4. The possibility of entering reservations may encourage States which consider
that they have difficulties in guaranteeing all the rights in the Covenant nonetheless to
accept the generality of obligations in that instrument. Reservations may serve a
useful function to enable States to adapt specific elements in their laws to the inherent
rights of each person as articulated in the Covenant. However, it is desirable in
principle that States accept the full range of obligations, because the human rights
norms are the legal expression of the essential rights that every person is entitled to as
a human being.
5. The Covenant neither prohibits reservations nor mentions any type of
permitted reservation. The same is true of the first Optional Protocol. The Second
Optional Protocol provides, in article 2, paragraph 1, that “No reservation is
admissible to the present Protocol, except for a reservation made at the time of
ratification or accession that provides for the application of the death penalty in time
of war pursuant to a conviction for a most serious crime of a military nature
committed during wartime.” Paragraphs 2 and 3 provide for certain procedural
obligations.
6. The absence of a prohibition on reservations does not mean that any
reservation is permitted. The matter of reservations under the Covenant and the first
Optional Protocol is governed by international law. Article 19 (3) of the Vienna
Convention on the Law of Treaties provides relevant guidance.2
It stipulates that
where a reservation is not prohibited by the treaty or falls within the specified
permitted categories, a State may make a reservation provided it is not incompatible
with the object and purpose of the treaty. Even though, unlike some other human
rights treaties, the Covenant does not incorporate a specific reference to the object and
purpose test, that test governs the matter of interpretation and acceptability of
reservations.
7. In an instrument which articulates very many civil and political rights, each of
the many articles, and indeed their interplay, secures the objectives of the Covenant.
The object and purpose of the Covenant is to create legally binding standards for
human rights by defining certain civil and political rights and placing them in a
framework of obligations which are legally binding for those States which ratify; and
to provide an efficacious supervisory machinery for the obligations undertaken.
8. Reservations that offend peremptory norms would not be compatible with the
object and purpose of the Covenant. Although treaties that are mere exchanges of
obligations between States allow them to reserve inter se application of rules of