Concept of arbitration has been prevalent, historically, in the Middle East since the early days of Islam. The arbitral process has been problematic in the UAE however, it has not been until recently that the UAE has recognized the importance of arbitration as a powerful dispute resolution alternative and revised its legislation to accommodate the proceedings of domestic and international arbitration. In the past, foreign investors have been reluctant to select the UAE seat for their arbitration proceedings. There has been a perception that, as a general rule, the practice of international commercial arbitration in the Middle East is still in its infancy. The UAE is now demonstrating to the international community that it has the necessary infrastructure and laws in place to successfully count itself as one of the key arbitration players, alongside London, Paris and Hong Kong. This has been the result of the UAE updating their laws, reforming dispute resolution practice and procedures and through the establishment of key regional arbitration centres. The UAE's accession to the New York Convention was also seen as a significant step in demonstrating the UAE's commitment to foreign investors and the international community. Under Federal Decree No. 43 of 2006, the UAE managed to accede to the New York Convention. The UAE's accession is considered as a mile stone towards provision for a more straightforward arbitral process and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards in other Convention states. As a recent development, the UAE has evidenced the joint venture between the Dubai International Financial Centre ('the DIFC') and the London Court of International Arbitration ('the LCIA'), in February 2009, to create the DIFC-LCIA Arbitration Centre ('the DIFC~LCIA'). The DIFC-LCIA operates alongside the longer-established Dubai International Arbitration Centre ('the DlAC'). Both offer their own procedural rules and regulations for the amicable settlement of disputes through arbitration. The Courts role is vital in an arbitral proceeding in any jurisdiction. Although arbitration is believed as a court-free, independent forum for dispute resolution; the court plays fundamental role to ensure that the arbitral proceeding is taking place in a moderate and independent decorum. The UAE Court's role towards the International commercial arbitration has been very problematic and the courts historically used to intervene in the arbitral proceeding over tiny issues. The new UAE arbitration laws has changed the situation and curtailed the courts powers to interfere the arbitral proceeding. At present, the arbitration in the UAE is more independent and straightforward. The proposed UAE arbitration law has much more similarities with the Model Law UNCITRAL and meets the International standards. A lot of work still has to be done in order to make the arbitration more independent, straightforward and friendly in the UAB. The Court's role is vital and is required to be more supportive then it is at present in the arbitral process.

This thesis is concerned with the ways in which international law regulates state and individual complicity. Complicity is a derivative form of responsibility that links an accomplice to wrongdoing by a principal actor. Whenever complicity is prohibited, certain questions arise about the scope and structure of the complicity rule. To answer these questions, this thesis proposes an analytical framework in which complicity rules may be assessed, and defends a normative claim as to their optimal structure. This framework and normative claim anchor the thesis’ analysis of complicity in international law. The thesis shows that international criminal law regulates individual complicity in a comprehensive way, using the doctrines of instigation and aiding and abetting to inculpate complicit participants in international crimes. These doctrines are marked by the breadth of the complicit conduct prohibited, a standard of knowledge in the fault required of the accomplice, and an underused nexus requirement between the accomplice’s acts and the principal’s wrong. In contrast, international law’s regulation of state complicity was historically marked by an absence of complicity rules. In respect of state complicity in the wrongdoing of another state, international law now imposes both specific and general complicity obligations, the latter prohibiting states from aiding or assisting another state in the commission of any internationally wrongful act. In respect of the ways that states participate in harms caused by non-state actors, the traditional normative structure of international law, which imposed obligations only on states, foreclosed the possibility of regulating the state’s participation as a form of complicity. As that traditional normative structure has evolved, so the possibility of holding states responsible for complicity in the wrongdoing of non-state actors has emerged. More and more, both the wrongs that international actors commit, and the wrongs they help or encourage others to commit, matter.

