The overall legal framework for transnational petroleum development projects is arguably a conjunction between international investment law and several other fields of international law, notably environmental law and human rights. However, the relationship between these applicable fields of international law is uncertain. In particular, prospects for the application of environmental law within such projects appear to depend on the balance in political and economic power between the host State and any multinational/transnational oil companies involved in the project. This balance is usually in favour of investment protection for the economic actors involved but the enduring role of the host State as the sovereign regulatory power within the relevant jurisdiction cannot be denied. The general issues raised in this debate will be examined within the specific context of the Sakhalin II project in the Russian Far East, where the host government has intervened on the ostensible basis of ensuring environmental protection but arguably at the expense of investment protection.

It is widely accepted that the provision of access to safe drinking water and sanitation services for the world's poor is one of the great developmental challenges of the modern era. There is a need to establish mechanisms that enable the human right to water to be satisfied in developing states. This article will discuss how the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) can be used to facilitate the promotion of quality and affordable water services to developing states. Indeed, it is argued that the WTO and the GATS are the most appropriate mechanisms to successfully satisfy the human right to water in developing countries. The challenges of adopting a multilateral model will be explored, and the importance of adopting capacity-building issues and pricing challenges within an amended GATS framework will be addressed. The nexus between the GATS and the trend towards privatisation will also be considered. The aim of this article is to contribute towards a greater understanding of the role that international trade law in general, and the GATS in particular, can play as part of a holistic response to the immense problems (present and future) relating to water resources in LDCs.

Since its establishment in 2002, the African Union (AU) has accorded particular importance to the establishment of a robust mechanism for effectively responding to conflicts in Africa. This emerging mechanism established under the Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council (PSC Protocol) is known as the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA). Central to the APSA is the PSC, which, like the UN Security Council, is ‘a standing decision-making organ for the prevention, management and resolution of conflicts’. The PSC is vested with expansive powers covering the prevention, management and resolution of conflicts in Africa. In this context, the PSC Protocol not only makes numerous direct references to human rights but it also assigns the PSC with specific responsibilities vis-à-vis the protection of human rights. Despite the PSC's express mandate with respect to human rights and the crucial importance and link of human rights to peace and security in Africa, little has however been written and discussed on the subject of human rights from the perspective of the works of the PSC and generally within the context of AU initiatives for the promotion, maintenance and restoration of peace and security in Africa. In an effort to contribute towards filling this lacuna, this article seeks to consider the place of human rights within the mandates of the PSC and the need for and the extent to which they are integrated into the PSC's work for the prevention, management and resolution of conflicts in Africa

A series of UN peace-building missions have taken the leading role in reconstructing the rule of law in East Timor, most notably through the hybridised Special Panels trials from 2000 to 2005 and ongoing hybridised participation in prosecution and judging in the years since then. While UN peace-building doctrine place great faith in transfusions of international expertise in the institutions of justice to secure their autonomy, the experience in East Timor has been one of consistent governmental interference to restrain politically sensitive prosecutions and systematic pardon of those convicted of committing crimes of political violence. Beginning with the thwarted prosecution of Indonesian generals accused of crimes against humanity before the Special Panels, and moving on to consider episodes of prosecutorial interference and systematic pardon in trials dealing with crimes committed during serious civil unrest in 2006 and attempted assassinations of the President and Prime Minister in 2008, this article examines the UN's ongoing failure to secure the autonomy of the judicial institutions it is mandated to assist. It cites a preoccupation on the part of the UN with the institutional aspects of the rule of law which has been emphasised at the expense of the more contentious cultural and behavioural aspects of the rule of law at a political level which are essential if the institutions of justice are to operate independently.