Discussions on the necessity to reform UN human rights treaty monitoring have witnessed a new dynamism over the last five years. After extensive consultation about ways to strengthen human rights treaty monitoring the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is expected to propose a new set of reform measures in 2012. This article aims to structure and analyse the different implemented and tabled streamlining and enhancement measures. It argues that a further reform of UN human rights treaty monitoring should take account of two fundamental considerations. Firstly, next to treaty monitoring other international human rights protection methods have gained significance over the last few decades. Today, judicial enforcement and political peer-to-peer protection through the UPR mechanism effectively condition the room for added value for treaty monitoring. Secondly, given that a case for such added value can still be made, it is significant that human rights monitoring mechanisms have not so far sufficiently been equipped, or equipped themselves to achieve structural domestic impact of their recommendations and views. This not only inherently hampers their impact, but also threatens support for their activities. In particular, prior requesting of specific input, clear indicators for what is compliant behaviour and what is not, and targeted follow-up to recommendations, all crucial aspects of ‘constructive dialogue’, have not been consistently institutionalised by treaty bodies. In this light the article outlines some concrete ways forward for a reformed reform agenda that could lay the groundwork for measures to sustainably strengthen UN human rights treaty monitoring.

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.

Intertemporal law governs the applicability of international legal norms ratione temporis. According to often used terminology, intertemporal law has two different branches. This article provides clarification of the so-called ‘second branch of intertemporal law’. It does so by refuting two commonly held assumptions. First, as established in section 2 of the article, the second branch of intertemporal law is not an exception to the first branch of that law. It cannot be, since both branches of intertemporal law centre on the same legal principle: an action or a factual state of affairs must be assessed in the light of the law which is contemporary with it. Secondly, as implicated by the line of reasoning in section 2, and further confirmed by the inferential evidence cited in section 3, the practical relevance of the second branch of intertemporal law is not confined to the application of the law on the acquisition to territory. It pertains to a more widely defined group of norms in international law.

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.

Indigenous peoples have historically experienced countless losses of cultural relics and material and spiritual treasures as well as the destruction of their sacred cultural sites, a situation that continues to prevail. This desecration of ancestral sites and the pillaging of sacred objects results in the cultural debasement of indigenous peoples, causing a serious threat to their continuing collective existence as distinct societies. Unfortunately, the present international law regime for the protection, repatriation and return of stolen and illegally exported cultural property presents serious deficiencies as regards its ability to reverse this state of affairs and effectively safeguard indigenous peoples' heritage.

This article explores the implications for the protection of civilians and other vulnerable persons, of the requalification of a conflict downwards from international to non-international, focusing in particular on the changes in the characterization of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2001 and 2003 respectively.

Determining the legal character of an armed conflict is rooted in an inherently political interpretation of black letter treaty law. It is generally agreed that when the United States and its coalition allies entered the wars in Afghanistan in 2001, and Iraq in 2003, their operations in those countries were initially subject to the laws of international armed conflict. However the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has determined that the conflict in Afghanistan became non-international with the establishment of the United States' backed government of Hamid Karzai on 19 June 2002 and that the conflict in Iraq became non-international with the establishment of the Iraqi Interim Government on 28 June 2004. The basis for this requalification is Article 2 of the Geneva Conventions read in conjunction with an interpretation of the meaning of ‘state’ (and of its power to authorize a foreign intervention in its own territory) that is inherently, and possibly inevitably, political.

Changes in the legal characterization of a war have profound implications for the protection of both non-combatants and combatants under international humanitarian law, in particular for humanitarian access; for the protection of non-nationals from deportation; for the protection of detainees; for the conduct of hostilities; and for the protection of persons transferred into the hands of local authorities. The practical consequence of a requalification of an armed conflict downwards to non-international is a marked loss of protection for persons that were protected by the Geneva Conventions in the earlier stages of the conflict.

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

In this article I discuss the legality of Israel's interception of the Mavi Marmara on May 31 2010. Although Israel's stopping, boarding and inspection of the Mavi whilst on the high seas would undoubtedly constitute a violation of the law of the sea during peace time, I examine whether this violation can be justified on the basis of international humanitarian law. Specifically, Israel asserts that it was enforcing a naval blockade. I examine the legality of this blockade. I suggest that the blockade was unlawful on the basis that customary international humanitarian law permits the use of naval blockades only in times of an international armed conflict. I argue that on May 31 2010 Israel was not engaged in an international armed conflict with Hamas. Moreover, I submit that customary international law prohibits the use of blockades where they are intended to deny the civilian population objects essential for its survival or where the damage to the civilian population is excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage. Israel argues that the intention of the blockade was to prevent war material from being delivered to Hamas fighters. This notwithstanding, I argue that because this blockade was causing a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza on May 31 2010, it was incompatible with customary international law and therefore unlawful. Furthermore, even if the deployment of the blockade could be considered lawful, I argue that the enforcement of the blockade was unlawful because Israel's use of force to capture the vessel went beyond what was necessary in the circumstances.

Egypt and Sudan's reluctance to share the Nile waters with the remaining riparian states has soured relations between them. The downstream countries base their claims on historical legal rights embodied in the 1929 and 1959 Nile Waters Agreements. Past efforts to enhance regional cooperation such as the Nile Basin Initiative and the Cooperative Framework Agreement (between the upstream countries) did not appear to significantly improve their relations. However, the legal and political situation has recently changed: South Sudan's independence from Sudan on 9 July 2011, the outbreak of civil turmoil in Egypt on 25 January 2011 leading to the fall of Mubarak, and the unilateral start of the construction of the Grand Millennium Dam (GMD) by Ethiopia at the beginning of April 2011. This paper sets out to address the following question: Do these recent changes create an opportunity to incorporate a more equitable sharing of the waters in the Nile Basin legal regime? It examines how the new changes may affect the existing legal debates on the validity of the Nile Agreements, state succession given that Sudan has split into two nations, whether Ethiopia is bound by the 1902 Agreement to notify planned measures and whether the new GMD gives expression to the implementation of the equity principle. It concludes that there is some hope for a more equitable sharing of the Nile waters given the recent legal and political changes.

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.

Combating piracy at sea and apprehending pirates have been a long-standing problem for the global community. Increasing acts of piracy off the coast of Somalia have prompted the UN Security Council to intervene in the matter. The Council, through several resolutions, has authorised states to take action against Somali pirates in the territorial waters and land territory of Somalia and recently adopted a resolution urging all states to fully implement relevant international conventions in their domestic legal systems. However, despite the Security Council's intervention in the matter most states are still reluctant to prosecute Somali pirates in their domestic courts. Considering the most recent Security Council resolution and existing international law, this article examines whether there is an international obligation to criminalise piracy under domestic legal frameworks and to prosecute pirates in domestic courts. It submits that existing international law arguably imposes an obligation to prosecute pirates, at least in certain circumstances, and the recently adopted Security Council resolution reinforces this obligation.

The ICJ's 2010 Kosovo advisory opinion opens many interesting avenues of research, but one feature may have been overlooked in the recent commentary on the opinion: in answering the question put, the Court reformulated or changed it. Whether the Court may do so will be discussed in this article. The Court obviously felt that it was entitled to do what it had earlier done, but this is not enough to justify it doing so. This article proceeds in three steps. First, the case law of the PCIJ and the ICJ on the issue is reviewed. Second, the Kosovo opinion is discussed in the light of the precedents. Third, and centrally, the legal framework together with the doctrinal opinions and theoretical considerations is discussed to answer the question whether the Court may change the question. Concluding, this article opines that – whenever interpretation becomes change – the Court is prohibited from doing so by Article 107 of the Rules of Court.