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The South Pacific Forum (successor to the South Pacific Bureau for Economic Cooperation (SPEC)) is the major regional organisation in the South Pacific. It is an informal organisation concerned with a wide range of economic matters relating to cooperation within the South Pacific region, and equally with the region's external relations through meetings with 'dialogue partners': in particular, commodity marketing, industrial development, tourism, shipping, civil aviation, transfer of technology, oil prospecting and environmental protection. Membership is restricted to sixteen sovereign and self-governing states in the South Pacific (including Australia and New Zealand). It consists of an annual meeting of Heads of Governments at which political, as well as economic, matters are discussed and determined by consensus; the Forum Officials Committee consisting of one representative from each member state who implement overall policy, and the Secretariat which is based in Suva.
The South Pacific Commission (SPC) is concerned principally with rural development, youth and community development, ad hoc expert consultancies, cultural exchanges, training facilities and marine resource development and research. It consists of twenty-seven sovereign states and self-governing territories in the South Pacific including Australia and New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the Unites States of America. The Secretariat is in Noumeia, New Caledonia.
The South Pacific Organisations Coordinating Committee (SPOCC), as its name implies, seeks to enhance cooperation and avoid duplication of effort in the South Pacific region.
SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT
COMMUNITY
The SADC was established by Treaty in 1992 and developed as a post-apartheid regional organisation of countries with common values and objectives. Its major aim is to create a momentum towards economic integration and close cooperation in the fields of security conflict resolution, transport and the maintenance of democratic institutions.
Heads of State meet annually and Foreign Ministers twice yearly; and member countries are Angola, Botswana, Congo Democratic Republic Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania and Zambia. The Secretariat of SADC is in Gaborone.
The Visegrád Group is a regional organisation for the coordination of mutual interests: the members being the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. The major initiative is the Central European Free Trade Area, joined subsequently by Slovenia and Romania.
WEST AFRICAN INTER-GOVERNMENTAL
ECONOMIC GROUPINGS
There are over thirty inter-governmental economic groupings in West Africa. To a large extent they are the product of the historical differences within the region, and most have the same objectives of economic harmonisation and eventual integration. The most important are:
The Economic Community of West African States, created at Lagos on the 28 May 1975 to promote economic development in West Africa by establishing a common market (based on the progressive elimination of all discrimination between national boundaries) and harmonising a variety of economic policies including agricultural policies, industrial development plans and monetary policies, co-operation for the development of energy and mineral resources and for the joint development of infrastructure. In addition it agreed to add 'Political Cooperation' to its objectives in 1993, and has accepted responsibility for organising military peace-keeping forces in the area in terms of the 1981 Protocol of Mutual Assistance and Defence; the ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) being established for this purpose.
ECOWAS is the 'umbrella' organisation for the various economic integration groupings in West Africa consisting, as it does, of sixteen members: five are anglophone - The Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone; eight are francophone - Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo; two are Lusophone - Cape Verde and Guinea Bissau, and one arabic-speaking - Mauritania. ECOWAS operates on the basis of an annual Conference of Heads of State, meetings of the Council of Ministers at least once a year, a Tribunal which interprets the provisions of the Treaty and resolves disputes, a Fund for Cooperation and Development, the ECOBANK, six Specialised Commissions and an Executive Secretariat based in Abuja.
The Council of the Entente States is one of the oldest groupings, founded in 1959 by Benin, Burkina Faso, and Côte d'Ivoire and joined by Togo on 3 June 1966. It is an informal organisation for the coordination of economic policies among member states, and has a Mutual Aid and Guarantee Fund for economic cooperation.
The Mano River Union (MRU) was established by Liberia and Sierra Leone in October 1973, and joined by Guinea in October 1980. Its objectives are the establishment of a customs union and the expansion of trade by the elimination of all barriers to mutual trade, the creation of conditions favourable to an expansion of mutual productive capacity, cooperation in the creation of new productive capacity and the securing of a fair distribution of the benefits from economic cooperation.
The River Niger Commission or the River Niger Basin Authority (RNC) was established in October 1983 by Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Niger and Nigeria for promoting, encouraging and coordinating studies and programmes related to the development of the Niger Basin.
The Organisation for the Development of the Senegal River was established in 1972 in Nouakchott by Mali, Mauritania and Senegal, and is open to all states through which the river flows provided that they accept the spirit and letter of the Convention.
