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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 January 2025
Remarks delivered at the inaugural meeting of the International Law Society of The Australian National University, Canberra, July 23, 1969.
1 Article 13 of the Charter.
2 Article 27.
3 See the article by the Legal Counsel of the United Nations, Stavropoulos, C. A., “The Practice of Voluntary Abstentions by Permanent Members of the Security Council under Article 27, paragraph 3, of the Charter of the United Nations” (1967) 61 Am.J.Int.L. 737CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A different view is expressed by L. Gross, “Voting in the Security Council: Abstention in the Post-1965 Amendment Phase and its Impact on Article 25 of the Charter” (1968) 62 Am.J.Int.L. 315. South Africa has lent support to Portugal's viewpoint.
4 General Assembly Resolution 95 (1).
5 Resolution 2131 (XX). See, in this regard, Sir Kenneth Bailey's account of the subsequent citation of Resolution 2131 in the United Nations Special Committee on the Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States, in “Making International Law in the United Nations” (1967) 61 Proceedings of the American Society of International Law 233, 238. See also the statement made by the Representative of the United States in explanation of his favourable vote on the resolution, describing it “as a political Declaration with a vital political message, not as a declaration or elaboration of the law governing non-intervention”. (United Nations General Assembly,Twentieth Session, First Committee, Verbatim Record of the 143 Meeting, A/C. I/PV.1422, p. 12).
6 Resolution 1803 (XVII).
7 See Higgins, R., “The Development of International Law by the Political Organs of the United Nations” (1965) 59 Proceedings of the American Society of International Law 121–122Google Scholar. See also Schwebel, S. M., “The Story of the V.N.s Declarationon Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources” (1963) 49 A.B.A.J. 463Google Scholar.
8 See K. Bailey, op. cit., R. Higgins, op. cit. and R. Higgins' seminal book, The Development of International Law through the Political Organs of the United Nations (1963), especially 1-10.
9 Id.,2.
10 Mrs Higgins concludes, after an examination of United Nations practice as of 1962—a practice which has been reinforced since—that it “seems inescapable that self-determination has developed into an international legal right …” Id. 103. Asof 1962, that conclusion may have been open to question, since, as Mrs Higgins concedes, those Members which abstained on resolution 1514 (XV) did not favour it. (See the review by the writer of Mrs Higgins' book in (1966) Yale L.J. 677, 679.
See also Sir Kenneth Bailey's comments op. cit., 235-236. Sir Kenneth notes that the General Assembly's “Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples” (Resolution 1514 (XV) “was so extreme and tendentious in some of its propositions as almost to underline the absence of and obligatory character”. While this is right, the resolution subsequently has been repeatedly reaffirmed and relied upon in other General Assembly resolutions which have been supported even by leading States which abstained on the resolution when it was adopted in 1960 by a vote of 89 to none with 9 abstentions.)
11 It may be maintained that armed reprisals are barred by the provisions of the Charter, notably Article 2, paragraph 4.