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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2010
The oldest of the international conventions concerning the prohibition of the employment of certain weapons, that is to say deriving from that part of the law of war, sometimes known as the “law of The Hague”, to distinguish it from the “law of Geneva”, will be a hundred years old this month: the Declaration of St. Petersburg of November 29—December 11, 1868.
page 612 note 1 The States bound by the Declaration are not very numerous: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Iran, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, U.S.S.R., Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey. The Declaration is affected by the famous general participation clause, by virtue of which the engagement would cease to be compulsory “from the moment when, in a war between Contracting or Acceding Parties, a non-Contracting Party or a non-Acceding Party shall join one of the belligerents”. It is certain that the Declaration's enacting terms have not become a rule of international customary law which is generally obligatory. In spite of this, it cannot be excluded that the general participation clause should be considered to have been rescinded as a result of custom.
Centenary of the Declaration of St. Petersburg
page 616 note 1 The original official text existing only in French, we have translated it into English (Ed.).