The Economic and Monetary Union of West Africa (UEMOA) through its central bank, the Banque Centrale des Etats de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (BCEAO), undertakes the linkage of member states’ currencies to the French franc. It consists of Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte D'Ivoire, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Togo, and the aim is regional economic cooperation for their development through free trade in products of local origin (such as livestock, agricultural products, fish and mineral products) that have not undergone industrial processing (i.e. raw materials); a special preferential import duty regime (the regional cooperation tax) for traded manufactured products that originate in member states; and the establishment of a common external tariff.
The Western European Union exemplifies the transitional stage in relation to defence and security that North America and Western, Central and Eastern Europe are going through following the ending of the Cold War. Originally and primarily a military alliance committing member states to come to the assistance of any other member which was the object of an armed attack in Europe 'with all the military and other aid and assistance in their power' (Article V of the 1954 modified Brussels Treaty), the WEU was subsequently defined in the Treaty of Maastricht as 'an integral part of the development of the European Union' (Article J4) and members agreed to 'intensify their coordination on Alliance issues which represent an important common interest with the aim of introducing joint positions agreed in WEU into the process of consultation in the NATO Alliance, which will remain the essential forum for consultation among its members and the venue for agreement on policies bearing on the security and defence commitments of allies under the North Atlantic Treaty' (Declaration B4). It defines its new role as 'an integral part of the process of European unification and the future defence arm of the European Union, alongside NATO and the OSCE' and as a means of strengthening the European pillar of the Atlantic Alliance. Additionally, in terms of the Petersberg Declaration the W.E.U. conducts European military operations in the humanitarian, peacekeeping and crisis management fields.
The institutions of WEU are the WEU Council of Ministers meeting at least twice yearly, the Permanent Council of representatives of member states meeting weekly, and the Parliamentary Assembly whose 115 members meet twice a year in Paris. WEU consists of ten members of the European Union: Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom. Austria, Denmark, Finland, Ireland and Sweden have Observer status; Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia are Associate Partners, and Iceland, Norway and Turkey are Associate Members, and the Secretariat is in Brussels.
The WTO, which is the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), was established on 1 January 1995, and is the legal and institutional basis of the multilateral trading system. It provides the principal contractual obligations determining how governments frame and implement domestic trade legislation and regulations, and it is the platform on which trade relations among countries evolve through collective debate, negotiation and adjudication. The essential functions of the WTO are: administering and implementing the multilateral and plurilateral trade agreements which together make up the WTO; acting as a forum for multilateral trade negotiations; seeking to resolve trade disputes; overseeing national trade policies, and cooperating with other international institutions involved in global economic policy-making.
In accordance with the 'most favoured nation' (MFN) clause, members are bound to grant to the products of other members no less favourable treatment than that accorded to the products of any other country. The commitment to 'national treatment' requires that once goods have entered a market, they must be treated no less favourably than the equivalent domestically produced good. Quotas are generally outlawed, but tariffs or customs duties are legal in the WTO. Tariff reductions made by over 120 countries in the GATT Uruguay Round are contained in national tariff schedules which are considered an integral part of the WTO. The Tariff reductions, for the most part phased in over five years, will result in a 40 per cent cut in industrial countries' tariffs on industrial products, from an average of 6.3 per cent to 3.8 per cent.
Members have also undertaken an initial set of commitments covering national regulations affecting various services activities. These commitments are, like those for tariffs, contained in binding national schedules. In addition, the WTO extends and clarifies previous GATT rules that laid down the basis on which governments could impose compensating duties on two forms of 'unfair' competition: dumping and subsidies. The WTO Agreement on agriculture is designed to provide increased fairness in farm trade; that on intellectual property will improve conditions of competition where ideas and inventions are involved, and another will do the same for trade in services. GATT provisions intended to favour developing countries are maintained in the WTO, in particular those encouraging industrialised countries to assist trade of developing nations. Developing countries are given transition periods to adjust to the more difficult WTO provisions. Least-developed countries are given even more flexibility, and benefit from accelerated implementation of market access concessions for their goods.