Over the last decade, the effects of an unprecedented rise in global temperature due to climate change, on the enjoyment of human rights, especially the right to life, have been subjects of intensive scholarly attention. Gallons of juristic ink have been spilled on the need for States to adopt policy measures aimed at combating climate change. However, recent findings show that policy measures and projects aimed at mitigating climate change are in turn producing even more serious human rights concerns, especially in developing countries. These human rights issues include: mass displacement of citizens from their homes to allow for climate change mitigation projects; lack of participation by citizens in project planning and implementation; citing and concentration of projects in poor and vulnerable communities; lack of governmental accountability on projects and the absence of review and complaint mechanisms for victims to obtain redress for these problems. These secondary human rights impacts of policy measures and projects aimed at mitigating climate change have not received sufficient attention in existing literature. The aim of this research is to examine and analyse the effects of climate change mitigation projects, specifically Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects, on the enjoyment of fundamental human rights. It considers how lessons from the approval and execution of CDM projects could inform thoughts on the value and requirements for mainstreaming human rights safeguards into international climate change regimes in general. It analyses the legal and theoretical prospects and paradoxes of adopting the United Nations Human Rights Based Approach (HRBA) as a framework through which human rights standards may be systemically integrated and mainstreamed into extant and emerging international legal regimes on climate change.

This thesis examines the practices of international, national, and localised criminal courts in post-genocide Rwanda. It argues that, although the courts are compatible in law, an interpretive cultural analysis shows that they have often competed with one another. The research draws on interviews conducted with judges, lawyers, and a group of witnesses and suspects from the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), the national Rwandan courts, and the gacaca community courts. The courts’ judges and lawyers have interpreted Rwanda’s transitional justice processes very differently. The ICTR has been principally concerned with developing international criminal case law. The national courts purport to have focused on domestic legal reform, while personnel inside gacaca view these local courts as having provided an account of the events and causes of the genocide. This thesis argues that the different interpretations offered within Rwanda’s post-genocide courts illuminate divergent legal cultures inside the institutions, leading to failures in effective cooperation and evidence gathering. The courts have pursued diverse means to try to establish their legitimate authority. However, among a group of Rwandan citizens, the practices of one court were routinely used as the basis to criticise the actions of the others, raising challenges for the legitimacy of transitional justice in Rwanda. The potential for similar competition between domestic and international justice processes is apparent in the current practice of the International Criminal Court (ICC). However, this competition can be mitigated through more effective communication between different justice systems which respond to the needs of the affected populations, fostering a legal culture of complementarity.

This thesis contributes to academic debate about the question: how much substantive protection should investment treaties (IITs) provide to foreign investment? Chapters 5 and 6 argue that arbitral tribunals have interpreted fair and equitable treatment and indirect expropriation provisions of existing IITs in several different ways. Each of these interpretations is sketched as a model level of protection that could be explicitly adopted by states in the future, either through inclusion in new IITs, or through amendment to existing IITs. In this way, the thesis defines a range of prospective options available to states concerning the level of protection to provide to foreign investment through IITs. The thesis evaluates the relative desirability of these different levels of protection. The thesis argues that different levels of protection should be evaluated according to their likely consequences. The thesis develops a framework for inferring and understanding the likely consequences of adopting different levels of protection. The framework proposes that the consequences of a given level of protection can be understood in terms of its likely effect on: economic efficiency; the distribution of economic costs and benefits; flows of foreign direct investment into host states; the realisation of human rights and environmental conservation in host states; and respect for the rule of law in host states. Within this framework, the thesis provides an assessment and synthesis of existing empirical evidence and explanatory theory so far as they relate to the consequences of IIT protections. It also specifies the normative criteria by which these consequences should be evaluated. Through the application of this framework, the thesis concludes that lower levels of protection of foreign investment are, in general, likely to be more desirable than higher levels of protection.

