“International politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power. Whatever the ultimate aims of international politics, power is always the immediate aim.”

“Power” is one of the most central concepts in politics. For many years political scientists and sociologists have debated the term and tried to agree on its precise content. In a recent study about economic power concentrations in the Netherlands, Mokken and Stokman and their collaborators surveyed the theoretical position of the concepts “power” and “influence”. Most of the theoretical debates are held within the confines of American political science. A number of contributions in a recent issue of The American Political Science Review show that these debates have not yet come to an end. Most of these debates concern “community power”, that is power as it manifests itself within local communities. The most important contributions to this debate have been made by American and British political scientists.

1. The structure of the United Nations system was established at San Francisco in 1945 and laid down in Chapters IX and X of the UN Charter. Articles 57, 58 and 63 provide the legal basis for co-ordination in the UN system. According to Art. 57 the various specialized agencies “shall be brought into relationship with the United Nations”. Art. 58 states that the UN shall make recommendations for the co-ordination of the policies and activities of the specialized agencies. Art. 63 assigns the primary co-ordination responsibility to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

Law, in the present writer's conception of it, is a product of thought having for its basis certain factual and moral elements to which certain principles of rational organization have been applied. “Rational” organization being organization directed by “reason”, it should first be made clear what is the connotation of “reason” that will be followed here.

1. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly

“as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction”.

The humble contribution of this writer to the Festschrift in honour of Professor A.J.P. Tammes relates to a study of the status and norms of the principle of self-determination in contemporary international law. There has been a prolonged controversy on the issue: some consider that the principle now enjoys the status of a legal right with corresponding obligations while others attribute only a moral status to the principle without any binding legal effect. By way of illustration of the nature of the controversy one can refer to the views of Rosalyn Higgins on the one hand and of Leo Gross, L.C. Green and Rupert Emerson on the other. According to Rosalyn Higgins, the main question is not whether the General Assembly resolutions have any binding effect but whether the practice of States (which she finds unanimous and consistent) revealed by the cumulative effect of such resolutions indicates the emergence of new norms or rules of customary international law. Dr. Higgins considers that the conclusion is inescapable that self-determination has developed into an international legal right. To Professor Leo Gross, the practice of decolonization (which he finds neither constant nor uniform) is a matter of political expediency, not based on a sense of legal obligation. Hence, subsequent practice as an element of interpretation does not support the theory that the principle of self-determination has acquired the status of a legal right or that human rights provisions could be interpreted as rights with corresponding obligations either generally or specifically with respect to the right to self-determination. Rupert Emerson considers it a relevant factor that the colonial Powers and a number of States supporting them have not accepted the basic principle that colonization is illegitimate nor the corollary proposition that the colonial peoples are entitled to as speedy as possible an exercise of their right to self-determination. After pointing out that there is still no right of self-determination in positive international law, Professor Green has conceded that since 1966 (when by Resolution 2200 (xxi) of 16 December 1966 both the Covenants on Human Rights were adopted by the General Assembly), such a right may be one in nascendi and may mature into a legal right in future as and when such non-binding instruments come into force; such a right can never operate retroactively, particularly because no attempt has been made to clarify what is meant by the “peoples” who are supposed to enjoy the right.

The codification of international law concerning the non-self-governing territories has proceeded through three distinct phases in this century. Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations contained the notion that the well-being and the development of dependent peoples was the sacred trust of civilization. This concept legally applied only to the mandated territories, but in fact embodied the then current philosophy of the colonial powers. It implied that the territories should not be exploited for the benefit of the administering authorities; it was, however, a fairly static view, which did not even indicate to what end the “development” was to lead.

Twenty years ago, when I presented my thesis on “The position of members of resistance movements under international law” at a public graduation ceremony in the Amsterdam University auditorium, Professor Tammes was my Promotor. For many years he had watched with interest over the progress of the thesis and had helped me, in our frequent exchanges of views, to deal with the difficulties and uncertainties of this part of international law. Bearing in mind the resistance movements of World War II, the subject seemed to be of more than merely theoretical importance, though it did offer important theoretical aspects, as will appear from the following pages.

