In response to Iraq's forcible occupation of Kuwait in the summer of 1990, the United Nations Security Council adopted twelve resolutions that year.

At the meeting of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe in Moscow in September 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev, the former President of the old Soviet Union, in his opening speech, raised the problem of minority rights in the newly emerging States of Eastern Europe and the Baltics. With the movement of the many different ethnic groups throughout the former Soviet Union since 1917, the rush to independence by the various republics creates new and, in many cases, substantial minority groups. The violence seen in Azerbaijan between Azeris and Armenians may presage events throughout Europe if care is not taken to protect minority rights. Often through naïveté or in a blatant attempt to stir up national fervour in the new State, the delicate task of defusing ethnic frictions in the creation of open, stable and successful societies is being mishandled. The crisis is sufficient for the Council of Europe to have deferred the applications for membership of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia while their constitutional provisions for minority groups are examined. The former Eastern bloc States are in a period of transition as old nationalisms buried by Stalinism are reawakened – the issue of minority groups within States created out of the collapse of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires has taken on fresh life.

This article examines the question of the right of States forcibly to affirm and protect substantive rights which have been unlawfully violated or denied by another State and considers a number of the legal and policy requirements which are relevant in the assessment of the place of this right under contemporary international law.

On 29 November 1985 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a Model Agreement on the Transfer of Foreign Prisoners. Five years later, on 14 December 1990, it adopted four more Model Treaties on international cooperation in criminal matters. The first concerned extradition, the second mutual assistance in criminal matters together with a Protocol concerning the proceeds of crime, the third transfer of proceedings in criminal matters, and the fourth transfer of supervision of offenders conditionally sentenced or conditionally released. A Model Treaty on the transfer of enforcement of penal sanctions is being prepared.

The codification of principles designed to protect cultural property was first attempted in the 19th century. Initially, the aim was to afford international protection to movable and immovable cultural property of historical, scientific or artistic importance in time of war. Only in the 20th century has it been felt necessary to protect movable cultural property in peacetime, particularly against illegal trade and theft.