Responsibility Under International Law and the Challenges of Applying Reservations to International Human Rights Treaties

There is an important difference between the international responsibility of States in formulating a reservation incompatible with the object and purpose of a human rights treaty and other types of international responsibility. The difference is that such a violation makes the reserving state responsible not only to the objecting members, but also to the international community as a whole. The main question of this descriptive-analytical research is what distinguishes the international responsibility of states in formulating a reservation incompatible with the object and purpose of a treaty from the acceptance of such a reservation - especially in human rights treaties.

The result of the present research shows that the responsibility of states in formulating a reservation incompatible with the object and purpose of a human rights treaty can be seen through the flexible structure of Articles 19 and 20 of the International Convention on the Law of Treaties. While Article 19 prohibits states from formulating a reservation incompatible with the object and purpose of the treaty at the stage of signing, ratifying, accepting, approving or acceding to a treaty, Article 20 does not take this prohibition into account at the stage of acceptance of the reservation by other states.