The Hague Academy Centre for Studies and Research in International Law and International Relations devoted its Session of 1996 to the Succession of States, including for the second time this topic in its programme, but in a context very different from that in which the 1962 Session had been held. Following the great wave of decolonizations, the studies conducted in the Centre in 1962 had constituted a kind of prologue to the lengthy deliberations by the International Law Commission that led to the 1978 Convention on Succession of States in Respect of Treaties and the 1983 Convention on...