These are exciting times for UN21. We have now completed the initial phase of our Kosovo project. Ten years of the American Journal of International Law has been sent to the American Centre within the Kosovo’s National Library located on the Pristina University campus. As you may recall, the 2004 Kosovo Jessup team in Washington, D.C. advised me that members had just taken a Private International Law course, using a 1964 text. It would thus be hard to articulate how much the Jessup students, other law students and faculty appreciate what we have done.

I just recently presented a proposal to members–via our UN21 listserv–suggesting that we donate each (current) annual volume of the AJIL as well. I have had a number of positive votes, with one suggestion that we do the same in Manila. My initial response to this proposal was that this next year may not be the best time to pursue another like program. However, I will return to this proposal either in or before the post-ASIL meeting summer UN21 Newsletter. Anyone with input should advise me, or Vice Chair Martha Trofimenko at this year’s ASIL meeting in March/April.

The second phase of our Kosovo Project has just been launched, as described later in this Newsletter.

We have also submitted our 2005 UN21 Executive Council Report to the ASIL Executive Director and all other Interest Groups. It provides our followup information regarding how we have met or progressed toward meeting the objectives we defined in our request for redesignation as an ASIL Interest Group. That report is set forth below in this Newsletter.

We also arranged a UN21 Annual Meeting Panel, which was the subject of some prior UN21 listserv e-mails. Details are set forth below.

The final report in this Newsletter is the budget report, outlining the expernditures that you authorized during this last year.

Unlike prior Newsletters, there is no Reader’s Corner report as section activities have precluded this useful feature of our Newsletter. A number of books will be reviewed i our post-meeting issue (#33).

I hope to see many of you during the ASIL Annual Meeting! Please be sure to attend our March 31, 2005, 9:00 to 10:30 AM panel at the conference hotel. 

• Promoting acceptance of the substantive principles of International Law;

• Promoting peaceful settlement of disputes, including greater use of the International Court of Justice (ICJ);

• Encouraging progressive development of International Law and its codification;

• Encouraging the teaching, study, dissemination, and wider acceptance of International Law.

We previously announced via our listserv e-mail that we would follow up on our book donation project by linking Balkan law students with professors, lawyers, and judges around the world–with a view toward assisting in the UN’s humanitarian efforts in Kosovo , and elsewhere in the Balkans.

Please visit the website we have just created, to see the initial response. It is located at http://home.att.net/~slomansonb/MentoringHope.html. It has been very rewarding. I am hoping that you will contact me, with your willing ness to serve as a mentor. This is a very informal program. Please review the information on that webpage, especially the following project description, now set forth in this Newsletter for your convenience:

Section Chair's Project Description: Kosovo is the only location in the world being administered by an international organization (UN). As we are the ASIL's United Nations section, we are facilitating the objectives of our group, by launching this mentoring program to assist future lawyers in the Balkans. Our objective is to provide a mentoring link between willing members of this ASIL group, other ASIL members, US law students who will one day become ASIL members, and others willing to assist in this program.

I teach at Pristina University each summer. We have the contacts to facilitate this proposed linkage. First and foremost is Dr. Enver Hasani--who represented Kosovo by being accredited to the Albanian Mission to the 1999 Rambouillet Peace Accords, and is now Kosovo's Foreign Minister. He agrees that this would be a productive method for establishing further links between Balkan law students/future attorneys and professors, lawyers, and judges--that may last for a lifetime. The second key contact person is Vjosa Osmani, a law graduate of Pristina University (Kosovo). She is now pursuing her LL.M. studies at the University of Pittsburgh.

We hereby solicit you to send a private message to either vjosao@yahoo.com or bills@tjsl.edu to express your interest and availability to be a mentor for one Balkan law student--all of whom are screened by either Vjosa or me. (For example, all listed Thomas Jefferson Law Student mentors were in my law school Public International Law classes and are mostly six years older than their Balkan mentees & most Balkan student mentees were in my summer classes in Kosovo). In the initial phase of this project, most of them will be students from the Balkans who attend Pristina University--now including mostly Kosovars, but also others as noted on the following table. We are now pursuing this program with no specific job description for the mentors. We believe that each linked "team" will decide how to make this program work. We suggest that mentors advise students on literature of mutual interest, and possibly comment on some student work such as papers they are writing, or just engage in simple conversation.

To: ASIL Interest Group officers <asil_igchairs@lists.asil.org>
Fm: William Slomanson slomansonb@worldnet.att.net
Subj: UN21 REPORT to EXECUTIVE COUNCIL
cc: Charlotte Ku <CKu@asil.org>

This report is submitted by the UN21 group for the ASIL Executive Council. It is supposed to outline progress made toward the group’s long and short term goals identified in its January 2004 Redesignation Report.

