After many years of hard work by politicians and jurists the Belgian municipal law on legitimacy has finally been reformed. There was a protracted debate, but not on the question of international adoptions. The amendments concerning international adoptions were decided upon unusually speedily. Within four months of the submission of the bill, the Chamber of Representatives and the Senate had reached an agreement. Only problems of parliamentary procedure prevented the bill being passed earlier.

On 4 December 1986, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 41/128 which contained the Declaration on the Right to Development. The Declaration was a further attempt by the United Nations to develop a normative regime to deal with one of the most pressing issues of our day – underdevelopment. It was a logical culmination of a movement that started with the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and continued through the period of the anti-colonial struggle. Once the right to self-determination was no longer challengeable as a political entitlement, attention shifted to its socio-economic corollary. In 1969, the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration on Social Progress and Development. The different UN Development Decades were also meant to address the problems of underdevelopment and the ever-increasing gulf between developed and developing countries. In 1974, a major attempt was launched by the UN General Assembly to change certain basic aspects of international law in the hope that this would lead to a new international economic order. Those efforts are yet to be substantially rewarded.

Multilateral treaties play an increasingly important role in the structure and process of present-day international law. They have proved to be a flexible, ‘multi-purpose’ instrument for finding a common denominator to the interests of a growing number of States and co-ordinating the international effort for dealing with global problems facing mankind. There is a growing awareness that the traditional bilateralist approach is inadequate for the solution of problems such as the maintenance of international peace and security, ensuring world-wide respect for human rights, democratizing international economic relations, preserving the human environment, etc. These problems generate ‘community interests’ on a global and regional level and require co-ordinated multilateral efforts for their solution.

The amount of litigation has grown considerably since 1970 in both the Netherlands and West Germany. This is causing concern on both sides of the border. However, the level of litigation is vastly different, the Dutch avoiding court procedures much more easily than the Germans in similar problem situations. A comparison of the ‘legal cultures’ of the Netherlands and the adjacent West German Land of North-Rhine-Westphalia reveals that the difference holds true for most types of court cases. The German courts are called upon to decide far more cases on criminal, civil as well as administrative conflicts, than are the Dutch courts. Not only for this reason, but also because the Dutch courts take a more pragmatic approach to cases, the need for judges is six times higher in North-Rhine-Westphalia. It would be all too easy to see a direct connection between the subsidies granted to the clients of the legal services and the overloading of the court system. The data, however, shows that the contrary holds true. Given the overall availability of legal services the emphasis could be said to lie on litigation in the German system and on advice and assistance in the Dutch system. The Dutch do not make use of the courts so often because they have the alternative of an extensive network of noncommercial advice and assistance agencies and tribunals (in particular for landlord - and - tenant and employment cases). In West Germany, on the other hand, there is less sifting of cases in the early stages of conflict and procedure, owing to the advocates monopoly on legal advice services and the underdeveloped system of legal aid.

The quest for clear-cut legal structures in corporate bodies is not only propelled by dogmatic interest, but often also from shaken confidence and frustrated expectations. When in October 1985 a leading official of the International Tin Council, the manager of its buffer stock, declared that the Council was henceforward no longer able to meet its financial commitments and when subsequently no agreement on the settlement of outstanding claims could be reached, the Council's creditors as well as its members were faced with a host of legal issues for which the general rules of public international law provide no easily extricable guidance. In the face of the insolvency of an international organization the recourse to measures of liquidation as provided for in national company laws or the determination of the position of the organization's creditors vis-à-vis the member States cannot follow the broad path of consolidated State practice and legal doctrine.

The Charter of the United Nations deals with the maintenance of international peace and security in Chapters VI (‘peaceful settlement of disputes’) and VII (‘actions with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace and acts of aggression’). These provisions are based on the principle of collective security: in the case of aggression the international community will come to the aid of the attacked and terminate the aggression. With the exception perhaps of the Korean war, this system has never worked: the stand-by agreements between the United Nations and Member States, which are mentioned in Article 43 of the Charter, never came into being.

The conquest of outer space has provided countless benefits and offers limitless potential for mankind. Despite the important developments which have been made in various fields connected with the exploitation of outer space, the predominant application of space science and technology is the communications satellite which is used for the transmittal of audio (radio), telegraph, telephone, and visual (television) transmissions either to a limited (local) or vast (national, regional, international), area. The most controversial of these functions is television broadcasting, as it is generally accepted that individuals are more influenced by what they see than by what they hear.

Restrictions imposed by domestic law do not excuse a State from due performance of international legal obligations. Either in observance of this principle, or as a sheer coincidence, most States have a framework of domestic legislation that, to varying degrees, would facilitate compliance with international legal obligations. But, as Wallace observes, ‘there is no universal practice stipulating how States should incorporate international law into their domestic legal systems and it is a State's perception of international law which determines the way in which international law becomes part of municipal law’.

