International law, like other fields of law, is not static. It develops constantly, accommodating the changes in international practice, attitudes of States, and the changing needs and requirements of the international community. According to the ICJ, ‘the possibility of the law changing is ever present’. At the same time, the notions of legal stability and security are inherent in the concept of law. Considering the development of law, we are still confronted with the trend to guarantee stability.

The international law of armed conflict aims to regulate the conduct of hostilities by belligerent parties and their armed forces and to protect certain especially vulnerable categories of people, such as prisoners of war and the inhabitants of occupied territories. How effective can it be in this pretension, and what mechanisms are available to promote compliance?

Since the entry into force of the Antarctic Treaty in 1961, the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties have adopted numerous regulations in order to protect and preserve the fragile environment of Antarctica. The enactment of legislation on environmental and other issues is the prerogative of a limited group of Contracting Parties, the Consultative Parties. They negotiate and adopt recommendations as well as new conventions related to the Antarctic Treaty. The entire body of rules is referred to as the Antarctic Treaty System.

Article 121 of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOS Convention) retains the traditional definition of an island as: ‘a naturally formed area of land, surrounded by water, which is above water at high-tide’ (paragraph 1), and attributes to it the same maritime spaces as the mainland. These spaces are at present: the 12 mile territorial sea (TS), the 24 mile contiguous zone (CZ), the continental shelf (CS) and the 200 mile exclusive economic (or fishery) zone (EEZ) (paragraph 2). However, unlike the 1958 Geneva Convention on the Territorial Sea which gives the same legal status to all natural islands, paragraph 3 of Article 121 limits the legal entitlement of islands to maritime spaces by providing that:

‘Rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf’.