CYIL vol. 14 (2023)

ERNEST PETRIČ CYIL 14 (2023) the Russian aggression on Ukraine appears to be on the horizon. New areas that require international legal regulation are coming to the fore. International environmental law, the protection of human rights in new areas triggered by new ways of living together, and the problems of particularly vulnerable groups, from children and the elderly to migrants and refugees, are and will continue to be in expansion. Important challenges for international law also come from the new communication possibilities and new technologies, artificial intelligence and privacy protection, and as a result of man’s penetration into outer space. All these new issues require international law to regulate them. They will have to be regulated mainly via a progressive development of international law and less by the codification of already existing customary international law, since in those new areas of human activity state practice hardly exists. It will however be necessary to find proper ways to enable the Commission to engage the necessary expertise and knowledge of natural and technical sciences whenever dealing with these new topics in the process of the progressive development of international law. This has already been the case in the work of the Commission when dealing with the protection of the atmosphere where the Commission met with eminent experts in the field of climate change and atmospheric pollution. It will be necessary to include in the methodology of the Commission’s work the possibility of including expert knowledge outside the legal sciences whenever it would be considered useful and necessary. 4. Personal experience and evaluation Let me conclude considerations of the three quarters of a century of the existence and operation of the Commission with a few words of my personal experience in it. 32 15 years of work in the Commission were a great time of dealing with current, theoretical, and practical problems of international law. It was essentially a specific and exciting research activity, establishing the existence or non-existence of the rules of customary international law via state practice and identifying the needs for a progressive development of international law. In short, it was research work of a team of 34 highly qualified experts in international law 33 from virtually all contemporary legal systems, as established throughout human history. The within the Commission was and still is an effort for the rule of law at the international level. Among the many topics in the Commission during my work in it, let me mention two that particularly attracted my attention and engagement. First, there was the topic of the protection in international law of persons, human beings in case of disasters such as floods, earthquakes, famine, and pandemics. The Commission was divided on this topic, to put it very simply, between those who, even in the event of disasters and in dealing with them and their consequences, kept first in mind the interests of the affected State, concern for its sovereignty, to prevent any possibility of interference into its internal affairs through the provision of international, governmental, or non-governmental assistance to disaster victims. And on the other side those who put the interests of people’s lives in the foreground, the interests of those who were threatened, harmed, hurt by the disaster, and who need help also from the international community, other countries, international organizations, including non-governmental ones. With a creative approach and at the same time by tolerant confrontations of different points of views, after few years the Commission found the right 32 I started working in the Commission at its 59th session in May 2007 and I was formally a member until the end of 2022. I chaired the Commission at its 61st session in 2009. 33 On the composition of the Commission, see The Work…, ibid vol. I. pp. 8–34.

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