In many countries, including our own, the question whether there should be a right to strike, and, if so, to what extent, and with what restrictions, has been and still is hotly debated. There remain few countries where strikes are absolutely prohibited. On the other hand there are also few countries where the right to strike is an inalienable right vested in the constitution. The legislator can adopt various attitudes towards the strike by making a strike a criminal offence, by granting the liberty to strike or the right to strike. In most countries the second attitude prevails; strikes are considered a fairly normal phenomenon though not guaranteed as a right. The method of assesment of the possible illegality of strikes, and the sanctions imposed on workers or trade unions, vary greatly.

The submission to the United Nations International Law Commission of the second Report on Succession of States in respect of matters other than treaties by the Special Rapporteur, M. Bedjaoui, has aroused marked turbulence in the otherwise serene deliberations of the Commission. This commotion may be partly due to the methods used by the Special Rapporteur in fulfilling the task assigned to him by the Commission, but it is also due, at least in part, to the subject dealt with, viz. the status of ‘acquired rights’ in cases of state-succession. In reading the proceedings, one is struck by the courteousness of Professor Tammes's remarks, which nonetheless leave no doubt as to the position he held in the discussion.

Intervention is an almost daily phenomenon of international politics. Both for practitioners of international law and for students of international relations it is a challenging theoretical problem, since the occurrence of intervention is contrary to a number of hypotheses assumed in the theoretical analysis of international problems. In its broadest sense the concept of intervention refers to any act that invades the theoretical sphere of action of States which — in so far as a spatial conception of things can have any relevance in this context — is confined to relations between States and in no way affects the intra-state territory of other States. The traditional model or paradigm which practitioners of both sciences have long adopted as the starting point of their analysis is derived from an image of international politics as relations between States, whereby each individual State has exclusive competence for the political process within its frontiers. Intervention means externally initiated acts which imply an infringement of that exclusive competence and which are therefore inadmissible from a normative and legal point of view. So interpreted, however, the intervention concept covers a whole range of activities which form a substantial part of the day-to-day practice of international politics and, consequently, also constitute an intellectual challenge for theoreticians. If non-intervention was the norm, interventions would be presumed to be the exception:

“The weight of opinion was that they constituted exceptions to the principle of non-intervention, that they did not preponderate to the extent of converting that principle from the rule to the exception”.

In this article, a cross-section has been outlined of three international organisations which have come into being in the Commonwealth Carribean. First there is the parent organisation, the Caribbean Community (Caricom); linked therewith but based on separate treaties, are many other organisations, of which the Legal Council and the Examinations Council have been closely examined. The cross-section is drawn through the subjects of international law which figure in the three founding instruments examined.

Both the relationship between international and municipal law and fundamental rights are important themes of contemporary public law, and have been frequently discussed, among others by Professor Tammes, to whom these lines are devoted in gratitude. This is no reason, however, to consider these matters as closed. Both are still of current interest since they affect the very foundations of law. New developments give rise to new reflections. In law, man's freedom is constantly at stake. Breaches of fundamental rights are the order of the day. But also, and this may justify cautious optimism, these rights are no longer a merely national responsibility. Fundamental human rights, if anything, manifest the relationship between international and municipal law. They are no longer the basis of municipal law only, but also of international law. Fundamental rights occur in both spheres and therefore play a part in the problems of the relationship between them.

The treatment of nationals does not, in principle, fall within the scope of International Law. International Law governs the mutual relationship of States as political entities, similar in form and equal in law, which, under it, possess rights and obligations. But International Law also has a function in the promotion of the welfare of the individual. International relations always “contained provisions for the protection of individual needs and interests”. The Declaration of the Eight Powers, made in Vienna on February 8th, 1815 — which became Annex XV of the Treaty of the Vienna Congress of June 9th, 1815, with its universal abolition of the Slave Trade — promoted during the 19th century the principles of humanity and universal morality. But the individual, so far, has not been the direct concern of International Law — in which even the individual alien has no locus standi. At various stages, International Law has shown concern for certain rights — including those of life, liberty and property — which he may invoke in municipal courts. In return, he is subject — like every other citizen — to local laws and local jurisdiction 2, with due consideration to limitations in conventions and treaties. Of those rights nationality is the foundation “which confers alone upon the State the right of diplomatic protection.” By virtue of the bond of nationality between State and individual, the individual “is entitled to invoke the aid of a specific protector and a definite member of the international society of States has the right and reparation for their violation”. In fact, in the international sphere, a stateless person had no such protection. By taking up

“the case of one of its subjects and by resorting to diplomatic action or international judicial proceedings on his behalf, a State is in reality asserting its own rights — its right to ensure, in the person of its subjects, respect for the rules of international law”.

