In this article, the author gives an overview of the main international legal norms that are relevant to imputiny for human rights violations, and their actual implementation, in order to answer the question whether imputiny is indeed in violation of present day general international law. In this context, attention will also be given to the development towards the establishment of an international criminal tribunal.

Article 76 of the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea was intended to create a precise definition for the continental shelf and to place a fixed limit on the open-ended provisions of Article 1 of the 1958 Convention. This article, like the rest of the 1982 Convention, was drafted on the basis of consensus. The question is whether the consensus principle has produced a workable legal document regarding the continental shelf and has brought about a legal solution. Analysis of the provisions of Article 76 leads to the conclusion that this article, although requiring some clarification, can be regarded as being practical and indeed a legal solution.

After looking into sexual abuse in some armed conflicts that occurred in the past, this article will attempt to give reasons for the sudden interest in this long ignored crime. Subsequently, it will examine the provisions relevant to the issue of sexual abuse in various international instruments. The article will then focus on the problems in implementing international humanitarian law. Not only will it describe the weak points, it will also present some possible improvements. The article will end with a look at the position of the victim in the process of prosecuting those accused of sexual abuse. In closing, it will offer some ways to ease the difficulties a woman encounters at this stage, and take a look at how the Yugoslavia Tribunal deals with this issue.

The recently concluded enlargement negotiations between the European Union and four applicant countries -Austria, Sweden, Finland and Norway-have so far been the last in a series of intensive negotiating efforts since the conclusion of the Treaty on the European Union (EU), the Agreement on the European Economic Area (EEA), the European Agreements with the Central and Eastern European countries and the conclusion of the Uruguay Round.

There can be no doubt that the varied and complex Indonesian legal scene over the past year or so was dominated by the single issue of human rights. For the Indonesian government of course, East Timor amongst so many other matters ensures that human rights have dominated its long string of worrying beads for decades. Nevertheless, from about May 1993 onwards, a series of events conspired to confront broad sections of the Indonesian public with the issue of human rights in a way so real, tangible and urgent, that much of the news has been dominated by it to the present date. The resulting mobilisation of Indonesian public opinion forced the Indonesian government to come out in the open on human rights in a way it might have preferred to prevent.