Scenario question Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Scenario question - Essay Example The Vienna Convention defines a reservation as â€Å"a unilateral statement, however phrased or named, made by a State, when signing, ratifying, accepting, approving or acceding to a treaty, whereby it purports to exclude or to modify the legal effect of certain provisions of the treaty in application to that State.†3 At the outset the question that needs to be examined is whether the reservation appended by State A is valid. The Vienna Convention in dealing with reservations, points out that a State may formulate a reservation, unless such reservation â€Å"is prohibited by the treaty.†4 In the case dealing with reservations to the Genocide Convention5, the International Court of Justice attempted to achieve a balance between the sovereign right of a State to make a reservation versus the apparent rising tide of reservations that went against the spirit of the treaty and the right of parties not to be bound to a treaty if they didn’t wish to be. There is a simil ar conflict posed in this case. The purpose of the Treaty between States A to D, is cooperation on economic matters, but State A in reserving the option to suspend economic cooperation, which is against the very purpose of the Treaty and contravenes Article 19 cited above. The 2000 Treaty does not specifically prohibit reservations, but since the purpose of the treaty is economic cooperation, a reservation seeking to withdraw economic cooperation may be questionable, especially in the context of the ICJ decision stated above which prevents States from making such incompatible reservations. The frequency of reservations has increased in the twentieth century and some examples of Conventions that prohibit reservations in treaties are the 1952 Universal Copyright Convention and the 1964 Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules Relating to the International Carriage by Air.6 In this instance, since State A has specified that the withdrawal of economic cooperation will occur only in