International Law & Treaties — Glossary

An advisory opinion is a non-binding legal pronouncement by a court or tribunal on a question of law referred to it, rather than in a contentious dispute between parties.

Afghanistan is a landlocked South-Central Asian state, currently governed de facto by the Taliban (Islamic Emirate) since August 2021, lacking universal international recognition.

The Alabama Claims arbitration was the 1871–1872 international tribunal that settled United States damage claims against Britain for Confederate warships built in British shipyards during the American Civil War.

Annex I is the schedule of the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change listing the industrialised and economy-in-transition countries that accept binding emission-control commitments.

Annex II of UNCLOS establishes the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, the technical body that reviews coastal States' claims to an extended continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles.

The Appellate Body is the standing seven-member tribunal of the World Trade Organization that hears appeals on points of law from panel rulings in trade disputes.

Application to current crises refers to the practice of analysing contemporary armed conflicts and humanitarian emergencies through established international-law rules to assess legality, attribute responsibility, and prescribe remedies.

Archipelagic sea lanes passage is the right of continuous, expeditious, and unobstructed transit by ships and aircraft of all states through sea lanes designated by an archipelagic state across its archipelagic waters.

The Area is the seabed, ocean floor, and subsoil beyond the limits of national jurisdiction, declared the common heritage of mankind under Part XI of UNCLOS.

ARSIWA Article 2 establishes that an internationally wrongful act of a State exists when conduct, attributable to the State and breaching an international obligation, occurs.

Articles 1 and 17 are clauses of the United Nations Charter (1945) establishing the Organization's purposes and the financial obligations of member states, respectively.

Articles 14 and 15 of the Indian Constitution guarantee equality before the law and prohibit discrimination by the State on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth.

Articles 20–27 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969) govern reservations to treaties, including their acceptance, objection, legal effects, and withdrawal.

Articles 34–37 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969) govern treaties and third States, establishing that a treaty creates neither obligations nor rights for a third State without its consent.

Articles 40 and 41 of the UN Charter empower the Security Council to order provisional measures and non-military sanctions to maintain or restore international peace.

In international law, conduct is "attributable" to a State when it is legally connected to that State so as to engage the State's international responsibility for an internationally wrongful act.

Barcelona Traction (1970) is the International Court of Justice judgment that established the concept of obligations erga omnes and confirmed that a corporation's national State, not its shareholders' States, holds the right of diplomatic protection.

A baseline is the legally defined line along a coastal State's shore from which the breadth of its maritime zones is measured under the law of the sea.

A bifurcated test is a two-stage legal standard that decides a question by analysing two separate prongs in sequence, each of which must be satisfied.

CEDAW is the 1979 UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, a legally binding treaty defining and prohibiting sex-based discrimination.

Cessation is the obligation of a State responsible for an internationally wrongful act to stop that conduct if it is continuing, distinct from and prior to reparation.

Charter-based bodies are UN human rights organs established directly by the United Nations Charter or by resolutions of its principal organs, deriving authority from membership rather than treaty ratification.

The common heritage of mankind is a principle of international law designating certain territories and resources beyond national jurisdiction as belonging to all humanity and managed for the benefit of present and future generations.

Conciliation is a voluntary dispute-settlement method in which a neutral third party investigates the dispute and proposes non-binding terms of settlement for the parties to accept or reject.

Consent is the voluntary expression of a State's or person's agreement to be bound by an obligation, the absence of which generally vitiates legal validity.

The constitutive theory holds that a state becomes a subject of international law only when it is recognised as such by existing states.

COP27 was the 27th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, held at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in November 2022.

COP28 was the 28th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC, held in Dubai, UAE, in 2023, which delivered the first Global Stocktake and a pledge to transition away from fossil fuels.

Current-affairs linkage is the examination technique of connecting a static syllabus concept to a dated, real-world development to demonstrate applied understanding.

The declaratory theory holds that statehood and recognition exist independently, so a new state acquires legal personality once it satisfies factual criteria, regardless of recognition by others.

Distinction is the cardinal principle of international humanitarian law requiring parties to an armed conflict to differentiate at all times between combatants and civilians, and between military objectives and civilian objects.

DSU Article 25 is the provision of the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding that authorises expeditious arbitration as an alternative means of resolving disputes by mutual agreement of the parties.

Erga omnes obligations are duties owed by every state to the international community as a whole, in whose protection all states have a legal interest.

Factual recall is the cognitive ability to retrieve specific, discrete pieces of stored information—names, dates, articles, definitions—accurately and rapidly from memory under examination conditions.

GATT Article I enshrines the most-favoured-nation principle, requiring every WTO member to extend any trade advantage granted to one member unconditionally to all other members.

GATT Article III is the national treatment obligation requiring that imported goods, once across the border, be treated no less favourably than like domestic products in internal taxation and regulation.

GATT Article XXIV is the provision permitting WTO members to form customs unions and free-trade areas as exceptions to the most-favoured-nation obligation.

A government is the institutional machinery through which a state formulates, enforces, and adjudicates its laws and exercises sovereign authority over a defined territory and population.

The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is a 1966 UN treaty obligating states to progressively realise economic, social and cultural rights.

Negative consensus is a decision rule under which a proposal is adopted automatically unless every member, including its proponent, agrees by consensus to reject it.

Non-intervention is the customary international-law principle barring a state from coercive interference in matters within the domestic jurisdiction of another sovereign state.

The People's Republic of China is the socialist state founded by the Chinese Communist Party on 1 October 1949, governing mainland China under single-party rule.

The polluter pays principle holds that the entity responsible for producing pollution must bear the cost of preventing, controlling, and remediating the resulting environmental damage.

The precautionary principle holds that where an activity threatens serious or irreversible environmental harm, lack of full scientific certainty must not be used to postpone preventive measures.

Sustainable development is development that meets present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, balancing economic growth, social equity and environmental protection.

VCLT Article 53 declares void any treaty that, at the time of its conclusion, conflicts with a peremptory norm of general international law (jus cogens).