“The inhabitants of a territory not under occupation who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading troops without having had the time to organize themselves into regular armed units are entitled to be regarded as belligerents provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.”

This definition of the levée en masse as “the spontaneous springing to arms of the population in defense of the country”, still valid today, is based on the idea of the French Revolution, embodied in the Proclamation of the National Convention of 16 August 1793 which, as regards the enfranchised citizen, laid down inter alia “tout citoyen est soldat quand il s'agit de combattre la tyrannie”; a concept that stood in contradiction to the then current calculable “cabinet wars” conducted by the State, in which to the recruited subject used by the army, itself a tool of the State, was allocated only the role of a passive object, the remainder of the population being considered, in Ford's term, as “quantité négligable”.

Sometimes a distinction is made between international law proper and the law of the United Nations. Usually this implies the acceptance of an order of priority; the law of the United Nations is then law of an inferior kind, less reliable (denounceable law of treaties), less universal and applying only as long as the other rules of the Charter have been complied with. This is then contrasted with international law proper, applying universally, binding upon everyone, with an unconditional character.

Most international treaties create legal rules applicable only between the States concerned; individuals are not involved. The few treaties which do contain rights or duties for the inhabitants of States only rarely grant such rights or impose such duties in unequivocal terms. Instead of providing that citizens have a right, for example, to freedom of trade, the treaties provide that the State must grant such freedom of trade to its citizens. In other words: the right of the citizen is drafted as an obligation of his State. In practice such an indirect way of drafting often leads to questions: are specific obligations, imposed upon States, meant to create rights which individuals can invoke in court, or are they not? The question is, whether the treaty provisions concerned have full effect not only on those to whom they are directly addressed, but also on others, whom they reach only indirectly, namely through the obligation of the addressee. Words often develop mysteriously and thus the full effect on an indirect addressee is termed “direct effect”. This expression should be understood as meaning that the effect on the indirect addressee is as full as that on the direct addressee.

Everyone is a propagandist, wittingly or unwittingly. As such, it is possible that Professor Tammes made propaganda when writing “De Toestand” (the situation), the foreign affairs column in the daily “Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant” just before World War II. Were his articles pure information or proggganda, newsgathering or newsmaking? It is difficult to draw a sharp dividing line between these notions. If information as such should not be ‘coloured’, then propaganda has some colour if the author has the intention to spread ideas in order to affect the opinion and the behaviour of others. In that sense propaganda has a long history: from Peisistratos (600–527 B.C.) to World War II (Goebbels) and the present day. It depends on the contents of propaganda whether its effects have a national or an international character. First, the national start will be considered; second, the international effects of propaganda will be placed in the international law context; finally, some aspects of international state responsibility will be dealt with.

1. In the present paper I intend to discuss some developments in the practice of States granting asylum to certain categories of individuals, as well as the extent to which and the way in which this practice is influenced by the Convention on the Status of Refugees. “Asylum” is the protection a State may afford to an individual by letting him enter the territory of the State and allowing him to stay within it. A State has a nearly unfettered discretion to grant this protection to any alien it wishes. But the term “asylum” is not employed in ordinary cases of admission of aliens; it is reserved for cases where the alien in question has left his country for what may roughly be characterized as political reasons, and is admitted to another country.

After the UN General Assembly had, on 14 December 1960, officially rung out the colonial era by adopting the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (Resolution 1514 (XV)) with a convincing majority (89 to 0 with 9 abstentions), the new States of the third world rapidly succeeded in pitting their numerical superiority in the General Assembly against the political and economic power of the industrialised world. This made it possible for the UN system – which dates back to 1945 and the structure of which the new States had not, or had hardly, been able to influence – to be adjusted to their specific needs, particularly in the vital fields of trade and industry. Thus, they contributed by their majority in the UN Assembly to the setting up in 1964 of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and in 1966 of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) as organs of the General Assembly.