Between treaty sig­na­ture and rat­i­fic­a­tion: France and the 1961 Con­ven­tion on the Re­duc­tion of State­less­ness

De­vel­op­ment sum­mary

Hélène Lam­bert and Jules Lepoutre in­vest­ig­ate the ob­lig­a­tions France bears after sign­ing, but not rat­i­fy­ing, the 1961 Con­ven­tion on the Re­duc­tion of State­less­ness. France is not a party to the Vienna Con­ven­tion on the Law of Treat­ies (VCLT), which also post-dates the 1961 Con­ven­tion and does not apply ret­ro­act­ively. The ques­tion is there­fore wheth­er cus­tom­ary law im­poses ob­lig­a­tions equi­val­ent to Art­icle 18(a) VCLT, which re­quires states to re­frain from acts de­feat­ing a treaty’s object and pur­pose before rat­i­fic­a­tion, along­side cus­tom­ary ob­lig­a­tions con­cern­ing state­less­ness.