The Europa-Institut, as the editor, is the second eldest institution of its kind in Europe.
More than 5.000 students from all over the world have been educated in the fields of
European and International Law at the Europa-Institut since its foundation in 1951. Each
year students from over 30 countries come to the one-year postgraduate master’s
programme “European and International Law” to study the legal, political, economic
and cultural foundations of the European Union. The programme is characterized by six
special study units: European Integration, and European Economic Law, Foreign Trade and
Investment, International Dispute Resolution, European Protection of Human Rights and
IT Law. It provides students with great freedom of choice regarding the courses they
wish to attend and offers a high degree of specialization. The programme can be completed
entirely in English, entirely in German or in a combination of these and results in the award
of the title Master of Laws (LL.M.) to its successful participants.
We decided to assemble our own collection series compiling key documents for each
respective field of our LL.M. programme after recognizing that existing collections do not
fulfil the specific requirements necessary for the successful performance of our students.
In attempting to fill the gap we have published five volumes so far – “International Dispute
Resolution” as volume 1, “European Law” as volume 2, “International and European Trade
Law” as volume 3, “Public International Law” as volume 4 and “International Human Rights
Law” as volume 5.
Volume 4 includes a collection of public international law documents that has been
compiled with the consideration to present a comprehensive overview of the hard and soft
international rules and principles of general application that regulate the conduct of States
and International Organizations. The volume comprises the essential (mostly universal,
some European) law-making treaties which try to promote world peace and justice through
law. A number of particularly important Resolutions of the UN General Assembly and documents
produced by the International Law Commission are also included. We have decided
to concentrate on the general documents and to abstain from covering specific areas that
are the subject of the other volumes or are less frequently used in academic teaching and
research.
Preface 5
This second revised edition comprises a comprehensive yet handy collection of the most
relevant international law documents. It now includes the most recent amendments to
the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and the Elements of Crime. We have
also added the recent resolutions of the UN General Assembly regarding the identification
of customary international law, subsequent agreements and subsequent practice in relation
to the interpretation of treaties and the effects of armed conflicts on treaties. The collection
is addressed not only to the students in our LL.M. programme but to universities in general,
practitioners, policy makers and international lawyers.
We thank Akad. Dir. Julia Legleitner LL.M. (programme director), Ass. iur. Christina
Backes (managing editor), Dennis Traudt, Annika Blaschke (text editors) and Uwe Loebens
(art editor) who have made this book possible by designing the layout, formatting and
proofreading the texts and contacting the respective organizations for the permissions to
reproduce their texts in this volume.
Thanks must also go to the Alumni Association of the Europa-Institut’s Law Section
(EVER e.V.) for its financial support.
Finally, we acknowledge with thanks the permissions granted by the United Nations, the
Permanent Court of Arbitration, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Council
of Europe, the International Criminal Court as well as the German Federal Foreign Office to
reproduce their materials.
We hope that this selection of documents will prove a useful roadmap through the
system of international law for the students in our LL.M. programme and beyond.weiterlesen