Intervention is an almost daily phenomenon of international politics. Both for practitioners of international law and for students of international relations it is a challenging theoretical problem, since the occurrence of intervention is contrary to a number of hypotheses assumed in the theoretical analysis of international problems. In its broadest sense the concept of intervention refers to any act that invades the theoretical sphere of action of States which — in so far as a spatial conception of things can have any relevance in this context — is confined to relations between States and in no way affects the intra-state territory of other States. The traditional model or paradigm which practitioners of both sciences have long adopted as the starting point of their analysis is derived from an image of international politics as relations between States, whereby each individual State has exclusive competence for the political process within its frontiers. Intervention means externally initiated acts which imply an infringement of that exclusive competence and which are therefore inadmissible from a normative and legal point of view. So interpreted, however, the intervention concept covers a whole range of activities which form a substantial part of the day-to-day practice of international politics and, consequently, also constitute an intellectual challenge for theoreticians. If non-intervention was the norm, interventions would be presumed to be the exception:

“The weight of opinion was that they constituted exceptions to the principle of non-intervention, that they did not preponderate to the extent of converting that principle from the rule to the exception”.

I should like to express my gratitude to the T.M.C. Asser Institute for their invitation to the symposium. As a guest I had no intention of speaking today, and, consequently, I have no prepared text. But some theses and arguments used in the course of discussion lead me to the conclusion that it would perhaps be reasonable and useful to clarify certain important points. Before I endeavour to do so, may I be permitted to stress, since I have the honour to be a Judge of the International Court of Justice, that everything I intend to say must be considered only as my own private opinion.

In this article, a cross-section has been outlined of three international organisations which have come into being in the Commonwealth Carribean. First there is the parent organisation, the Caribbean Community (Caricom); linked therewith but based on separate treaties, are many other organisations, of which the Legal Council and the Examinations Council have been closely examined. The cross-section is drawn through the subjects of international law which figure in the three founding instruments examined.

Mr. Chairman, it is very difficult for me to speak as the last speaker after Excellency's brilliant intervention. I think if as lawyers we are here to speak about a new economic order of things in the world, then we are here for the prease purpose of trying to do away with economic tensions which have been the cause of war, and in this way, I feel, our efforts are devoted to the cause of peace.

The present survey is the first of a series that will cover Dutch judicial decisions rendered or published in 1974 to 1976 inclusive, concerning the new Hague private international law Conventions. The surveys are based on the p.i.l. card index of the T.M.C. Asser Institute, The Hague, and prepared by dr. M. Sumampouw, senior research officer at that institute.

Both the relationship between international and municipal law and fundamental rights are important themes of contemporary public law, and have been frequently discussed, among others by Professor Tammes, to whom these lines are devoted in gratitude. This is no reason, however, to consider these matters as closed. Both are still of current interest since they affect the very foundations of law. New developments give rise to new reflections. In law, man's freedom is constantly at stake. Breaches of fundamental rights are the order of the day. But also, and this may justify cautious optimism, these rights are no longer a merely national responsibility. Fundamental human rights, if anything, manifest the relationship between international and municipal law. They are no longer the basis of municipal law only, but also of international law. Fundamental rights occur in both spheres and therefore play a part in the problems of the relationship between them.

Whenever the use of comparative law is discussed, the question arises as to whether the phrase encompasses the use of foreign law. In this report comparative law will be taken in a broad sense, to include foreign law. For practical reasons subjects which are not confined to the boundaries of a single system – such as European law, international law and the law of international organisations – will not be covered in this report. For the same reasons no attention will be paid to those branches of legal science, which do not primarily deal with positive law, such as jurisprudence, legal methodology, sociology of the law and criminology.

The treatment of nationals does not, in principle, fall within the scope of International Law. International Law governs the mutual relationship of States as political entities, similar in form and equal in law, which, under it, possess rights and obligations. But International Law also has a function in the promotion of the welfare of the individual. International relations always “contained provisions for the protection of individual needs and interests”. The Declaration of the Eight Powers, made in Vienna on February 8th, 1815 — which became Annex XV of the Treaty of the Vienna Congress of June 9th, 1815, with its universal abolition of the Slave Trade — promoted during the 19th century the principles of humanity and universal morality. But the individual, so far, has not been the direct concern of International Law — in which even the individual alien has no locus standi. At various stages, International Law has shown concern for certain rights — including those of life, liberty and property — which he may invoke in municipal courts. In return, he is subject — like every other citizen — to local laws and local jurisdiction 2, with due consideration to limitations in conventions and treaties. Of those rights nationality is the foundation “which confers alone upon the State the right of diplomatic protection.” By virtue of the bond of nationality between State and individual, the individual “is entitled to invoke the aid of a specific protector and a definite member of the international society of States has the right and reparation for their violation”. In fact, in the international sphere, a stateless person had no such protection. By taking up

“the case of one of its subjects and by resorting to diplomatic action or international judicial proceedings on his behalf, a State is in reality asserting its own rights — its right to ensure, in the person of its subjects, respect for the rules of international law”.

