roadmaps to reforming the un drug conventions - Beckley Foundation

objections can be lodged and can lead to rejection of the reservation. In contrast, areservation to the 1988 treaty could not be rejected because of objections by Parties.A country, acting either alone or in parallel with other parties, could thus implement aversion of the suggestions in the next chapter in conformity with international law bydenouncing the treaties and reacceding with reservations along the lines we havesuggested. Reservations filed on reaccession to the 1988 treaty would have to beaccepted, despite any objections which might be filed. 57 Reservations to the 1961 (asamended) and 1971 treaties could be rejected by objections from a blocking one-third ofParties.Helfer notes that objections to reservations are actually relatively rare in internationallaw. 58 But given the active opposition with which the U.S. and other Parties haveresponded to the Bolivian attempt to amend the 1961 Convention (see section 2.1 above),a country taking this path would have to be prepared for the possible rejection of itsreservations to the 1961 and 1971 treaties.What happens if the number of objections were to be sufficient to block a reservation isin dispute. Goodman lays out three alternative dispositions which have been argued for:(1) the reserving state may then be bound except for the positions which it reservedagainst (in which case the objections would have had no practical effect); (2) the statemay just not be a party to the treaty; or (3) the state may be considered a party withoutbeing able to apply the reservation. 59 Since accessions to treaties commonly take effectafter 30 days, while objections to reservations may commonly be made for up to 12months, 60 the situation might well become not only ambiguous but also quite confused.To avoid such ambiguity, Bolivia made its reaccession contingent on acceptance of itsreservation. So if the reservation is not accepted, Bolivia remains outside the 1961 treaty.Such a result would be contrary to a main goal of the international drug control system,the one goal on which it can be seen by all unambiguously to have succeeded. Thesystem has prided itself on attaining near-universality in accession to the treaties; theINCB annual reports each include a section on the current status in this regard. Thoughthose staffing and committed to the system in its present form might be extremely57The one path which could in theory disallow a reservation would be a lawsuit asking theInternational Court of Justice to rule the reservation “contrary to the object and purpose of theConvention”. This could not be filed by any of the many parties, including the U.S. for the 1988Convention (see Table 3), which filed a reservation rejecting the jurisdiction of the ICJ over theparticular treaty.58Helfer, 2006.59Goodman, R. ‘Human rights treaties, invalid reservations, and state consent’. American Journal ofInternational Law 96:531−60, 2002.60Pellet, A. Fourteenth report on reservations to treaties. International Law Commission, 61st session.New York: United Nations, General Assembly, 2009, pp. 25−28, document A/CN/4/614/Add.2http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N09/450/18/PDF/N0945018.pdf?OpenElement(accessed 7 April, 2012).23