CYIL vol. 8 (2017)

PAVEL ŠTURMA CYIL 8 ȍ2017Ȏ At its first meeting on 1 May 2017, the Commission elected the Chairman of the ILC and other officers of the Bureau of the sixty-sixth session. 2 On some occasions, they also meet in the Enlarged Bureau, including in particular the Special Rapporteurs and the chairmen of the Study Groups. The Commission also set up a Planning Group under the chairmanship of Mr. Valencia-Ospina. The ILC also established a Drafting Committee, which met this year for all topics where some draft articles or conclusions were sent to it: (a) Crimes against humanity; (b) Protection of the atmosphere; (c) Provisional application of treaties; (d) Immunity of State officials from foreign criminal jurisdiction; (e) Peremptory norms of general international law ( jus cogens ); and (f ) Succession of States in respect of State responsibility. However, the Commission provisionally adopted the draft articles or conclusions with commentaries only with respect to three above mentioned topics under (a), (b), (c) and (d). All the new draft conclusions on jus cogens , as well as two draft articles on Succession of States in respect of State responsibility were adopted just by the Drafting Committee, and the Commission as a whole only took note of the report presented by the Chairman of the Drafting Committee. During the first part of the session, the Commission also established the Planning Group, which in turn decided to constitute the Working Group on the Long-term programme of work, under the chairmanship of Mr. Mahmoud Hmoud, and the Working Group on methods of work, under the chairmanship of Mr. Hussein Hassouna. The first Working Group also discussed, on the basis of the submitted working papers, five new proposals of possible subjects for the Long-term programme. However, due to lack of time, the Working Group only decided, during the second part of its session, to recommend including two new topics, namely “General principles of law” and “Evidence before international courts and tribunals”, in the Long-term programme of work. The second Working Group commenced but did not conclud its debate on methods of work of the Commission. At its meeting on 9 May 2017, the Commission decided to include the topic “Succession of States in respect of State responsibility” in its programme and to appoint Mr. Pavel Šturma as the Special Rapporteur for the topic, which began to be discussed during the second part of the session. At its last meeting on 4 August 2017, the Commission also decided to appoint Ms. Marja Lehto (Finland) as the new Special Rapporteur for the topic “Protection of the environment in relation to armed conflicts”, to replace Ms. Marie Jacobsson, who is no longer a member of the Commission. In addition, the ILC had a number of meetings with representatives of other legal bodies, such as the International Court of Justice (the visit of its President Ronny Abraham), the Asian-African Legal Consultative Organization (AALCO), the Inter-American Juridical Committee, the Committee of Legal Advisors on Public International Law (CAHDI) of the Council of Europe, the African Union Commission on International Law. In the same vein, an informal exchange of views was held between members of the Commission and the International Committee of the Red Cross on topics of mutual interest, on the occasion of an invitation to the premises of the ICRC Headquarters.

2 Chairperson: Mr. Georg Nolte (Germany), First Vice-Chairperson: Mr. Eduardo Valencia-Ospina (Colombia), Second Vice-Chairperson: Mr. Hussein A. Hassouna (Egypt), Chairman of the Drafting Committee: Mr. Aniruddha Rajput (India), Rapporteur: Mr. Bogdan Aurescu (Romania).

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