The Secretary-General of the United Nations has recently referred to the goal of building up an international staff of the highest standard of efficiency, competence, and integrity, responsible only to the Organization and with as wide a geographical basis as possible. He acknowledged that the fact that the United Nations is a predominantly political organization inevitably exposes the Secretariat to pressures from many quarters although “Governments have generally made great efforts to respect the terms of Article 100, paragraph 2, of the Charter.…” He expressed the belief that it has been widely recognized that an objective independent Secretariat is in the long run in the best interest of all member states.

The Western—or, until now, Spanish—Sahara is a small place. Its decolonization and the fortunes of its mere 75,000 inhabitants do not attract instant or prolonged public attention. Nevertheless, or, perhaps, in part for that very reason, the disposition of the Sahara case by the United Nations has been monumentally mishandled, creating a precedent with a potential for future mischief out of all proportion to the importance of the territory.

A comprehensive amendment to the constitutional instrument of the International Monetary Fund has been submitted to the 128 member states of that organization for their acceptance in order that it may enter into force. The “Proposed Second Amendment” to the Articles of Agreement of the International Monetary Fund was approved by the IMF’s Board of Governors on April 30, 1976. In the United States and many other countries the amendment will, in accordance with internal law, be submitted to appropriate legislative bodies for consent to acceptance.

In the commentary on their monumental collection of lump sum compensation treaties, Lillich and Weston regret the lack of information concerning the negotiation of these agreements as well as the lack of relevant information concerning the distribution of the lump sums received. The present article endeavors to remedy this lack of information at least in regard to the Austrian practice that has come to the attention of the author.

The purpose of this article is to examine the main legal questions that arise from the co-existence of two sets of international procedures for handling individual petitions: the system established by the Optional Protocol to the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, on the one hand, and two regional procedures within the framework of the Organization of American States, on the other.

Some international cases are hard. The facts are controverted, the norms uncertain, hence determining the lawfulness of unilateral actions is difficult. In the Western Sahara case, facts and law are clear and condemnation of unlawful action must not be evaded.

On April 13 President Ford signed a bill unilaterally to extend the fisheries jurisdiction of the United States from the present 12-mile limit to 200 miles onto the high seas (and even thousands of miles at sea with regard to salmon) effective March 1, 1977. Barring a sudden breakthrough in the law of the sea negotiations, as of March 1, 1977 the Coast Guard may begin arresting vessels on the high seas pursuant to this act in violation of the treaty obligations of the United States. This action again exposes the inadequacy of the present foreign policy process for taking an international legal perspective into account. It may also prove the greatest mistake in the history of U.S. oceans policy.

Each year, the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law awards a prize in memory of the late Francis Deák for an especially meritorious article appearing in the Journal. The Prize for 1976 has been conferred on Mr. Günther Handl for his article “Territorial Sovereignty and the Problem of Transnational Pollution,” appearing in the January 1975 issue at page 50.

The first sentence of Professor Murase’s article “The Most-Favored-Nation Treatment in Japan’s Treaty Practice During the Period 1854-1905” which appeared in the April issue of the Journal is incorrect. He asserts that “[i]t can be said today that a unilateral most-favored-nation (MFN) clause is only of historical significance.” However, even today, Japan lives under the threat of a unilateral unconditional most-favored-nation clause.

The material in this section is arranged according to the system employed in the annual Digest of United States Practice in International Law, published by the United States Department of State.