The general purpose of the group is to augment the somewhat disappointing performance of States during the UN Decade of International Law. The group’s objectives have been to assist the ASIL by fulfilling both the UN Decade and the Society’s educational and public awareness missions; providing additional opportunities for active participation by ASIL members; trying to attract more members via our group projects; and hopefully contributing to the general development and application of international law.

Our IG members continue to communicate via our listserv. (The Chair has "neglected" to move that listserv to the ASIL listserv; however, we have been communicating since 1997 on our own listserv and plan to make that move before the current Chair ends his term as of the Centennial 2006 Annual Meeting.) Members, unfortunately only occasionally contribute op-eds to our electronic web-based Newsletter. But these two devices nevertheless continue to help us achieve our long term communications objectives.

We also continue to believe that they do not necessitate an annual business meeting of the group, especially because many members do not attend the Annual Meeting. Instead, our periodic newsletters and listserv exchanges provide the medium for members keeping themselves informed of current developments, but mostly to exchange views on various programs. (And we of course host periodic panels at the Annual Meeting.) Our conduct of business online has helped to democratize this groups’ activities. Thus, as the current chair enters his last year–under the ASIL’s IG term limits–we will be able to engage in a continuing dialogue to choose a successor.

Our stated long-term goals are being achieved. We focused on Kosovo, because it is the only location in the world currently being administered by an international organization, the UN, from which we derived our raison d’etre. Since the referenced Redesignation Report, we have purchased 10 years of the American Journal of International Law for law students–including those participating in Jessup, faculty, and lawyers for the National Library housed at the University of Pristina in Kosovo. A current proposal, now under consideration, is the annual donation of each volume of the AJIL.

This phase of our program will further enhance the ASIL’s visibility, which includes Jessup, as mentioned above). We have thereby aided in the UN’s humanitarian mission in Kosovo, given the extreme dearth of international materials, in the face of a huge demand for such information. The section has thus followed through on its commitment to contribute to the education of a formerly oppressed ethnic group, and others in this third world region, in a way that will better acquaint these future leaders with the work of the ASIL.

The second phase of this successful project has just gotten underway. It pairs mentors, not limited to just UN21 members, with Balkan student mentees (in the present stage of development, primarily Kosovar Albanians). The project website and description is located at http://home.att.net/~slomansonb/MentoringHope.html. By our next report, we hope to have even more linkages deigned to provide hope to an economically depressed and historically war-raved area, hungry for such western contacts. We believe that we are thus adding to the ASIL’s political capital abroad.

Respectfully submitted,

Prof. Bill Slomanson
Chair, UN21 Interest Group   

STATE BUILDING I: ISSUES OF CHOICE,
CREATION AND LEGAL JUSTIFICATION
(March 31, 2005 9:00-10:30 AM)

Moderator: Prof. Bill Slomanson, Professor of Law TJSL (SDiego) & Visiting Professor, Pristina Univ (Kosovo).

Eyal Benvenisti Professor of Law, Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law.

Presentation Title: Applicability of the Law of Occupation to Post-conflict Societies.

Bio: LLB, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; LLM and JSD, Yale Law School. and Director of the Cegla Center for Interdisciplinary Research of the Law. Previously Hersch Lauterpacht Professor of International Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Faculty of Law, and Director of the Minerva Center for Human Rights at the Hebrew University. Been Visiting Professor of Law at number prominent US law schools.

Short Description: Prof B will focus on legal guidelines regarding state-building, with an emphasis on conflicts in Iraq, Kosovo, and East Timor as major case studies. Will address the law of occupation & enormous challenges facing current & recent occupations.

Hans Corell Ambassador, Former Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and Legal Counsel of the United Nations 1994-2004

Presentation Title: Authorization for State-building Missions: Legal Issues Related to Creation and Management

Bio: Court Clerk & judge 1962-72. Then Ministry of Justice until 1984. Ambassador and Head of the Department for Legal and Consular Affairs of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs 1984-94. Member of Sweden’s delegation to the United Nations General Assembly 1985-1993. Co-author of the CSCE proposal for the establishment of the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia 1993. The Secretary-General’s representative 1998 Rome Conference on the International Criminal Court.

Short Description: This presentation will focus on legal issues related to the overall enterprise of state building. His focus will be on State building missions authorized by the UN Security Council in Kosovo and East Timor & State building where the SC’s mandate is the result of a violation of the UN Charter as with occupation Iraq.

Dr. Elizabeth Cousens International Peace Academy

Presentation Title: Building States after Conflict: Context, Strategies and Outcomes

Bio: Dr. C Vice President International Peace Academy 2005. Previous three years, directed Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum, based at Social Science Research Council. She specialized country and regional analysis crisis situations & worked closely with UN. Dr. C also served Office of the United Nations Special Co-ordinator for the Middle East Peace Process based in Gaza–dealing issues Palestinian institutional reform, strategic coordination humanitarian assistance & final status negotiations.

Short Description: Comparative context of and strategies for international state-building, relationship between state-building and ending civil wars, dilemmas and trade-offs in implementation.

