The creation of the independent Inspection Panel in 1993 by identical resolutions of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Development Association (World Bank or Bank) has been well analyzed elsewhere. What has not been noted is the actual practice of the Inspection Panel, as well as the evolving impact on international law of the cases brought before this innovative institution associated with the World Bank.

At the fifty-first session of the General Assembly, the Sixth (Legal) Committee reviewed the annual reports of the International Law Commission (ILC), the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), the Special Committee on the Charter of the United Nations and on the Strengthening of the Role of the Organization (Special Committee) and the Committee on Relations with the Host Country (Host Country Committee). The Sixth Committee also considered proposals for two new legal instruments relating to (1) the establishment of a permanent international criminal court, and (2) the non-navigational uses of international watercourses, as well as other topics concerning international terrorism, international humanitarian law, diplomatic and consular law, the United Nations internal justice system, the United Nations Decade of International Law (Decade) and the “New International Economic Order.” The topics are discussed in the order in which they were considered by the committee.

This Note summarizes the judicial work of the International Court of Justice during 1996, using the updated General List, pleadings filed, Orders and Judgments given and hearings held at the Peace Palace in The Hague to describe the Court’s current record.

During the calendar year 1996, the Court was seized of one new contentious case: Kasikili/Sedudu Island (Botswana/Namibia). In 1996 a total of eleven cases appeared on the General List. Besides the new case referred to, the contentious proceedings before the full Court were Aerial Incident of 3 July 1988 (Iran v. United States), Maritime Delimitation and Territorial Questions between Qatar and Bahrain, Questions of Interpretation and Application of the 1971 Montreal Convention Arising from the Aerial Incident at Lockerbie (Libya v. United Kingdom) and (Libya v. United States), Oil Platforms (Iran v. United States), Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Yugoslavia), Gabčíkovo-Nagymaros Project (Hungary/Slovakia), Fisheries Jurisdiction (Spain v. Canada), and Land and Maritime Boundary (Cameroon v. Nigeria). Advisory proceedings were concluded in Legality of the Use by a State of Nuclear Weapons in Armed Conflict (request for an advisory opinion by the World Health Organization) and Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons (request for an advisory opinion by the General Assembly of the United Nations).