A standard trope when teaching multilateral human rights treaties has been to point to the Convention on the Rights of the Child as having achieved near-universal ratification, with only the United States and Somalia not having ratified it (at least among those entities generally recognized to be states under international law). Well, that trope now has to come to an end – on 1 October Somalia officially deposited its instrument of ratification with the UN Secretary-General, having completed domestic ratification processes earlier in the year. That leaves the US as the only state in the world not to have joined this treaty, a somewhat more unenviable position than before, one could say. Unfortunately, upon ratification Somalia also made the following reservation: “The Federal Republic of Somalia does not consider itself bound by Articles 14, 20, 21 of the above stated Convention and any other provisions of the Convention contrary to the General Principles of Islamic Sharia.” The three enumerated articles deal with the freedom of thought, conscience and religion, and the…
Reservations to Treaties
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The ILC’s Clever Compromise on the Validity of Reservations to Treaties: A Rejoinder to Marko Milanovic and Linos-Alexandre Sicilianos
In ‘The ILC’s Clever Compromise on the Validity of Reservations to Treaties’, Marko Milanovic and Linos-Alexandre Sicilianos say the ILC Guide to Practice on Reservations to Treaties strikes a clever compromise by holding on to a general regime on reservations to treaties and, at the same time, making human rights lawyers happy. They also characterise the…
The ILC Guide to Practice on Reservations to Treaties: Some General Remarks
On 16 December 2013, by adopting resolution 68/111, the General Assembly completed a 21-year study on the codification and progressive development of the law on reservations to treaties. In its resolution, the GA takes note of the Guide to Practice on Reservations to Treaties, the text of which had been adopted by the International Law Commission (ILC) on…
The ILC’s Clever Compromise on the Validity of Reservations to Treaties
This post, adapted from our introduction to the symposium on the International Law Commission’s Guide to Practice on Reservations to Treaties in the current issue of the EJIL, looks at one specific topic addressed by the ILC – the rules governing the validity of reservations and the consequences of invalidity. This is not only the most controversial…
EJIL Reservations Symposium – Jean Monnet Papers
I am happy to announce that the EJIL will be publishing a symposium on the International Law Commisssion’s Guide to Practice on Reservations to Treaties. The symposium was edited by Linos-Alexandre Sicilianos and myself, and features contributions from Alain Pellet, Michael Wood, Daniel Mueller, and Ineta Ziemele and Lasma Liede. It will most likely be…
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