On 17 February 1983, a new revised Constitution (Grondwet) entered into force for the Netherlands. It did not bring about radical changes and left the constitutional structure essentially unchanged. Because they may serve as a framework for the later analysis of the revised provisions on foreign relations, some of these lasting features will be outlined here.

The elaboration of international legal standards relating to the status of women in the Commission on the Status of Women has led to an increased interest within the Commission with the problem of the implementation of these principles for, as Landy states:

“the adoption of international legislation and its formal acceptance by a growing number of countries cannot, by themselves, add to the stability of inter-State relations, unless there also exists some degree of assurance that the contracting parties really comply with their obligations…”

The United States intervention in Grenada has been characterised by some as a rescue mission, by others an act of aggression. A study of the legality of this intervention involves broad and fundamental questions about the content and nature of international law. To what extent can the policy goals put forward by President Reagan in the above-quoted speech be consistent with the present legal system? What place do human rights considerations have in international law, and how are a state's defence needs defined? These basic questions arise in studying the US intervention in Grenada, as well as the question of the capacity of a particular individual to request military intervention in his state.

In 1970, the number of refugees in Africa was estimated at three-quarters of a million; by 1980 it was estimated at five million and is still growing. One in every two of the ten million refugees in the world in 1980 was from Africa and the total number of African refugees now exceeds the population of many African countries. A discussion of the many inter-connected causes of the refugee problem in Africa, the magnitude of which continues to grow, would be beyond the scope of this analysis. However, at the 1981 International Conference on Assistance to Refugees in Africa (ICARA) it was agreed that the African refugee problem required consideration not merely in connection with the need to extend assistance to refugees, but also the need to pay attention to the forces in all their forms, that conspire to generate refugee influxes. In this regard the Conference agreed that besides natural calamities, all refugee situations in Africa are inextricably linked with cases of violations of human and peoples’ rights. Apart from these manifestly political issues, there are of course the humanitarian, social and economic aspects of the problems of refugees which must be dealt with by African States. These non-political aspects alone have created a formidable task for African governments, inter-governmental and non-governmental agencies as well as for the Organization of African Unity (OAU).

Transportation – in other countries a public service owned and operated by government authorities – remains, in the United States, in the hands of private companies, following a pattern established with the construction of the Erie Canal and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the early nineteenth century. To a visitor from Europe, an American airport lobby seems a market-place of competing firms.