A continuing debate in international human rights law concerns the result of invalid reservations to multilateral treaties. The cardinal rule holds that a reservation cannot be incompatible with the object and purpose of a treaty. Yet a normative puzzle remains: what legal remedy should follow the determination of the invalidity of a reservation? Leading commentators have discussed a limited set of options. Three choices can be identified:

The relationship between the International Monetary Fund (Fund) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) is a continuation of the long-standing relationship between the Fund and the Contracting Parties to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), as modified by new developments associated with the establishment of the WTO. The two organizations generally act in a complementary and cooperative fashion. Discussions about the legal aspects of the relationship, however, including recent WTO dispute settlement cases concerning the Fund, reflect misunderstandings about the legal nature of Fund activities and how they relate to the WTO provisions on this relationship. In addition, certain issues about the Fund/WTO relationship are not clearly resolved in the text of the WTO Agreements. This article discusses key legal provisions of the WTO Agreements that concern the Fund and explains the legal nature of the Fund’s activities relevant to these provisions.

The reconvened sixth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP-6bis) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) took place in Bonn from July 16 to 27, 2001, under the presidency of Jan Pronk, Netherlands minister of housing, spatial planning, and the environment. The meeting was noteworthy as the occasion for adopting the Bonn Agreements on the Kyoto Protocol rules, a crucial juncture for entry into force of the principal international instrument for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. The rules were adopted in final form as the Marrakesh Accords at the seventh session of the Conference of the Parties (COP-7), held in Marrakesh, Morocco, from October 29 to November 9, 2001.