The WTO is one piece in a complex network of international, regional and domestic legal systems and regulatory frameworks. The influences on the development of WTO law extend far beyond its own Members and institutions: domestic legal instruments have provided the inspiration for numerous WTO obligations while the rights and obligations under the covered agreements are frequently incorporated into the legal systems of the Membership. The WTO is home to numerous committees and working groups that also engage with other international bodies and their domestic counterparts. Transnational actors seek to take advantage of these networks, encouraging WTO law to develop in their favour. The interactions involved, however, are highly complex and unpredictable. By drawing on different models of causal explanation, it is possible to offer a perspective on the development of WTO law that accepts its role as part of a larger globalized process. Three different causal influences are identified: instrumental, systemic and constitutive. Together, they offer a prism through which to examine the development of WTO law as it responds to the behaviour of transnational actors, bridging gaps between international relations and law and, it is hoped, offering a convincing explanatory rationale for the way in which WTO law develops.

Deference in international human rights law has provoked animated discussion, particularly the margin of appreciation doctrine of the European Court of Human Rights. Many commentators describe the practice of deference but do not explain how it affects judicial reasoning. Some approve characteristics of deference but do not provide a justification to defend the practice against criticism. Others regard deference as a danger to human rights because it betrays the universality of human rights or involves tribunals either failing to consider a case properly or missing an opportunity to set human rights standards. This thesis employs a different approach by focussing on deference as the practice of assigning weight to reasons for a decision on the basis of external factors. This approach draws on theories of second-order reasoning from the philosophy of practical reasoning. The thesis offers a conceptual account of deference that accords with the practice not only of the European Court of Human Rights, but also the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Committee. Additionally the thesis presents a normative account of deference, that the role of these tribunals entails permitting a measure of diversity as states implement international human rights standards. Deference in international human rights law then is the judicial practice of assigning weight to the respondent states’ reasoning in a case on the basis of three factors: democratic legitimacy, the common practice of states and expertise. This affects judicial reasoning by impacting the balance of reasons in the proportionality assessment. The account defended in this thesis dispels concerns that deference is a danger to human rights, whilst providing a theory that justifies the practice of the tribunals. The thesis thus provides the contours of a doctrine of deference in each of the three international human rights systems.

In a world shaped by the simultaneous forces of globalization and fragmentation, very few armed conflicts remain isolated from any foreign involvement and confined to the territory of one State. On the contrary, many begin as internal conflicts that gradually acquire international characteristics of varying degree and nature. Yet, the law of armed conflict forces each such conflict into one of two legal categories: it must either be a non-international, or an international armed conflict. Accordingly, the prevailing approach in the literature is to examine what type of conflict, if any, corresponds to a certain situation in reality at a given time. In contrast, this thesis opts for a dynamic approach, focussing on the combination of factors that transform a prima facie non-international armed conflict into an international armed conflict. It argues that four such modalities of internationalization have emerged thus far: (1) outside intervention; (2) State dissolution; (3) wars of national liberation; and (4) relative internationalization by way of recognition of belligerency, unilateral declarations, or special agreements. Since some situations feature more than two conflict parties, the thesis puts forward an autonomy-based interpretive model, which enables to determine whether such situations should be seen as a single internationalized armed conflict or a number of independent international and non-international armed conflicts. On the basis of this comprehensive map of conflict internationalization, the thesis turns to the effects brought about by this process. It analyses two areas of the law of armed conflict considered to be regulated differently in the two respective types of conflict, namely matters of combatant status and belligerent occupation. It argues that fighters belonging to non-State armed groups participating in internationalized armed conflicts are in principle eligible for combatant status and it proposes an interpretive model for the determination whether they in fact meet the relevant criteria in practice. Finally, the thesis argues in favour of the applicability of the law of belligerent occupation to internationalized armed conflicts. To substantiate this claim, it delineates the temporal, geographical, and personal scope of the law of occupation in such conflicts. In its totality, the thesis analyses the meaning, process, and effects of conflict internationalization and on this basis argues for a particular interpretation of the concept of internationalized armed conflict in international law.

