On October 23, 1991, representatives of nineteen states participating in the Paris Conference on Cambodia signed a set of accords aimed at ending the twenty-year-old conflict in that country. The solemn ceremony at the Kleber Center in Paris marked the conclusion of over three years of intensive negotiations at a variety of levels, including interfactional, regional and international, to end one of the world’s most tragic regional disputes. It also signaled the beginning of an unprecedented role for the United Nations in the resolution of such conflicts.

It has now been two years since the end of the United Nations Security Council’s military enforcement action against Iraq, popularly known as “Operation Desert Storm.” The glow of military success suffused the American atmosphere, and its aftermath is clearly shaping international expectations about the United Nations, its legal authority, human rights, and more general issues of power, wealth and loyalties of peoples. Also shaping expectations is the end of the Cold War, which left the United States as the sole “superpower.” How well the international community and the American polity are adjusting to the absence of the Soviet Union as a major state and convenient enemy remains open to question. International law is thus challenged to regulate an international community suddenly transformed in many ways.

On September 8, 1992, President George Bush transmitted to the Senate for advice and consent to ratification the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, adopted at New York on May 9, 1992, by the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change and signed on behalf of the United States at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro on June 12, 1992.

The International Law Commission of the United Nations held its 44th session from May 4 to July 24, 1992, under the chairmanship of Professor Christian Tomuschat. The Commission considered aspects of state responsibility, the possible establishment of an international criminal court, international liability for injurious consequences arising out of acts not prohibited by international law, and its future plan of work and working methods.

In little over a year, the United Nations has created a new and innovative mechanism to collect, assess and ultimately provide compensation for hundreds of thousands—or even millions—of claims against Iraq for direct losses stemming from the invasion and occupation of Kuwait.

The UN Compensation Commission, an element of the United Nations response to Iraq’s August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, began operations in Geneva in July 1991. In seven formal sessions between July 1991 and September 1992, the Commission’s Governing Council adopted by consensus an innovative structure for collecting and verifying millions of potential claims. A small, but experienced, professional staff was recruited; it is headed by a distinguished Peruvian diplomat and includes legal experts with long experience at the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal in The Hague. The staff is at work in the Villa La Pelouse on the UN grounds in Geneva.

At its Sixty-fifth Conference in Cairo, April 20-26, 1992, the International Law Association approved by consensus the Declaration of Principles of International Law on Compensation to Refugees. Prepared by the International Committee on the Legal Status of Refugees, these principles build upon earlier drafts that were debated at the Sixty-third Conference in Warsaw in 1988, and were approved “in principle” at the Sixty-fourth Conference in Queensland, Australia, in 1990.