This chapter focuses less on European Communities (EC) trade policies and practices than on the challenges the EC poses in the implementation of the World Trade Organization (WTO)code. The European Union is undergoing a process of internal economic integration. Its external trade relations are also dynamic, and have an impact on its internal structure. The enforcement standpoint has an 'institutional' concern. This is in terms of the efficacy of the GATT/WTO instruments of implementation; in the trade-related institutional framework of the entity under review; and in the general relationship and responsiveness of the trade policies and practices with the WTO framework. The EC has passed legislation to implement the results of the Uruguay Round, effective as of January 1995. The 1991 Report by the GATT Secretariat gives a picture of the pattern of EC external as well as internal trade, including an appraisal of EC trade product-wise.

This chapter describes the collective security system as envisaged in the United Nations Charter. It begins with some basic considerations on the pivotal role of Art. 39 of the Charter. Next, the chapter deals with the legal basis of the Security Council's powers and the conditions under which such powers can be exercised. These powers are then analysed following the two-fold distinction between non-military and military measures. The power to impose the adoption of economic enforcement measures necessarily presupposes the power to make these measures permitted, had they been otherwise contrary to international law. The chapter focuses on the legal effects of the Security Council's resolutions. It concludes with a discussion on the limits to the Security Council's powers and the remedies against their violations.

This chapter deals with the use of force in the related fields of international terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. It discusses in the first place to what extent the notion of self-defence adequately protects States against international terrorism. Linking the armed attack already consumed with the possible military reaction would lead to the repudiation of the defensive character of self-defence. The chapter considers the lawfulness of anti-terrorist military action on the ground of necessity. The lawfulness of armed reprisals intended to curb international terrorism can be neither excluded nor upheld on the basis of theoretical or formal arguments. Finally, the chapter considers collective and unilateral measures taken in order to ensure compliance with disarmament obligations, neutralise threats involving weapons of mass destruction and curb the proliferation and trafficking of these weapons.

The provisions governing the treatment of children in the power of an adverse party in an international armed conflict are extensive. Similar, if more rudimentary, provisions apply to children captured in internal armed conflicts. Child soldiers, particularly those who have been illegally recruited, would seem to fall into the category of victims of neglect, exploitation, abuse, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and/or armed conflict. The Machel report pointed out that as of the date of its compilation no peace agreement had formally recognised the existence of child combatants. The Government shall accord particular attention to the issue of child soldiers. It shall, accordingly, mobilize resources, both within the country and from the International Community, and especially through the Office of the UN Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict, UNICEF and other agencies, to address the special needs of these children in the existing disarmament, demobilization and reintegration processes.

An Optional Protocol has been adopted and most states have renounced the forced recruitment of children. Indeed, the prohibition of the compulsory and forcible recruitment of children may be becoming a rule of customary international law. There is a substantial body of rules governing the recruitment and treatment of child soldiers, and they have been the subject of considerable augementation and development in recent years. Recent years have undoubtedly seen developments in how international law governs the activities of such groups, culminating in the prohibition of all recruitment of children by them set out in the OP. However, the growth in legal regulation has not been accompanied by any increase in compliance. Not only does international law regulate when and under what conditions children can be recruited and used in hostilities, but it has also begun to address the consequences of failures to comply with these rules.

Perceptions of childhood vary across time and space. One criticism that can be made about viewing the issue through a children's rights prism, however, is that it obscures the fact that children and adults frequently face the same pressures and act for the same reasons. Appreciating that conceptions of childhood have differed across time and space helps us understand why child soldiers continue to be recruited and how child soldiers themselves might view their experiences. The idea that children have rights, and that those rights operate to oblige their parents and other adults to do or refrain from doing certain things to them, is new. Nevertheless, it is argued that it is an idea whose time has come. With regard to younger children, the argument that their development right not to be recruited trumps their autonomy right to make their own decisions seems much simpler.

The establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) places the international trading system on a firm constitutional footing. The Marrakesh Agreement establishing the WTO sets out the purposes and objectives of the WTO and its institutional framework. The primary purposes of the WTO are twofold: to ensure the reduction of tariffs and other barriers to trade, and the elimination of discriminatory treatment in international trade relations. Membership of the WTO is open to any State or separate customs territory that has autonomy in the conduct of its external commercial relations. In conclusion, the institutional framework of the WTO can be said to provide a basic, but by no means complete, constitutional framework for the international trading system. The system provides for a legislative machinery in the field of international trade, for a dispute settlement apparatus, a surveillance mechanism, and an administrative structure.

This chapter deals with the numerous recent cases of use of force without, or with controversial, Security Council authorisation and assesses their impact on the collective security system. A question germane to the authorisation ex post facto concerns the admissibility of implied authorisations. The common feature of the cases examined is the negative impact they had, in different ways and degrees, upon the collective security system and the limited centralised control over the use of force ensured by the authorisation practice. The United States' recent attitude reveals the intention to dismantle the institutionalised hegemonic collective system established by the United Nations Charter, whose functioning was to a limited extent possible through the authorisation practice. The norms on the use of force by regional organisations embodied in Chapter VIII of the Charter were the result of lengthy negotiations which had led to a substantial revision of the Dumbarton Oaks proposals.

This chapter discusses the extent to which the collective security system established in the United Nations Charter could function in the 1990s in spite of the non-implementation of Arts. 43 et seq. of the Charter. The enlargement of the notion of threat to international peace, already noticeable in 1992, is one of the most striking features of the Security Council's recent practice. The prevailing and more convincing view admits that the Security Council may overcome the non-implementation of Art. 43 through the conclusion of ad hoc agreements with Member States. The main lesson learned from the United Nations' recent practice is that peace-keeping and peace-enforcement are mutually exclusive options. The authorisation practice constitutes the Security Council's attempt to over-come the non-implementation of Art. 43 of the Charter as an alternative to enforcement measures put at the disposal of the United Nations by Member States on an ad hoc basis.

War crimes are violations of the laws and customs of war incurring individual criminal responsibility. Although the prohibition of the recruitment of children under 15 was first promulgated as a rule of international humanitarian law, it might be said that it has since migrated to become a part of international human rights law. The prohibition on the recruitment and use of child soldiers was originally linked to situations of armed conflict. The prohibition of the recruitment of children can be seen as straddling both international human rights and international humanitarian law. However, in one respect in particular, it sits firmly on the international humanitarian law side of the fence. International human rights law binds only states. However, there now exists a ruling of an international tribunal on the point, an interlocutory decision of the Appeals Chamber of the Special Court for Sierra Leone in Prosecutor v. Samuel Hinga Norman.