International law discussion 2 - Essay Example

The Charter of the OAS The Charter of the OAS, which created the Organization of American s, came into effect on December 13, 1951. There are currently thirty-five nation signatories of the treaty. (The U.S. signed it in 1948.) Venezuelan president and revolutionary Simon Bolivar was the first to come up with the idea of more closely unifying the nations in North and South America in 1826. Bolivar’s goal was to unify Latin American nations against imperialism. Due to a variety of political and historic reasons, however, it never occurred.

The second attempt at unity amongst the Americas occurred in 1889 and 1890, at the First International Conference of American States, held in Washington, D.C. The OAS can directly trace its roots to these meetings. World War II convinced the leaders of the American nations that they needed to come together to guard against outside aggression and to contain conflicts within the hemisphere. In 1948, meetings were held in Bogota. Not only did the attendees sign the Charter of the OAS, it resulted in their pledge to fight communism in the Americas and in the adoption of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, the world’s first human rights agreement.

Like many international treaties, the Charter of the OAS was developed as a response to outside forces—first, to fight imperialism and secondly, to guard against outside aggression, most significantly, communism. With the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s, as well as the return to democracy in Latin America and the increase of globalization in the 1990s, the way in which the OAS has enforced its Charter has changed. There has been some criticism of the OAS and the Charter as being an arm of the United States, especially after the OAS expelled Cuba in 1962 and Honduras in 2009.

One thing that has remained, however, is that in the case of the Charter of the OAS, it was created in response to outside forces and threats. 2. State Responsibility “State responsibility” is a basic principle of international law, and forms part of international customary law. It is binding on all states, and provides that any state that violates its international obligations must be held responsible for its acts. If these states do not respect their international duties, they are responsible to immediately stop their illegal actions and make reparations to everyone their actions injured.

The rules on state responsibility do not specifically describe the content of a state’s international law. For example, it does not state if torture is illegal, or if it is obligated to ensure free elections. Instead, the content of its obligations is described in individual treaties and in international customary law. Slavery, for example, is expressly forbidden in most international customary law. All the rules on state responsibility identify is when a state can be held responsible for violating their obligations, and spell out the consequences if it fails to fulfill them According to humanitarian legal organization Diakonia, “A state violates international law when it commits an ‘internationally wrongful act’, which breaches an international obligation that the state was bound by at the time when the act took place” (Gall, 2008, n.p.).

All states are obligated to follow the international treaties it has signed. If a state fails to do this, it is responsible to make full reparations to all injured parties, including material and moral damages. It is also responsible to cease the unlawful conduct immediately, and offer guarantees that it will not repeat the illegal actions in the future. Works Cited Gall, L. (2008). What are the responsibilities of a state under international law? Retrieved from http://www.diakonia.se/sa/node.asp?node=1857.

Secretariat for Legal Affairs, OAS. Charter of the Organization of American States. Retrieved from http://www.oas.org/dil/treaties_A-41_Charter_of_the_Organization_of_American_States.htm.