Of the more than 140 major cases of armed violence recorded since World War II, which have claimed more victims than that war itself, only relatively few have been ended through the mediation of the United Nations. Moreover, there is no single case in which the United Nations were absolutely instrumental in the prevention of an armed conflict, though in some cases aggression may have been averted in the face of international pressure. This is a disappointing state of affairs for an organisation whose task, according to the Preamble of its Charter, is to ‘save succeeding generations from the scourge of war’. But even if we disregard the lofty wording of the Preamble, the Charter itself in Article 1 places the maintenance of international peace and security first among the aims of the organisation.

The 1968 Brussels Convention on Jurisdiction and the Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters, as amended by the 1978 Convention on the Accession of Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom, entered into force as between the original six Common Market States and Denmark on the one hand, and the United Kingdom on the other, on 1 January 1987. The Convention is given internal effect within the United Kingdom by the Civil Jurisdiction and Judgments Act 1982.

After holding the issue on its agenda for many years, the UN Commission on Human Rights on 10 March 1987 adopted a path-breaking resolution supporting conscientious objection to military service as a ‘legitimate exercise of the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion recognized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights! The Commission recommended that governments introduce various forms of alternative service for conscientious objectors, establish impartial procedures for deciding specific cases, and ‘refrain from subjecting such persons to imprisonment’.

In April 1982, when hostilities broke out between the Argentine Republic and Great Britain, both Governments imposed severe reciprocal restrictions upon the assets of their respective citizens and residents. In particular, all financial movements relating to trade were blocked. On the Argentine side, thefirst measures were announced through communiqués from the Central Bank, which were systematized shortlyafterwards by Decrees 683/82, 786/82 and 787/82, and supplemented by various Central Bankresolutions, as well as resolutions from the Ministries of Economy, Defence, Public Works, the Energy Secretariat, the National Customs Administration and the Under Secretariat of Economy. Specifically, thelast named did so by Resolution No. 99/82 (published in the ‘Boletín Oficial’ of 10 May 1982) which suspended ‘temporarily’ the registration of transfers of shares in local companies belonging to investors who — according to the Registry of Foreign Investments — were resident or domiciled in the United Kingdom.

In the 1987 Annual Report on the work of the United Nations the Secretary-General, Pérez de Cuéllar, wrote that for the solution of almost every regional conflict in which the UN is involved the need for a UN peace-keeping operation can be envisaged. He referred in particular to the settlement of the Namibia situation, regarding which the ten year old plan (contained in Resolution 435 of the Security Council) provides for the stationing of military and civilian units which are to carry out peace-keeping tasks during the transitional stage of independence. He claimed that other cases would require new and innovative forms of peace-keeping by the UN. In September 1987 he wrote that during the preceding year several conflicts had extended to the sea. This raised the question to what extent the UN had a role with regard to keeping the peace at sea and ensuring the safety of merchant vessels as part of their aim to bring an end to conflict. Pérez de Cuéllar pointed out that any peace-keeping operation at sea could be distinguished from peace-keeping on land in a number of respects, though the basic principles would be largely the same.

Entries into force subsequent to this date and pending the expiration of time consequent upon already executed formalities are indicated by the use of italics.

The UN's ‘classical’ peace-keeping operations fall somewhere between Chapters VI and VII of the Charter, and therefore do not coincide with the 1945 concept of UN 'action'. Therefore such operations should be juridically assessed as a practice which has developed with its own characteristics. However, a number of legal principles may be derived from this long-standing practice, which may be considered as falling under customary law, even if the United Nations has not yet reached the stage of adopting a codification of such principles.

The West German company, Gubisch Machinenfabrik AG, had sold an item of machinery to the Italian, Palumbo, domiciled in Rome, and sued the latter in the Court of Flensburg, West Germany, for payment of the purchase price. Subsequently, Palumbo sued Gubisch in the Court of Rome in order to have the contract declared void because Palumbo's offer had been withdrawn before it had reached Gubisch. In the alternative, Palumbo demanded rescission of the contract for lack of consent, or otherwise for delay indelivery. Gubisch submitted a motion in the Italian proceedings for lack of jurisdiction because of lis pendens, on the basis of Article 21 of the Convention. The motion was rejected by the Court of Rome, but on appeal the Italian Supreme Court submitted a preliminary question to the Court of Justice of the EC, which held that:

‘The concept of lis pendens dealt with by Article 21 covers the situation in which one party brings an action in a court of a contracting State for rescission of an international contract of sale, whereas an action of the other party for performance of the same contract is pending in a court of another contracting State’.

In his paper (see supra) Suy dealt with questions regarding the legal conditions for the establishment of UN peace-keeping forces, such as: which UN organ has the competence to take the basic, fundamental decision?; are there any legal restrictions as to the composition of the force?; should there be a preliminary formal confirmation by the Security Council of the existence of a ‘threat to international peace and security’?; what are the legal limits of the force's actions?; and is the consent of all the parties concerned a formal requirement?