Depuis la création de l'article XXIV du GATT, les recherches et les analyses liées à la relation entre le droit de l'OMC et les accords commerciaux régionaux ont été basés principalement sur cet article et sur la recherche pour la compatibilité des ACR avec les conditions et les critères proposés par ce dernier. Autres dispositions liés au même thème ont été créés, comme l'article V de l'AGCS et la Clause d'habilitation, qui cherchent à couvrir le commerce des services dans ces accords et regarder d'octroi de préférences en fonction du niveau de développement des Membres de l'OMC. Avec le temps, il a été constaté que l'application de ces dispositions et procédures d'évaluation de la compatibilité n'ont pas eu l'effet souhaité par les négociateurs des règles de l'OMC. Les ACR ont continué à se multiplier en parallèle avec le système de l'OMC et des relations de complémentarité, de concurrence et de conflit ont été établis entre eux. Face à l'inefficacité d'articuler les ACR avec le droit de l'OMC uniquement pour l'utilisation de dispositions conçus pour cela, on doit chercher dans d'autres dispositions de l'OMC, des outils pour atteindre cet objectif. En outre, ces dispositifs permettent l'utilisation de règles de droit international public dans certaines limites et ces règles peuvent être très utile pour l'articulation des ACR et de droit de l'OMC. Pour ce faire, il faut diviser l'analyse en deux phases, la première de recherche d'une articulation normatif et la seconde portait sur le traitement de la multiplicité des fora / Since the creation of article XXIV of the GATT, research and analysis related to the relationship between WTO law and Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) have been based primarily on this article and the search for compatibility of RTAs with conditions and criteria proposed by the latter. Other provisions related to the same theme were created, such as Article V of the GATS and the Enabling Clause, that seek to cover trade in services in these agreements and look for the granting of preferences based on the level of development between WTO Members. However, over time, the application of these provisions and procedures for assessing the compatibility have not reached the desired effect by the negotiators of WTO rules. The RTAs continued to increase in parallel with the WTO system and complementary relationships, competition and conflicts have been established between them. The ineffectiveness to articulate RTAs with WTO law solely using the article XXIV of the GATT leads us to search for new legal tools to achieve this articulation. More particularly, these tools allow us to use the rules of public international law within certain limits and may be very useful for the articulation between RTAs and WTO law. This research of legal tools is divided in two phases: the first one analyzes normative tools for articulation and the second one analyzes the treatment of multiple fora. Some of the items to be discussed will be the limitation of standards in the WTO, the rules of interpretation of WTO law and the attractiveness of the DSB for resolving conflicts among Members of the Organization

The subject of dangerous goods as it pertains to carriage by sea is of growing importance and concern because it impacts on safety as well as environmental issues. Both involve liability associated with maritime transportation and liability in respect of dangerous goods is a complex area of law both from an international as well as a domestic perspective. China is a rapidly emerging economic power and a major world player in shipping and seaborne trade including import and export of hazardous substances. Furthermore, China is undergoing remarkable reform and transformation in all respects, and legal regimes, especially in the maritime field, are in a state of evolution. This thesis presents a two-fold area of concentration, that is, the international regime and the domestic Chinese law, looking at the safety as well as the environmental dimensions of international carriage of dangerous goods by sea. In order to carry out a comparative analysis of the international and Chinese legal regimes pertaining to the issues of contractual and tortious liability, a relatively detailed analytical examination of the international regime has been completed. Following this, the legal regime under Chinese law concerning the sea carriage of dangerous goods is critically evaluated in terms of the evolution of the domestic maritime law and the issues of application of international law and domestic law from the perspectives of regulatory law and civil liability. The discussion on the existing issues liability is centered on the principles of liability in tort and contract borne by private parties and state responsibility in respect of damage arising from the maritime transportation of dangerous goods. Conclusions are drawn from the summaries of chapters highlighting the critical issues in light of the findings of the research; the appropriate recommendations and suggestions for improvements to the international regimes; and proposals for law reform in the form of new legislation or amendments to existing legislation with the aim of improving the domestic regime to bring it into closer alignment with international law on the carriage of dangerous goods by sea.