Book Reviews Hague Conference on Private International Law. Proceedings of the Seventeenth Session 10 to 29 May 1993. I-1; I-2. On 19 May 1993, the Hague Conference on private international law celebrated its centenary. In volume I, the reader is presented with an excellent survey of the work and achievements of the Conference. The volume is divided into two parts. The first part includes mainly the minutes of the Opening and the Closing Sessions, the text of the Final Act of the Seventeenth Session as well as preliminary documents for, and the conclusions of, the Special Commission of June 1992 on general matters and policy of the Conference. A special bibliography at the end of this part (78 pages!) might be of particular interest to the reader as it incorporates all the preceding bibliographies edited by the Conference, as well as new articles and works which have appeared up to 15 June 1995. The second part of volume I is devoted to the centenary of the Conference. It contains a list of all delegates who ever participated in the diplomatic sessions of the Conference. Volume II is concerned with the Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption. The topic was not new to the Conference. In 1965 the Conference concluded the Convention on Jurisdiction, Applicable Law and Recognition of Decrees Relating to Adoptions, which, in its thirty years of existence, was only ratified by Switzerland, Austria and the United Kingdom. But the problems of intercountry adoption, as well as the public's sensitivity to the matter, have increased dramatically in recent years. In drawing up the Convention of 1993 the Conference made a second try. The task was particularly difficult because the rules of private substantive law governing adoption vary significantly from one country to another. Therefore, the idea of a loi uniforme as well as the classical techniques of private international law had to be abandoned. Instead, the Convention is restricted to setting criteria and to improving practices and procedures for intercountry adoption by establishing a system of Central Authorities on the model of the Hague Child Abduction Convention. Although the institutional weight of the Central Authorities as well as the administrative costs might be criticized, the Convention has been a remarkable success. As of November 1996, the Convention had been signed by twenty-eight states and has been ratified by eleven, namely Mexico, Romania, Sri Lanka, Cyprus, Poland, Spain, Ecuador, Peru, Costa Rica, Burkina Faso and the Philippines. In volume II, the reader finds a number of preliminary documents, including a general report on intercountry adoption by J.H.A. van Loon (50 pages). Following this report are the working documents, the minutes, the text of the Convention, and the explanatory report by Professor G. Parra-Aranguren, which constitutes an autonomous commentary on the Convention. On the whole, volume II is an indispensable source for research on intercountry adoption. Kerstin Strick Bonn University
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