom of action by a state.

On 13 July 1999 Algeria joined the growing list of countries that have adopted some form of ‘amnesty law’ as a means of restoring peace and encouraging reconciliation. After a brief description of the historical context, this article examines the features of the Algerian Civil Concord Law. This law is then used as a backdrop in considering eight ways in which modern amnesty laws may be drafted and adopted to ensure compliance with developing principles of international law.