Proposed Simplifications of Convention-Making Procedures

Abstract

I. Generations of lawyers have laboured to establish a code on the law ol treaties. Eventually, a treaty on that subject was signed in Vienna on May 23, 1969—the “Treaty on Treaties”. Without intending now to go into questions regarding the Convention as a whole (it certainly is one of the best prepared pieces of modern international legislation), attention must be paid to a matter which the President of the Conference itself, Professor Roberto Ago, found necessary to point out in a specific Report on the Final Stage of the Codification of International Law to the International Law Commission, and which has been revived as a subject of doctrinal studies, under dramatic pressure, first by the bodies which feel responsible for the security of air traffic. The need for rapid entry into force of certain international Conventions, however, also poses the question whether experience, subsequent to the Vienna Conference, is appropriately helped by that code. This is the point of observation chosen for this paper: treaty-making as part of the functional operation of inter-governmental organizations.The question is far from being purely academic. As will be seen below, several important IGOs have these last years posed the question of simplification of entry into force of ‘their’ treaty law. It must be asked therefore whether this is—or may become—a general trend or possibly one limited to a specific category of IGOs, and hence of treaties. We will show that there are no short-cuts to “simplification” and “simple” solutions.