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The legal regime of international humanitarian assistance provided during armed conflicts is based on several general legal principles. They are guiding principles that apply in all circumstances and situations, regardless of the nature of the armed conflict. The first principle entails that the state has primary responsibility to ensure that the basic needs of population under its jurisdiction are met during the armed conflict. The second principle, closely related to the first one, is the principle that third countries and international humanitarian organizations may offer assistance if a party to the conflict fails to undertake its duty to provide supplies necessary for the survival of the population. The next principles calls for the consent of all concerned parties in the provision of humanitarian assistance, as well as the duty of the parties to the conflict and all third countries to approve and facilitate the unimpeded passage of aid. The last principle is that staff involved in relief operations must be respected and protected. In addition to these general legal principles, international humanitarian assistance is regulated by a dozen of special rules covering various aspects of providing international humanitarian assistance during armed conflict. These rules are the result of a compromise between efforts to provide the vulnerable population with the necessities of life and a demand to protect the sovereignty of all parties to the conflict, but particularly of the state in which the aid is being sent. There is a difference between the rules governing humanitarian aid operations in international armed conflicts and the rules applicable in non-international conflicts. The first group of rules is far more numerous; they regulate in detail the issues related to relief actions, including the conditions for passage, delivery and distribution of consignments, the types of goods and services that can be sent, the category of persons who they are intended for, the position of the personnel engaged in these operations, and the technical conditions for implementing these rules. As regards non-international armed conflicts, the rules on humanitarian assistance are fewer, shorter and more general. These scarce rules are sometimes vague, and they mainly come down to the principle of humane treatment and the right of international humanitarian organizations to offer their assistance. Given that non international conflicts are the predominant form of armed conflict today, there is a strong tendency to extend the application of codified rules of international law governing the provision of humanitarian assistance to these conflicts. The practice of respecting almost all codified rules governing the provision of humanitarian assistance in modern armed conflicts and its wide acceptance by states and other participants confirms that the rules of customary International Humanitarian Law created in this area are applicable in both international and non-international armed conflicts.

The reimbursement of the costs and expenses incurred by the applicant in the proceedings is the one form of just satisfaction which is not explicitly provided for in Article 41 of the ECHR. The costs and expenses incurred in order to prevent a violation of the Convention or to remedy the consequences of a violation thereof shall be reimbursed. They cannot be covered by the mere statement that the injury itself constitutes just satisfaction without awarding a monetary sum. The award relates both to the costs incurred by the applicant before the domestic authorities and in the proceedings before the ECtHR itself. In terms of costs payment, the applicants are at a disadvantage as compared to the States. In order to mitigate this inequality, free legal aid has been established. It is granted by the ECtHR upon the applicant's written request or on its own motion. Legal aid shall be given if it is necessary for the proper conduct of the proceedings and if the applicant has insufficient means to meet all or part of the costs entailed. Free legal aid covers the fees of the applicant's legal representatives as well as other expenses incurred by the applicant and related to the proceedings. The Convention does not provide the criteria for affording costs and expenses, but the issue is settled by the Court in each particular case. Through long-standing and extensive case law, a four-part test for awarding costs and expenses has been established. According to that test, the costs must cumulatively fulfill the following conditions in order to be reimbursed: they were incurred in connection with a violation of the Convention; they were actually incurred; they are necessary; and they are reasonable as to quantum. As regards the procedure, the Court does not award the costs on its own motion or in excess of the amount claimed by the applicant. A claim for reimbursement can be made only by the plaintiff in his own name and within the time limit set by the Court. The request must be accompanied by all the necessary evidence to show that the costs were actually incurred. The Court may decide on the submitted request in the principal judgment or postpone this issue and settle it in a separate judgment. If the Court has accepted the claim, it awards in the judgment the lump sum covering all recognized costs. The state must pay the reimbursement within three months and interest will accrue after the expiry of that period.

