Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T05:03:59.243Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Canada in the United Nations Treaty Series: A Global Perspective1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2016

Peter H. Rohn
Peter H. Rohn*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington.
Get access

Extract

How complete is the United Nations Treaty Series (UNTS)? What does an answer to this question mean for our understanding of the law of treaties? If the UNTS is not complete, which treaties are missing? If there are gaps, do they show any patterns? Are some signatories, treaty topics or time periods more gap-prone than others? If we take Canada as a test case, for example, do all post-1945 treaties of Canada actually show up in the UNTS? If there is a gap, can we identify it? If identified, can the gap be explained? How does Canada compare with other countries in UNTS fidelity? Finally, and most importantly, what does the Canadian test case mean for the UNTS as a whole and for the law of treaties?

These questions have come up repeatedly in connection with the UNTS Project at the University of Washington since 1963. There is no comprehensive answer for all of them, but many new details have been found and some patterns have emerged.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Yearbook of International Law/Annuaire canadien de droit international , Volume 4 , 1966 , pp. 102 - 130
Copyright
Copyright © The Canadian Council on International Law / Conseil Canadien de Droit International, representing the Board of Editors, Canadian Yearbook of International Law / Comité de Rédaction, Annuaire Canadien de Droit International 1966

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

2 Rohn, Peter H., “Institutionalism in the Law of Treaties: A Case of Combining Teaching and Research,” 59 Am. Soc. Int’l L., Proceedings 93, 95 and 105 (1965).Google Scholar

3 Merillat, H.C.L. (ed.), A Survey of the Teaching of International Law in Political Science Departments 61–63 (American Society of International Law and American Political Science Association, 1963).Google Scholar

4 Deutsch, Karl W., “On Theories, Taxonomies, and Models as Communication Codes for Organizing Information,” 11 Behavioral Science (January 1966);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Greenberger, Martin (ed.), Computers and the World of the Future (Cambridge, The M.I.T. Press, 1962);Google Scholar Janda, Kenneth, Data Processing: Applications to Political Research (Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1965);Google Scholar Vickerey, B. C., On Retrieval System Theory (London, Butterworth, 1961);Google Scholar von Neumann, J., The Computer and the Brain (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1958);Google Scholar Wiener, Norbert, The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (Boston, Houghton-Mifflin, 1950).Google Scholar

5 Rohn, supra note 2 and Rohn, UNTS Project — General Report (dittoed report for distribution to participants and administrators) (University of Washington, November 20, 1964).

6 For an excerpt from the Canadian treaty profile, see Table 8.

7 Canada: Department of External Affairs, Canada Treaty Series, since 1946; China: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Treaties Between the Republic of China and Foreign States, 1937–1957 (Taiwan, 1958) ; Guatemala: Mendoza, José L. (ed.), Pactos Bilaterales, Tratados y Convenciones Internacionales Vigentes Para Guatemala (Guatemala, 1960);Google Scholar Switzerland: Recueil Officiel des Lois et Ordonnances de la Confédération Suisse, Table des Matières 1964 (Berne, 1965); U.S.S.R.: Triska, Jan F. and Slusser, Robert M., A Calendar of Soviet Treaties 1917–1957 (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1959);Google Scholar Venezuela: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tratados Públicos y Acuerdos Internacionales de Venezuela, Vols. 1944–1955 (Carácas).

8 See references in note 15 below as well as Brandon, Michael, “Analysis of the Terms ‘Treaty’ and ‘International Agreement’ for Purposes of Registration under Article 102 of the United Nations Charter,” 47 Am. J. Int’l L. 49–69 (1953);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Jessup, Philip C., “Modernization of the Law of International Contractual Agreements,” 41 Am. J. Int’l L. 378, 405 (1947);CrossRefGoogle Scholar de Visscher, Charles, Theory and Reality in Public International Law, Section III (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1957).Google Scholar

9 Personal interviews in April 1965 with Mr. Charles Bevans, Chief, Treaty Section, U.S. State Department; Mr. S. Kiernik, Chief, Treaty Section, U.N. Secretariat; Dr. H. C. L. Merillat, Executive Director, American Society of International Law; Dr. William C. Olson, then Chief, Foreign Affairs Division, Legislative Reference Service, Library of Congress, now Associate Dean, School of International Affairs, Columbia University; and Mr. A. W. J. Robertson, Head of the Treaty Section, Legal Division, Canadian Department of External Affairs. See also note 21 below.

10 Spiropoulos, J. in Yearbook , International Law Commission, 1949, at 48:Google Scholar “The question of treaties was one of the most important questions of international law, both in its theoretical and practical aspects.” Similarly Jessup, Philip C., “Modernization of the Law of International Contractual Agreements,” 41 Am. J. Int’l L. 378–405 (1947).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also de Visscher, op. cit. supra note 8, at 115 and 268.

