on december 11, 2008, the united nations adopted the “convention on contracts for the international carriage of goods wholly or partly by sea”, more colloquially known as the “rotterdam rules” for the city which hosted the convention’s signing ceremony on september 23, 2009. rotterdam convention approved the “presumption of responsibility” as the basis of carrier’s responsibility and listed the...

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is an international response to our planet's changing climate. Serving as a means through which governments have opted to deal with the threat of global warming, the UNFCCC was adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The ultimate objective of the convention is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the UN, r a...

In 1989 the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) was ratified by all but two of its members, the United States of America and Somalia. The CRC has been hailed as a victory for the children’s rights movement and according to The International Save the Children Alliance (1999: 5) “over the past ten years it has helped to establish an internationally accepted framework for th...

Dr. Annabelle Duncan, a microbiologist, has served as Australia’s scientific advisor to the VEREX and Ad Hoc Working Groups of the BWC in Geneva, and on several U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) biological inspections in Iraq. Dr. Kenneth G. Johnson, also a microbiologist, has served as Canada’s scientific advisor to the Ad Hoc Working Group on the BWC in Geneva and also has participated in UNSC...

Making a commitment to respect the rights of children has profound implications for the status of children in our society. Nowhere is this more evident than in the field of health care where the decisions and actions of professionals impact on children’s lives in profound, intimate, and powerful ways. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child which was ratified by the UK Government in 1991 p...