“The inhabitants of a territory not under occupation who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading troops without having had the time to organize themselves into regular armed units are entitled to be regarded as belligerents provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.”

This definition of the levée en masse as “the spontaneous springing to arms of the population in defense of the country”, still valid today, is based on the idea of the French Revolution, embodied in the Proclamation of the National Convention of 16 August 1793 which, as regards the enfranchised citizen, laid down inter alia “tout citoyen est soldat quand il s'agit de combattre la tyrannie”; a concept that stood in contradiction to the then current calculable “cabinet wars” conducted by the State, in which to the recruited subject used by the army, itself a tool of the State, was allocated only the role of a passive object, the remainder of the population being considered, in Ford's term, as “quantité négligable”.

The present article is intended to give a résumé of the international law questions arising in connection with Article 25 of the Constitution of the German Federal Republic of 23 May 1949, which reads as follows: “The general rules of public international law are an integral part of federal law. They shall take precedence over the laws and shall directly create rights and duties for the inhabitants of the federal territory”. First of all it must be recalled that the Weimar Constitution of 11 August 1919 included a similar provision. Article 4 provided: “The generally recognised rules of international law constitute a binding integral part of the legal system of the German Empire.”

Sometimes a distinction is made between international law proper and the law of the United Nations. Usually this implies the acceptance of an order of priority; the law of the United Nations is then law of an inferior kind, less reliable (denounceable law of treaties), less universal and applying only as long as the other rules of the Charter have been complied with. This is then contrasted with international law proper, applying universally, binding upon everyone, with an unconditional character.

Most international treaties create legal rules applicable only between the States concerned; individuals are not involved. The few treaties which do contain rights or duties for the inhabitants of States only rarely grant such rights or impose such duties in unequivocal terms. Instead of providing that citizens have a right, for example, to freedom of trade, the treaties provide that the State must grant such freedom of trade to its citizens. In other words: the right of the citizen is drafted as an obligation of his State. In practice such an indirect way of drafting often leads to questions: are specific obligations, imposed upon States, meant to create rights which individuals can invoke in court, or are they not? The question is, whether the treaty provisions concerned have full effect not only on those to whom they are directly addressed, but also on others, whom they reach only indirectly, namely through the obligation of the addressee. Words often develop mysteriously and thus the full effect on an indirect addressee is termed “direct effect”. This expression should be understood as meaning that the effect on the indirect addressee is as full as that on the direct addressee.

Everyone is a propagandist, wittingly or unwittingly. As such, it is possible that Professor Tammes made propaganda when writing “De Toestand” (the situation), the foreign affairs column in the daily “Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant” just before World War II. Were his articles pure information or proggganda, newsgathering or newsmaking? It is difficult to draw a sharp dividing line between these notions. If information as such should not be ‘coloured’, then propaganda has some colour if the author has the intention to spread ideas in order to affect the opinion and the behaviour of others. In that sense propaganda has a long history: from Peisistratos (600–527 B.C.) to World War II (Goebbels) and the present day. It depends on the contents of propaganda whether its effects have a national or an international character. First, the national start will be considered; second, the international effects of propaganda will be placed in the international law context; finally, some aspects of international state responsibility will be dealt with.

1. In the present paper I intend to discuss some developments in the practice of States granting asylum to certain categories of individuals, as well as the extent to which and the way in which this practice is influenced by the Convention on the Status of Refugees. “Asylum” is the protection a State may afford to an individual by letting him enter the territory of the State and allowing him to stay within it. A State has a nearly unfettered discretion to grant this protection to any alien it wishes. But the term “asylum” is not employed in ordinary cases of admission of aliens; it is reserved for cases where the alien in question has left his country for what may roughly be characterized as political reasons, and is admitted to another country.

After the UN General Assembly had, on 14 December 1960, officially rung out the colonial era by adopting the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (Resolution 1514 (XV)) with a convincing majority (89 to 0 with 9 abstentions), the new States of the third world rapidly succeeded in pitting their numerical superiority in the General Assembly against the political and economic power of the industrialised world. This made it possible for the UN system – which dates back to 1945 and the structure of which the new States had not, or had hardly, been able to influence – to be adjusted to their specific needs, particularly in the vital fields of trade and industry. Thus, they contributed by their majority in the UN Assembly to the setting up in 1964 of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and in 1966 of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) as organs of the General Assembly.