11 Briggs, Herbert W., The International Law Commission 319–41 (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1965);Google Scholar Rosenne, Shabtai, “Codification of Treaty Law,” 41 Wash. L. Rev. 261–81 (1966).Google Scholar

12 United Nations, Repertory of Practice of United Nations Organs, Vol. 5, at 279–312 (New York, 1955).

13 United Nations, List of Treaty Collections, (Document ST/LEG/5), New York, 1956. The time is counted from Gen. Ass’y. Res. 686 (VII) of December 5, 1952, authorizing the Secretary-General to undertake the publication of a list of treaty collections, to the date of publication of above, November 1955.

14 Ibid.

15 Hoyt, Edwin C., The Unanimity Rule in the Revision of Treaties, A Re-Examination (The Hague, Nijhoff, 1959);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Kasme, Badr, La Capacité de l’Organisation des Nations Unies de Conclure des Traités (Paris, Librairie Générale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, 1960);Google Scholar McNair, Lord, The Law of Treaties (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1961);Google Scholar Mostecky, Vaclav (ed.), Index to Multilateral Treaties (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard Law School Library, 1965);Google Scholar Schneider, J.W., The Treaty-Making Power of International Organizations (Geneva, Droz 1959);Google Scholar Zemanek, Karl, Das Vertragsrecht der Internationalen Organisationen (Vienna, Springer, 1957).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 See supra note 9 and infra note 21.

17 U.N. Charter Article 102, paragraph 2: “No party to any such treaty or international agreement which has not been registered in accordance with the provisions of paragraph 1 of this Article may invoke that treaty or agreement before any organ of the United Nations.”

l8 The UNTS Project at that time had received only one of two grants from the Agnes Anderson Fund and it was not known whether any additional support would be forthcoming.

19 See supra note 7.

20 Personal correspondence and/or interviews with document librarians at Berkeley, Stanford, U.G.L.A., Los Angeles County Law Library, Harvard Law Library, United Nations Library and Library of Congress. On the West Coast by far the largest foreign treaty collection is at Los Angeles County Law Library but its Foreign Law Librarian, Dr. William Stern, wrote on June 3, 1965: “The biggest gap in our international law collection is in the field of treaties.” The U.N. Secretariat has informed me that there is no plan to update its admittedly obsolete 1956 List of Treaty Collections in the foreseeable future. Definitional problems preclude accurate figures but a reasonable estimate of the consensus of the above experts suggests that national treaty records are currently being published in less than approximately 50 foreign countries, and that only approximately one-third to one-half of them are available in full through the above libraries.

21

  • a)

    a) Letter dated March 3, 1965, requesting name and address of treaty officer in national foreign ministry, sent to Washington embassies of following countries: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslavakia, Denmark, El Salvador, Finland, France, Germany (Fed. Rep.), Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, U.S.S.R., and Yugoslavia.

  • b)

    b) Reply received from all the above except the following countries: Czechoslovakia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Hungary, Poland, and U.S.S.R.

  • c)

    c) Letter and questionnaire dated June 22, 1965, regarding gaps between UNTS and national treaty records sent to treaty officers of the same countries as listed under Item (a) above.

  • d)

    d) Reply received from the following countries only: Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Israel, Portugal, United Kingdom.

  • e)

    e) Treaty officer visited personally in the following countries in the spring and summer of 1965: Belgium, Canada, France, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, U.S.A., and at International Law Commission in Geneva, Israel and U.S.S.R. Most of the treaty officers of these countries have agreed in principle to co-operate in investigating the extent of the gap between UNTS and their national treaty records.

  • f)

    f) Detailed, repeated exchange of information and close working relationship with treaty officer of only one country so far, i.e., Canada, April to June 1965; see also supra note 1.

22 See Table 1. The figures in the bottom line would suggest a much higher average. However, the world average shrinks as a result presumably of the small gap of the world’s top treaty maker, i.e., the U.S.A. See Table 7, Column 1, for a ranked listing of the world’s top twenty treaty makers.

23 See footnote on Table 1.

24 The usefulness was measured by the number of treaty partners which each of the five tentative test countries showed on the country profile printout, as follows: U.S.S.R. 50, Canada 49, Switzerland 41, China 38, Guatemala 15 and Venezuela 12.

25 The formula for all possible pairs in a given set of items is: X=(n2-n)/2. The number of treaty-making entities in the UNTS is 159 (122 states and 37 international organizations). The world total of possible treaty pairs is (1592-159)/2=12,561. Of course, many possible pairs of entities do not in fact have any mutual treaties at all and many other pairs have very low scores of from ι to 5 mutual treaties. For this immediate purpose, only the pairs with 35 or more mutual treaties are shown in Table 4 below.

26 See Table 4, All Pairs of Parties With at Least 25 Mutual Bilateral UNTS Treaties.

27 See Table 7, Line 13, Columns 7 to 11, showing the general trend of the Canadian treaty volume against which the gap is gaining slightly.