The highest WTO authority is the Ministerial Conference which meets every two years, whilst the day-to-day work falls to a number of subsidiary bodies, principally the General Council, which also convenes as the Dispute Settlement Body and as the Trade Policy Review Body. The General Council delegates responsibility to three other major bodies - namely the Councils for Trade in Goods, Trade in Services and Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. Four other bodies established by the Ministerial Conference report to the General Council: the Committee on Trade and Development, the Committee on Balance of Payments, the Committee on Trade and Environment, and the Committee on Budget, Finance and Administration. The plurilateral agreements of the WTO - those on civil aircraft, government procurement, dairy products and bovine meat - have their own management bodies which report to the General Council.
The WTO is headed by its Director-General and four Deputy Directors-General. The Secretariat is responsible for servicing WTO delegate bodies with respect to negotiations and the implementation of agreements. It has a particular responsibility to provide technical support to developing countries, and especially the least-developed countries. WTO economists and statisticians provide trade performance and trade policy analyses, while its legal staff assist in the resolution of trade disputes involving the interpretation of WTO rules and precedents. Other Secretariat work is concerned with accession negotiations for new members and providing advice to governments considering membership. The WTO budget is around US$83 million, with individual contributions calculated on the basis of shares in the total trade conducted by members. Part of the budget also goes to the International Trade Centre. The Secretariat is located in Geneva.
INTERNATIONAL LAW AND
PRACTICE
'A law dependent for its existence on the consent of its subjects, without legislature for its creation or alteration, lacking effective machinery of enforcement, difficult to ascertain and regularly disregarded is no law at all. Discuss.'*
International law is the outcome of man's endeavours to extend into the field of interstate relations the rule of law and the respect for order which exists within the state. The period since the end of the Cold War, however, has not been an encouraging one for its advocates. Whether in the field of recognition, extradition or the use of force, international law has been ignored, contravened or perhaps worse, abused in the political interest.
Basically - and traditionally - international law is defined as the body of rules governing the relations between states. However, since the rapid evolution of the concepts of social and interstate responsibilities resulting from postwar factors and events (e.g. the creation of new states and increased involvement of the individual) and reflected in the development of the United Nations, a wider definition of the term has become necessary. The following is J. G. Starke’s definition as contained in his Introduction to International Law.
International law may be defined as that body of law which is composed for its greater part of the principles and rules of conduct which states feel themselves bound to observe, and therefore, do commonly observe in their relations with each other, and which include also:
(a) the rules of law relating to the functioning of international institutions or organisations, their relations with each other and their relations with states and individuals; and
(b) certain rules of law relating to individuals and non-state entities so far as the rights or duties of such individuals and non-state entities are the concern of the international community.
Although international law is the subject of much debate and opposing viewpoints, there are certain areas of almost complete agreement (e.g. piracy on the high seas and the immunities of diplomats), just as at the other end of the spectrum there are areas of considerable disagreement. It cannot thus be claimed that it is a subject merely for academic lawyers; but on the other hand it could be argued that 'international law' was, in some respects, a contradiction in terms. It is something of a paradox, attracting both disciples and sceptics: those who, with missionary zeal, see it as the path to world peace and righteousness; and those who maintain that without legislature or international sanctions there can be no international law. Both views are to some extent valid, and its relevance in diplomatic relations lies in the fact that considerations of international law do in fact influence governments and provide standards of international behaviour which they acknowledge as being the ideal, even though they may not always manage to live up to them. But like all good causes, international law is liable to be the subject of evil designs, and politicians the world over are not slow to invoke and if necessary distort its principles when it suits their purposes, or to disclaim them if they should prove to be embarrassing. It is thus a subject that diplomats must be acquainted with, but handle with care. The sources of international law are, in brief: treaties, custom, general principles of law, judicial precedents and the writings of leading authorities.
The following topics have been selected as being of interest to diplomats and as a basis for further study; it is not pretended that issues of international law can be effectively reduced to simple generalisations and to imprecise non-legal terminology.
States enter into treaty relationships when they agree with each other or with a group of other states to undertake certain commitments. Treaties invariably take the form of documents, though a verbal undertaking could be claimed to have the same validity as a written one.
Treaties (to use the general term) may be made in different forms, such as between Heads of State; between states; between governments (to some extent in the order of their importance and formality, but often depending on whim or custom). Such treaties are equally binding on the states concerned even though they may be expressed as agreements between Heads of State or governments.
