Jason Pobjoy explains in The Child in International Refugee Law (CUP 2017) how the rule set out in Article 31 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT), the ‘general rule of interpretation’, in his words, ‘comprises a single holistic “rule” of interpretation’, and that the adoption, by the International Law Commission (ILC),
‘of a “single, closely integrated rule”’ underscores the need to look beyond a literal construction of the text and to consider the terms of the treaty in light of their object and purposes, in their context and taking into account subsequent extrinsic sources (p 34).
He goes on to explain that this ‘rejection of strict literalism has found favour in domestic refugee jurisprudence’ and then sets out how Articles 31–33 mandate a ‘systemic approach’ to the interpretation and application of the Refugee Convention, with the Convention on the Rights of the Child naturally playing a particularly important role (p 34–43). It is extremely well done.
This approach, clearly and convincingly set out in Chapter 1 of the book, is undoubtedly correct. It is of a feather with the dictum of the International Court of Justice in Interpretation of the Agreement of 25 March 1951 between the WHO and Egypt, according to which a treaty ‘does not operate in a vacuum’ but rather ‘in the context of a wider framework of legal rules of which it forms only a part’ (ICJ Rep 1980, p 73, 76, para 10). Against this background, the book in Chapter 6 develops the argument that the Convention on the Rights of the Child is a complementary source of protection for children, going into some detail on state practice to make out the argument.
Continue here: https://www.ejiltalk.org/treaty-interpretation-and-the-child-in-international-refugee-law/
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