Reports of International Arbitral Awards / Recueil des Sentences Arbitrales

International arbitral and judicial awards are of considerable importance, for they are a "subsidiary means for the determination of the rules of law" as provided in Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice. They are also important from the point of view of the progressive development of international law, a task which Article 13 of the Charter places under the responsibility of the General Assembly of the United Nations.Prior to the publication of the United Nations Reports of International Arbitral Awards, there existed no systematic collection of such decisions. Yet the need of one had been felt for a long while by the various national and international bodies concerned with international law and by all those interested in its development. This publication is prepared by the Codification Division of the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs.