Sixth Committee: Legal; Consensus, not confrontation sought over controversial issues in international law

UN Chronicle, March-May, 2004 by Namrita Talwar, Fayth A. Ruffin

For the Sixth Committee, it's effectively taboo to bypass total agreement among its membership Traditionally, it strives to embrace the opinion of every member and include it within the final body of opinion. This Committee, like the Second (Economic and Financial), runs on consensus. It has to, if its resolutions on international legal issues are to have more universal validity.

Sixth Committee Chairman Lauro Liboon Baja Jr. of the Philippines told the UN Chronicle that the effectiveness of any international law depended in the end on "the political will of countries themselves and a regional institution to monitor the observance of international law".

In the debate this year, the proposed vote on human cloning (see box on page 31) attracted the world's attention, but the buzz of other international law also filled the air, especially with regard to the International Criminal Court, the impact of international sanctions, the role of model legislative provisions of the UN Commission on International Trade Law (see box on page 32) and the definition of terrorism in the draft comprehensive convention on terrorism.

The Sixth Committee approved only 15 resolutions in 2003, including one recommending that the vote on a ban on reproductive cloning be postponed for a year until the fifty-ninth session of the General Assembly.

There are two basic positions on cloning within the Committee: to ban research on cloning altogether or to allow selective research for allied medical benefit. In interviews with the Chronicle, diplomats said that postponement was preferred over confrontation. In 2001, Germany and France initiated the resolution on the International convention against the reproductive cloning of human beings. Christian Much of Germany said that his country supported the position to postpone, as it was the "least bad of all the bad options" the worst option, he added, would have been to force a vote this year He said that the postponement would see in 2004, "in the worst-case scenario, an exchange of opposing opinions and no flexibility from either side, in the best-case scenario, an open dialogue and consensus on the issue and move toward a draft convention" Chairman Baja felt there was little or no opportunity for the positions to be reconciled "There does not seem to be a clear-cut understanding among delegations of the wider implications of human cloning" The compromise to postpone, however, must be seen less as a lack of understanding than as earnest attempts at reconciling national positions, he said.

Brazil, for instance, supports a partial ban instead of a ban on all forms of cloning research. Its representative, Sydney Leon Romeiro, told the Chronicle that there was room to improve scientific research in his country, and a total ban would put an end to all inquiry Since postponement could open up a position between total ban and a step-by-step approach, Brazil had voted for postponement.

Another contentious issue was the draft comprehensive convention on international terrorism. Negotiations continued over defining the term "terrorism". Ambassador Baja said that "if one really would focus on the definition of terrorism, it would not really be impossible, but it would be very, very difficult and ardous labour".

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One delegate told the Chronicle in rather bleak terms: "I don't think there would be any future programme" on the terrorism convention Chairman Baja, however, had a different take on the issue. Three countries, he said, came together to do something about terrorism. The Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia did not define what terrorism is. "We just enumerated what would constitute terrorist acts, and with a chapeau that this is only for the purposes of that particular development. That could be another way out of the impasse", he explained. referring to the terrorism convention. Three more countries--Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia and Viet Nam--adhered to this trilateral arrangement on the establishment of communications procedures and exchange of information to combat terrorism. Even as efforts to define terrorism continued, the intent to fight it was apparent in the resolution on Measures to eliminate international terrorism. The Committee urged all States, as a matter of priority, to become party to current terrorism conventions and protocols while it continued to elaborate a draft comprehensive convention.

In the train of Committee resolutions that have had an impact on the evolution of international law, one concerned the International Criminal Court (ICC), which was created as a permanent court to investigate war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. In 1992, the General Assembly directed the International Law Commission to draft a proposal for an ICC, while the establishment by the Security Council of the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia in 1993 and for Rwanda in 1994 created public interest in the Court. The ICC became operational in 2002 and judges were appointed So far, 81 countries are parties to it.