28 Lejnieks, Juris A., “The Nomenclature of Treaties: A Quantitative Analysis,” forthcoming in 2 Texas Int’l L. Forum (1966).Google Scholar

29 Brierly, in Yearbook , International Law Commission, Vol. 1950/II, at 225 and 229Google Scholar; Lauterpacht in id., Vol. 1953/II, 102; McNair, op. cit. supra note 15, at 12; Myers, Denis P., “The Name and Scope of Treaties,” 51 Am. J. Int’l L. 574–605 (1957);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Permanent Court of International Justice, Series A/B, No. 41, at 47 as cited in Yearbook, International Law Commission, Vol. 1962/II, at 33; Schneider, op. cit. supra note 15, at 41; Kelsen, Hans, Principles of International Law 318 (New York, Rinehart, 1952);Google Scholar McDougal, Myres et al., Studies in World Public Order 423–24 (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1960).Google Scholar

30 See Table 3 and also Lejnieks, supra note 28.

31 Lejnieks, supra note 28.

32 See Table 6. Registration percentages are as follows: United Kingdom 81%; Australia 58%; New Zealand 55%; South Africa 44%; Canada 40%.

33 See sources cited in supra note 21 (e).

34 The topical categories of Table 5 are taken from the Canadian Treaty Series and the Rohn Printouts, respectively. In matching them for comparative purposes, some minor adjustments of content and language have been unavoidable. The adjustments do not affect the magnitudes involved. For a ranked listing of the major categories and sub-categories of the Röhn Printouts, see Table 9. Code 4.1 concerns air transport.

35 See Table 6, Column a, and Table 7, Column 1.

36 Only bilateral treaties are used in arriving at the American preponderance but multilaterale would probably change the result only in a very small degree, and possibly even further upward. For further details, see Tables 4 and 6.

37 I am indebted to Ambassador Shabtai Rosenne of Israel, Member of the International Law Commission, for persuading me to extend my inquiry from the fact of registration to the act of registering. The material in Table 6 would not have been organized in this particular way without the imaginative train of thought he developed during a conversation in Geneva in July 1965. See also supra note 32.

38 Art. 3, para. 1, Regulations to Give Effect to Article 102 of the Charter of the United Nations: “Registration by a party…relieves all other parties of the obligation to register.”

39 United Nations, Repertory of Practice of United Nations Organizations, Vol. V, at 285, Art. 4, Sec. 1, Para, (c) and 299–301 (New York, 1955).

40 See Table 7, Line 3; Code MUL STA NO IGO is defined as “Signatories include more than two States but no international organization.” For the orthodox view that multilateralism grows, see Scelle, G. as paraphrased in Yearbook , International Law Commission, 1951, Vol. 1, at 20:Google Scholar “He was sure that the present trend would continue and that multilateral treaties would take the place of treaties of the classical type.” Also, see varyingly similar expressions of J. M. Yepes, id., 1950, Vol. I, at 70; Brierly, J. L., The Law of Nations 98 (6th ed., New York, Oxford University Press, 1963),Google Scholar referring to Manley O. Hudson’s earlier quantitative work; C. de Visscher, op. cit. supra note 8, at 171; Wilson, R.R., International Law and the United Nations, 25–26 (University of Michigan Law School, Ann Arbor, 1957).Google Scholar

41 What McDougal, Myres calls “trend-thinking” in Studies in World Public Order 54 (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1960).Google Scholar

42 See supra note 40.

43 For an awareness of the relevance of magnitude in this matter, see Rosenne, supra note 11.

44 Rohn, supra note 2 at 97.

45 122 states and 37 international organizations totaling 159 treaty-making entities.

46 Rohn, supra note 2 at 97.

47 One of my research assistants, Mr. Guy Poitras, combed through 6 volumes of the International Law Commission Yearbook for magnitude-oriented remarks on the law of treaties. His most inclusive count reached 656 items. Among the most relevant items are, e.g., Scelle, 1950, at 81, Sec. 72: “…treaties concluded by international organizations were still few in number, but this could and would increase.” Or, Tabibi, 1964, at 74, Sec. 9 : “…the trend towards more general participation in multilateral treaties was gaining momentum.…” The secondary literature abounds in comparable statements. E.g., McNair, op. cit. supra note 15, writes that “a glance at the index of the United Nations Treaty Series will show” certain agreements to be “now becoming very common” or, at 751, that certain treaties are “steadily increasing in number.” Further examples in Rohn, , “A Legal Theory of International Organization,” 5 Turkish Yb. Int’l Rel. (1964).Google Scholar

48 Larson, Arthur, Design for Research in International Law, Durham, Duke University School of Law, February 1961, Project 6, at 17–18;Google Scholar Gould, Wesley L., “Inventory and Retrieval of Literature as Aids to Interdisciplinary Approaches to International Law,” 59 Am. Soc. Int’l L., Proceedings, 98–104 (1965);Google Scholar Jackson, John H., “Retrieval of International Legal Materials,” 58 Am. J. Int’l L. 980–84 (1964);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Rohn, op. cit. supra note 2; University of California, Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, “Computers and the Policy-Making Community,” April 4–15, 1966, Conference Proceedings, forthcoming, for various speeches, papers and remarks by Davis B. Bobrow, Ithiel de Sola Pool, Karl W. Deutsch, Morton Gorden, Harold Guetzkow, Ole R. Holsti, Kenneth Janda, Harold D. Lasswell, Alan S. Manne, David L. Osborn, Peter H. Rohn, Rudolph J. Rummel, Judah L. Schwartz and others expressing themselves in this general sense.