CYIL 2012

PETR VÁLEK

CYIL 3 ȍ2012Ȏ

1. Introduction Among the UN bodies dealing with international law, the activities of the Sixth (Legal) Committee of the UN General Assembly (hereinafter the “GA”) are perhaps the least known. As I had the privilege to represent the Eastern European Group in the Bureau of the Sixth Committee during the 66 th GA session, I feel the responsibility to fill the information gap on the work of this Committee, at least for the readers of the Czech Yearbook of Public and Private International Law. The Bureau was elected by the GA on June 22, 2011, and its members were as follows: Ambassador Hernán Salinas Burgos (Chile) as Chairman, Ms. Jacqueline K. Moseti (Kenya) as Rapporteur, and Ms. Ceta Noland (Netherlands), Ms. Mattanee Kaewpanya (Thailand) and myself as Vice-Chairs. In relation to the 66 th session of the GA, I have to briefly mention also the outcomes of the recent elections for various international legal bodies. Although this matter has formally nothing to do with the Sixth Committee, in reality that is what kept busy most of the Legal Advisors at the Permanent Missions to the UN during last year. In fact, 2011 was indeed an “election year”, starting with the elections of seven judges of the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea in June, followed by the elections of five judges of the International Court of Justice (hereinafter the “ICJ”) and thirty-four members of the International Law Commission (hereinafter the “ILC”) in November and finished by the election of six judges of the International Criminal Court (hereinafter the “ICC”) and twenty-five judges of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in December. Fortunately, the Czech Republic brought its two election campaigns to a successful end: first, on November 17, 2011, Prof. Pavel Šturma, the Vice-Dean of the Charles University Law School and Head of its International Law Department, was elected by the GA into the ILC and, on December 13, 2011, Judge Robert Fremr, currently ad litem Judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, was elected into the ICC at the 10 th session of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute in New York. These good news, coupled with the re-election of the Slovak ICJ Judge Peter Tomka, the current President of the ICJ, make the last year particularly important for the Czech and Slovak international law community. The objective of this article is not to describe in detail every single item in the agenda of the Sixth Committee. Instead, I will focus on the questions that I directly worked at, as I can provide more in-depth information on them, and just briefly mention the ones that I could not follow as closely. First, I will concentrate on the general question of how the ILC draft articles are considered by the Sixth Committee, while paying special attention to the Articles on Nationality in Relation to Succession of States. In order to provide better understanding of the work of the Sixth Committee, I will include basic information on this body and its relationship with the ILC, before coming to its recent activities. Second, I will report on last year’s unsuccessful negotiations on the draft Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism and, third, on the topic of universal jurisdiction. By describing the

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