The instruments recording international agreements have various titles: agreement, arrangement, convention, declaration, exchange of notes, general act, modus vivendi, procés-verbale, protocol, or statute. All have equal validity but vary in form and wording; and as far as practice in the USA is concerned ratification by the Senate is required for treaties, but agreements can be concluded either following Congressional approval or upon constitutional authority. Generally speaking, bilateral instruments take the form of a treaty, agreement, exchange of notes or modus vivendi (in the order of their importance and formality); and multilateral instruments take the form of treaty or convention unless they are on a grand scale when such terms as general act or statute apply. A Final Act is a series of agreements or treaties resulting from a conference, each one of which requires specific approval.
A protocol of signature, which is rarely used, has a particular function in that it may be used as a sort of 'postscript' to a treaty. It is considered by the negotiators to be part of the treaty but is written and signed as a separate document. It is less formal than the treaty it accompanies and may record reservations by certain signatories, clarification of points in the treaty, or other subsidiary considerations. It may be used after a short period to record a further point of agreement.
A 'protocol', which is often used, is an international agreement that is usually supplementary to, or amends, a treaty. An exchange of letters may be attached to a treaty for roughly similar purposes, but these are a rather less formal record of intentions and are not necessarily signed by the negotiators. However, an exchange of notes (or letters) is more normally made independently of a treaty, as a less formal means of recording agreement between states.
(a) Accreditation and full powers
The process of treaty-making requires that the persons who conduct the negotiations on behalf of the states concerned should be able to prove that they are authorised to do so; that is to say that they should be able to establish their credentials. These usually take the form of a letter signed by or on behalf of the Minister for Foreign Affairs.
If a treaty or other international instrument is to be concluded and signed at bilateral negotiations or at a multilateral conference, representatives (unless, for example, they are heads of government or Ministers for Foreign Affairs) must be provided with full powers. (If the treaty is between Heads of State the full powers are signed by the Head of State; if between governments, by the Minister for Foreign Affairs.)
A typical example of full powers issued to a delegate to a plenipotentiary conference would be as follows:
Whereas, for the better treating of and arranging certain matters which may come into discussion between the Government of.…… and the Governments of certain other Powers and States repres
ented at the forthcoming Conference [name of Conference] to be held at.…….on.…… it is expedient that a fit person should be invested with Full Power to conduct the said discussion on the part of the Government of...….: I, [name in full] Minister for Foreign Affairs, do hereby certify that
[name in full, decorations and official designation of the leader of the delegation]
is by these Presents named, constituted and appointed as Plenipotentiary and Representative having Full Power and Authority to agree and conclude with such Plenipotentiaries and Representatives as may be vested with similar Power and Authority on the part of the Governments aforesaid any Treaty, Convention, Agreement, Protocol or other Instrument that may tend to the attainment of the above-mentioned end, and to sign for the Government of.…… everything so agreed upon and concluded. Further, I do hereby certify that whatever things shall be so transacted and concluded by the said Plenipotentiary and Representative shall, subject if necessary to Ratification by the Government of..... be agreed to, acknowledged and accepted by the said Government of.….. in the fullest manner.
In witness whereof I have signed these Presents and affixed hereto my Seal.
Signed and sealed at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (place).….. the... day of.…. One thousand Nine hundred and ninety... ..
Seal Signature of Minister
for Foreign Affairs
At conferences in which a large number of states are participating, it is customary for a Credentials or a Full Powers Committee to be established for the purpose of confirming the powers and authenticity of the delegates.
(b) Negotiation
The negotiation of a treaty is normally preceded by an understanding between the states concerned - sometimes a letter of intent - as to the general purpose and likely outcome of its proceedings. In the case of multilateral negotiations an agenda is usually agreed in advance. In the case of bilateral treaties it is usual for the governments to outline the pattern of negotiations and to subdivide them under specific heads of agreement. It may then be found advisable to refer certain heads to technical or specialist subcommittees so that their conclusions can be considered by the negotiators at a plenary session. The art of negotiation needs no elaboration: it is the skill and patience of the marketplace elevated to a higher plane. Negotiators, however, are usually limited in their conduct by written instructions from their government - their 'brief' - and by the availability of the telephone or fax, which enables them to refer back all major problems for decision.