Directive 2013/32/EU established the common standards which the EU Member States are obliged to incorporate into their national legislations in order to regulate the procedure for deciding on asylum applications. Asylum proceedings are to be carried out by national authorities but states are obliged to comply with the standards set out in this Directive. The asylum procedure is initiated upon the request of an interested party and its aim is to examine whether a third-country national or a stateless person has met the requirements for obtaining a refugee status. Before examining the justifiability of the asylum application, it is essential to determine which EU Member State is responsible for examining the application, which is established by applying the Dublin rules. If it is established that the state of the applicant's current location is not the state responsible for examining the asylum application, the applicant will be transferred to the respective state. Then, the responsible state is obliged to institute the first instance procedure and examine the submitted application within the prescribed time limits. The examination is carried out in a regular court proceeding, unless there are reasons for instituting a special proceeding (a priority procedure, an admissibility procedure, an accelerated procedure, and a border procedure). Under this Directive, the applicant is guaranteed the right to remain in the territory of the deciding EU Member State, as long as the final decision at first instance is pending, and some other procedural guarantees aimed at ensuring that the decision on asylum has been rendered by observing the rules of fair proceedings. On the other hand, the applicant has certain obligations, the most important of which are the obligations to appear before the competent state authority, to submit the available documents, to agree to being photographed and fingerprinted, etc. If dissatisfied with the first instance decision, applicants may challenge the decision by filing an appeal with the competent national court. During the appeal proceedings, they have the right to remain in the territory of the EU Member States, except in cases involving a number of explicitly prescribed situations. If the asylum application is accepted by the final decision of the competent authority, the person acquires the legal status of a refugee and all the rights arising from that status. If the asylum application is denied, the person is obliged to leave the territory of that EU Member State.

Once the Schengen Agreement came into force, there was a need to adopt a framework of common rules which would regulate some asylum-related issues in the newly-created Schengen area without internal borders. The first step in that course was made in 1990 by adoption of the Convention Determining the State Responsible for Examining Applications for Asylum, as an instrument of classical intergovernmental cooperation. Whereas the Maastricht Treaty did not bring any significant developments in the field of asylum policy, the Amsterdam Treaty was a significant turning point in this field. Under this Treaty, the asylum policy became part of the first pillar of EU, which implies that the Brussels institutions were given the authority to embark on the process of establishing the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). In the first phase of development of the CEAS system (1999-2005), the EU adopted a number of binding Community acts which laid down minimum asylum standards. Drawing upon the shortcomings observed during the implementation of the adopted directives and regulations, the EU embarked on their review and recast. The instruments adopted in the second phase of developing the CEAS system (2006-2013) were much more detailed and advanced in terms of regulating both the procedure for providing international protection and the contents of that protection. However, such a concept of the CEAS has turned out to be quite ineffective in the circumstances of mass migrant flows. For this reason, in 2015, the EU has adopted a range of measures aimed at eliminating the observed shortcomings.

Axial magnetic force calculation between two ring permanent magnets is presented in the paper. One magnet is magnetized in radial direction while the other one is magnetized in axial direction. Configuration like this one resembles the one passive magnetic bearing has. Force calculation is performed using semi analytical approach based on fictitious magnetization charges and discretization technique. For comparison purposes, and in order to check preciseness of the method applied, Finite Element Method (FEM) results were used. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. TR 33008]

In this paper an approach to efficient computation of radiation pattern in FDTD simulation environment is presented. A necessary large distance from the radiating object is achieved by multigrid space discretization with unilaterally connected subdomains. A numerical dispersion is reduced using more general complex-envelope finite difference time domain (CE-FDTD) formulation and high order accuracy FDTD schemes where possible. In order to examine how much the introduced algorithm complexity and increased demands concerning computational power and memory are justified by the gain in accuracy, several different scenarios were considered. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. TR-32051 i br. TR-33008]

Although the legality of approved humanitarian intervention is undisputable in the positive international law, this legal institute should be further regulated in order to remove certain legal ambiguity and difficulties in its application. The future regulation of humanitarian intervention may be carried out in one of the three ways: by adopting a special international treaty, by entering amendments in the UN Charter, or by embarking on the factual revision of the UN Charter. Due to the limiting effects of Article 103 of the UN Charter as well as the problematic status of UN member states which would not ratify the international agreements on humanitarian intervention, the regulation of future humanitarian intervention seems to be the least likely option. Formal revision of the UN Charter is not a viable option either because, thus far, the major world powers have been against introducing any substantial changes to this treaty. For this reason, the factual revision of the UN Charter is currently the most appropriate way of regulating future humanitarian interventions. When it comes to substantive rules governing humanitarian intervention, it is necessary to focus on the problem of humanitarian intervention decision-making as well as on the conditions and criteria for the approval and carrying out a humanitarian intervention. The UN Security Council must retain the right to decide on approving such an intervention but it is also necessary to establish an independent expert body whose task would be to determine the presence of serious and mass violations of human rights in a specific country and notify the Security Council about such occurrences. The specification of conditions and criteria for undertaking a humanitarian intervention should strengthen its legitimacy and prevent unreasonable disruption of states' territorial integrity and political independence.

