Unanimity

In the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, conference decisions, on issues of substance, were taken by unanimity. Scelle writes that the ‘establishment of the theoretical principle of the “sovereign equality” of States led to the proclamation of the sacrosanct rule of unanimity’. The only formal exceptions to this were the technical unions such as the International Telegraph Union which, in the middle of the nineteenth century, introduced majority voting.

Sohn points out that the 1899 First Hague Conference used a procedure of ‘unanimity less two votes’ and that the 1907 Hague Conference ‘seems to have invented the principle of near unanimity or quasi-unanimity’. The latter conference, however, adopted its final decisions unanimously ‘with various delegations recording their reservations or abstaining’, so that ostensibly the unanimity principle was not breached. Hill, writing in 1928, stated that: ‘The conventions of nearly every nineteenth-century conference that has included representatives from a considerable number of states have been dependent upon the signature of all diplomats present.’ After listing some exceptions, Hill continues by stating that, apart from procedural issues, ‘International gatherings since the World War have tended in the main to do homage to the earlier practice.’ Riches, writing in 1940, stated that ‘those responsible for the determination of state policy have been singularly unwilling to commit the state to acceptance of a rule of law whereby the state is bound to accept the will of the majority’.