roadmaps to reforming the un drug conventions - Beckley Foundation

made a reservation concerning criminalising possession or purchase for personalconsumption (§2), as well as on provisions urging that offences under the article beregarded as serious, and be treated with limits on discretion and with long statutes oflimitations (§§6,7,8). The Netherlands also reserved concerning §§6, 7 and 8, anddeclared a number of ‘understandings’ upon signing the treaty concerning Article 3 andthe definition of ‘illicit traffic’ in Article 1.Yemen’s reservation is open-ended, reserving its ‘right to enter reservations in respect tosuch articles as it may see fit at a time subsequent to this signature’.Seventeen parties, including European Union members, Mexico, Turkey and the UnitedStates, filed objections to the reservations to the 1988 treaty. The objections concernedmatters of extradition, confiscation, mutual assistance, and the law of the sea. Only theU.S. objection to Colombia’s reservations and declarations makes reference to areservation concerning Article 3. The objections do not block any of the reservations,since the 1988 treaty has no specific provision which allows that. However, several of theobjections considered the reservation in question ‘to be contrary to the object andpurpose of the Convention’ – as France stated, for instance, concerning Lebanon’sreservations concerning banking secrecy, and Vietnam’s concerning extradition.As noted, France’s language here points to possible challenges of future reservationsunder the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. But what is meant by the‘object and purpose’ of a treaty, as a leading treatise on international law notes drily, ‘isnot free from uncertainty’. 52 A footnote to this statement quotes two guidelines topractice, in draft then but now adopted by the International Law Commission, which donot do much to give a more specific meaning:3.1.5 Incompatibility of a reservation with the object and purpose of the treatyA reservation is incompatible with the object and purpose of the treaty if it affectsan essential element of the treaty that is necessary to its general tenor, in such away that the reservation impairs the raison d’être of the treaty.3.1.5.1 Determination of the object and purpose of the treatyThe object and purpose of the treaty is to be determined in good faith, takingaccount of the terms of the treaty in their context, in particular the title and thepreamble of the treaty. Recourse may also be had to the preparatory work of thetreaty and the circumstances of its conclusion and, where appropriate, thesubsequent practice of the parties. 5352Shaw, M.N. International Law, 6 th edition. 1 st South Asian edition, p. 921. Cambridge, etc.: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2010.53International Law Commission. Guide to Practice on Reservations to Treaties, 2011. New York: UnitedNations, 2011. http://untreaty.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/draft%20articles/1_8_2011.pdf(accessed 7 April, 2012).21