The most powerful democracy is detaining hundreds of suspected foot soldiers of the Taliban in a legal black hole at the United States naval base at Guantanamo Bay, where they await trial on capital charges by military tribunals. This episode must be put in context. Democracies must defend themselves. Democracies are entitled to try officers and soldiers of enemy forces for war crimes. But it is a recurring theme in history that in times of war, armed conflict, or perceived national danger, even liberal democracies adopt measures infringing human rights in ways that are wholly disproportionate to the crisis. One tool at hand is detention without charge or trial, that is, executive detention. Ill-conceived rushed legislation is passed granting excessive powers to executive governments which compromise the rights and liberties of individuals beyond the exigencies of the situation. Often the loss of liberty is permanent. Executive branches of government, faced with a perceived emergency, often resort to excessive measures. The litany of grave abuses of power by liberal democratic governments is too long to recount, but in order to understand and to hold governments to account, we do well to take intoaccount the circles of history.

The UNCITRAL Model Law on Procurement of Goods, Construction and Services,1 adopted in 1993/4, provides a template for reforming regulatory systems on public procurement. A decade on, UNCITRAL is now considering a review.2 This is timely for several reasons, not least because of new purchasing practices, especially in electronic procurement, and the increasing need for harmonization with other international norms. In this context, the present article offers a critical appraisal of the Model Law as a global standard for public procurement.

Coping with refugees arriving by sea is a problem that has existed for a number of years.1 Throughout this period the crux of the matter has remained the same, reconciling the humanitarian plight of refugees and asylum-seekers with the destination States' concerns about illegal immigration, mass migrations of people, and the costs of asylum. The boarding of the Tampa by Australian SAS troops in August 2001, in order to prevent the disembarkation of 433 asylum-seekers on Christmas Island, has once again brought into sharp focus the acute tension created between competing legal norms, and between moral and legal considerations. What are the rights of vessels and people in distress under the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea and other maritime agreements? How do commercial considerations affect the obligation to assist those in distress at sea? What are the rights of refugees under the 1951 Refugee Convention and other human rights instruments? What are the powers of a coastal State to protect itself from threats to national security in its coastal waters? This article examines the legal obligations incumbent upon coastal States and flag States in respect of asylum-seekers rescued at sea and seeks to answer these questions. It goes on to suggest that the law in respect of search, rescue, and refuge is highly unsatisfactory because a number of key obligations are poorly defined and inadequately implemented. It alsoseems clear that insufficient weight is given to humanitarian considerations. Finally, consideration is given to possible solutions to the problem.

The study of penalty clauses1 is a rewarding area of comparative research. The most cursory of examinations reveals the diametrically opposed theoretical positions of contemporary legal orthodoxy in France and England. Asearch for the rationale behind this theoretical divergence gives insight not only into the broader conceptual and substantive differences between the two jurisdictions, but, importantly, their many similarities as well.

On 12 September 2001 the Commission of the European Communities published its Proposal for a Council Directive laying down minimum standards for the qualification and status of third country nationals and stateless persons as refugees, in accordance with the 1951 Convention relating to the status of refugees and the 1967 protocol, or as persons who otherwise need international protection1 (Proposal).

At independence in 1966 Botswana, like most former British colonies, adopted a Constitution which included a Bill of Rights. Whilst this tried to reconcile the needs of maintaining public order with that of protecting human rights, it did not entirely remove some of the vestiges of authoritarianism and discrimination that had been associated with the preceding colonial administration. Since independence, the country has had to grapple with many problems caused by constitutionally sanctioned discrimination in many areas of its social, economic, and political life. Despite some half-hearted, improvised and short-term solutions, the problems just would not go away.

A feature of the new law of the sea introduced by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOS Convention),1 was the capacity for coastal states to assert vast maritime claims over waters adjacent to their coastlines. A continental shelf could be claimed out to a minimum of 200 nautical miles,2 while the newly recognized Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) also extended out to 200 nautical miles.3 The continental shelf had previously been recognized under the 1958 Geneva Convention on the Continental Shelf4 and so the extension of coastal state sovereign rights over the seabed and subsoil was consistent with already existing law of the sea principles. However the EEZ, which gave to coastal states sovereign rights over the living and non-living resources of the sea-bed and adjacent waters,5 was a new initiative of the LOS Convention and represents one of the most significant contemporary expansions of state sovereignty. By contrast with the extended continental shelf, which did not affect any significant pre-existing activities on the sea-bed, the new EEZ had a major impact upon fishing activities. As coastal states around the world eagerly proclaimed EEZs, waters previously considered high seas areas available for fishing6 were now within the reach of state fisheries’ jurisdiction and control. The result has been that under contemporary international law those waters available for the exercise of the high seas ‘freedom’ of fishing,7 have gradually been reduced. This new regime, in combination with parallel initiatives to regulate some aspects of high seas fishing activities, has meant that ‘legal’ fishing on the high seas is now subject to extensive regulation.

The preamble to the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage 1972 (the ‘World Heritage Convention’),1 adopted 30 years ago, testifies to the conviction of the States Parties ‘that deterioration or disappearance of any item of the cultural…heritage constitutes a harmful impoverishment of the heritage of all the nations of the world’.2 It speaks of the recognized ‘importance, for all the peoples of the world, of safeguarding this unique and irreplaceable property, to whatever people it may belong’3 and declares ‘that parts of the cultural…heritage…of outstanding interest…need to be preserved as part of the world heritage of mankind as a whole’.4

Chapter V (Part 1) of the ILC&s1 Articles on State Responsibility2 contains sixcircumstances which, when invoked justify, or excuse,3 the commission of acts that are otherwise unlawful against another State.4 The circumstances attenuate or remove responsibility entirely. These circumstances are namely: consent (Article 20), selfdefence (Article 21), countermeasures (Article 22), force majeure (Article 23), distress (Article 24), and necessity (Article 25). Nonetheless, Article 26 of the ILCASR states that ‘[n]othing in this Chapter precludes the wrongfulness of a State which is not in conformity with anobligation arising under a peremptory norm of general international law.’

In May 2003 the United Nations General Assembly approved an agreement between the United Nations and the Cambodian government (UN Agreement) providing for United Nations assistance in the establishment and operation of ‘Extraordinary Chambers’ within the domestic court structure of Cambodia.1 The UN Agreement is the result of a lengthy process of negotiation between the United Nations and the Cambodian government, with the intervention of several interested states.2 The final agreement reflects a compromise between the need to address impunity and the need to preserve Cambodian sovereignty.