E/1999/27 E/CN.6/1999/10 “This article intends to protect individuals who communicated with the Committee either under article 2 or under article 8, but a State party to this protocol that makes a declaration under article 10 shall not have any such obligation under article 11 with regard to individuals communicating with the Committee under article 8.” Jordan “Jordan wishes to express its continued and serious concern with article 17 relating to reservations. In this form adopted by the Working Group, article 17 precludes reservations to the optional protocol. Jordan believes that article 17 within the context and nature of the protocol not only has the potential to discourage ratification efforts of this protocol but also runs contrary to the well established practice of ‘permitting’ appropriate reservations in all non-restrictive multilateral treaties as coded in articles (19–23) of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Jordan, like many States, regards the Convention rules, in their entirety, as stating custom as underscored by the European Commission on Human Rights in the Temeltasch Case. “Article 19 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties articulates the general permissibility of a State to formulate a reservation notwithstanding the exceptional cases listed by the article 19 of the aforementioned convention, including article 19 (a), which precludes a State from formulating a reservation if the treaty prohibits the reservation which article 17 of this protocol seems to be based on. “In this regard, we do not hold the view that the integrity of the protocol would have been affected in the absence of a prohibition on reservations or that there is compelling necessity that the optional protocol prohibit reservations. The optional protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Protocol Instituting a Conciliation and Good Offices Commission to be responsible for seeking a settlement of any dispute which may arise between States Parties to the Convention Against Discrimination in Education, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination are only examples of this practice. Any exception should show compelling considerations of mutual interests being affected if reservations were permitted, as the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea and the recent ICC Rome Statute clearly demonstrated. We view non-restrictive multilateral treaties as being generally governed by this ‘permissive’ practice with no categorized exceptions, including universal human rights treaties and procedural instruments, to achieve those rights. “The integrity of any non-restrictive multilateral treaty or protocol would only be materially affected if a reservation of a substantial kind were to be formulated which renders it incompatible with the object and purpose of the treaty coded in article 19 (c) of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. “My delegation, ultimately views, and I quote from the commentary of the International Law Commission 1966, that ‘what is essential to ensure both the effectiveness and the integrity of the treaty is that a sufficient number of states should become parties to it, accepting the great bulk of its provisions’. We view that in the present era of diversity and change and of challenge of traditional concepts, the rule calculated to promote the widest possible acceptance of common agreement and expressed in a multilateral instrument may be the one better suited to the immediate needs of the international community which allows for ‘qualified permissibility’ and maintains progressive development towards the eventual elimination of compelling conditions that rendered reservations on the national level. In the spirit of constructive 68