Ralph Wilde University College London

Presentation Title: Establishing Remedies re Conduct of International Territorial Administration

Bio: Dr Wilde Lecturer (US equivalent tenured Professor) Faculty of Laws University College London, part Univ London. Published on a range of international law topics in numerous academic journals, including the American Journal of International Law. His monograph on administration of territory by international organizations, based on his prize-winning doctoral thesis at Cambridge University, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2005. Dr. Wilde Co-Chair of the ASIL’s International Organizations Interest Group.

Short Description: Dr. W address question of establishing remedies against international actors engaged in state-building. Local populace should able challenge decisions international actors & agents in these missions. Accountability mechanisms been established various missions, such as Bosnia and Kosovo, and some cases been brought against international administrators. He offer constructive suggestions about how state building missions should incorporate mechanisms for review/third party scrutiny.  

To: UN21@yahoogroups.com
From: William Slomanson <slomansonb@worldnet.att.net>
Date: Thu, 03 Mar 2005 12:27:29 -0800
Subject: [un21] THE GIFT THAT CONTINUES TO GIVE

UN21 Members:

We have now donated the last 10 years worth of AJIL's to the National Library in Kosovo, for use by the Jessup Moot Court team, faculty, and students at Prisitina University in Kosovo. For $185.00 per year, we can continue to upgrade the dearth of available materials. As previously

reported, members of the Kosovo Jessup team told me last year in Washington that they had just completed their Private Int'l Law course--using a book published in 1964!

Because this would be an ongoing annual expenditure, I would like to hear publicly from UN21 members on whether they agree/disagree with this use of UN21 funds. BTW, we pay minimal shipping costs (about $10.00 per annual volume) for mailing each quarterly journal fm the NY publisher to Wash, DC--where I've arranged for (free) shipment to Kosovo via diplomatic pouch.

So this would amount to a total of almost $200.00 per year for this potential donation. (If/when Kosovo's status changes, we could revisit this matter--assuming you approve.)

Please advise,

Bill Slomanson, Chair
ASIL UN21 IG  

The following budget information was submitted to us by ASIL. It reflects our balance sheet information as of December 31, 2004 (and sent to UN21 on February 22, 2005). As of January 1, 2004, our budget surplus was was $5,088.25. Dues received during 2004 were $2,048.17. Expenditures (American Journal of International Law to Kosovo) were $769.05. The current balance showing on the ASIL’s 2004 accounting is $6,367.38.

The above 2004 expense information does not include the previously reported cost of our section’s 2005 ASIL Annual Meeting panel. The amount reflects the flight and ASIL registration fee for Ambassador Hans Corell, Former Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and Legal Counsel of the United Nations who will be our leading panelist. This proposed expenditure was posted on our listserv for comment, and later authorized by UN21 members. It should appear in next year’s ASIL accounting as a 2005 expenditure, and should be approximately $900.00 for his flight from Sweden and $150 speaker’s ASIL meeting registration fee–totaling approximately $1,050. (We are not paying his other costs. Thus my previously reported 1,500.00 estimate was too high.)

There is a pending expenditure now being considered by the UN21: an annual donation of each volume of the American Journal of International Law–approximately $200.00 per year. (I have avoided the shipment costs because our journals have been sent to Kosovo via diplomatic pouch.)

If we receive the same amount for 2005 dues ($2,048.17), then our projected balance as of December 31, 2005 should be approximately $7,165.55, computed as follows:

Beginning balance:      $6,367.38
Panel costs:                  1.050.00
Annual AJIL donation:     200.00
Projected dues:             2,048.17
------------------------------------
Projected balance:      $7,165.55

We have a much higher balance than I projected in a previous UN21 Newsletter. Thus, the new Chair, as of the 2006 ASIL Annual Meeting, will have mire than adequate resources for future projects.

To: Sliebel@asil.org
From: William Slomanson slomansonb@worldnet.att.net
Subject: INTEREST GROUP NEWS

Hi Sandra:

Not sure who to send to--here's a draft blurb for ASIL Newsletter "Interest Group News"

The UN21 Interest Group has donated the last ten volumes of the American Journal of International Law to the National Library on the campus of Pristina University in Kosovo. The English House of Commons is assisting UN21 by donating numerous book volumes to enhance the university's aged collection of international reference materials. UN21 is also in the process of establishing Project Mentoring Hope, designed to link Balkan law students with ASIL members to facilitate the professional development of university graduates. For details, see the project webpage at http//home.att.net/~slomansonb/MentoringHope.html.

The webpage is not complete--this is just a draft. It will be complete, well before the next issue of the ASIL Newsletter goes to press.

Best,

Bill

If this would be useful, perhaps I could put our stock management team in touch with Pristina, or with you?

Best regards,
Paul

Dr Paul Bowers
Senior Research Clerk
International Affairs & Defence Section
House of Commons Library

Tel: 020 7219 3621
Fax: 020 7219 3931