One of the significant competences of the European Court of Justice is to issue a preliminary ruling on an issue which has been referred to this Court by the national courts of the EU Member States. In this procedure, the national courts are provided the necessary explanation on the applicable EU law, either through by interpreting some legal provisions or by assessing the validity of a legal act adopted by the EU institutions. The preliminary ruling of the Court of Justice is binding for the national court which referred the issue to the Court. The decision is also binding for all national courts which have jurisdiction to decide on legal remedies in this matter. On the other hand, the effect of the preliminary ruling on other national courts is not quite clear. In other words, there is a dilemma as to whether the preliminary ruling on a disputed issue posed in one proceeding is binding for all other courts, which have not been actually involved in this particular proceeding. As for the temporal effect of a preliminary ruling, there is a general rule that the Court's preliminary ruling has a retroactive effect. However, in some situation, the Court of Justice may limit the retroactive effect of its rulings if their ex tunc application is incompatible with the principle of legal certainty.

The article deals with the problem of environment protection during armed conflicts. The authors primarily focus on examining the possibility of applying international environmental law in armed conflicts. In the first part of the paper, the authors provide an overview of relevant rules of international humanitarian law which are important for environment protection and contained in different sources of law governing this area (international treaties, international customs and general principles). In this part, the authors point out to the weaknesses and shortcomings of the IHL environmental provisions, including both the traditional rules which have an indirect effect on environment protection and the contemporary rules which in most cases directly protect the environment. The second part of the article deals with the rules of international environmental law applicable in armed conflicts. The authors first examine the possibility of applying multilateral environmental treaties in armed conflicts. In that context, the authors point out to different types of such treaties, with specific reference to the treaties which do not contain provisions on their applicability during armed conflicts. Further on, the authors analyze the application of customary environmental rules in armed conflicts. These rules are considerably less important than international treaties and they commonly comprise a few general principles which may be considered nowadays as the rules of customary law. Finally, the authors explore the possibility of applying the rules of environmental soft law, such as the rules contained in different declarations and resolutions adopted at international conferences or within the framework of international organizations.

In International law, the status of persons with mental disabilities is regulated within the framework on the protection of persons with disabilities. Their rights are protected not only by international treaties comprising legal provisions of binding character for the parties but also by means of the so-called "soft law" comprising international documents which are not legally binding. Most of the general and subject specific treaties on human rights do not explicitly deal with the status of persons with disabilities. Only recently have some treaties been made containing legal provisions on special protection of persons with disabilities. The most important treaty of this kind is the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, adopted in the year 2006. The protection of such persons is regulated in much more detail by "soft law" which includes a number of documents adopted by the UN, the Council of Europe and the European Union. Although most of these documents primarily pertain to the rights and the status of persons with disabilities, there are a few that exclusively deal with the protection of persons with mental disorder.

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This paper describes a modification of the Hybrid Boundary Element Method (HBEM) for electrostatic problems solving. Such improved method is applied for transmission lines analyses. By taking a quasi-static TEM approach, the Hybrid Boundary Element Method is applied to determine the effective relative permittivity and the characteristic impedance of different stripline structures. Comparisons with already published numerical results and software simulation have been also performed with an aim to test the validity of the proposed approach. A close results match can be noticed. The main novelties of the proposed HBEM modification are better accuracy and ability to determine the polarization charges distribution on the separating surface between a strip and a dielectric layer. This was not possible before, using the previous version of the method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-pecuniary damages are a form of just satisfaction that the ECtHR may award if a violation of protected rights is found. These damages can be claimed by individuals, groups of persons, non-governmental organizations and states, whereby the awarded amount must be distributed to individual victims. However, for the Court to award compensation for non-pecuniary damage, several requirements must be met. The Court has awarded compensation for non-pecuniary damage on several grounds, such as pain, stress, anxiety, frustration, embarrassment, humiliation, and loss of reputation. Unfortunately, the criteria for determining the amounts of compensation for moral damage are still not clear and precise, so they have been determined by the Court on an equitable basis, taking into account its case-law standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Magnetic force between U-shaped permanent magnet and linear infinite plane is determined in the paper. Two different cross-sections (circular and rectangular cross section) are considered in the paper in order to analyse their effects on the attraction force. It is confirmed that results obtained using presented method, in case of rectangular cross section, enable more rapid parametric studies of the attraction force, relative to dimensions and spacing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]