The United States and Switzerland signed on to an international treaty Wednesday intended to clarify what country’s laws should govern in cross-border business deals with stocks, bonds or other securities. The two were the first to sign, but The European Commission advised EU members Wednesday to adopt the treaty, known as the Hague Securities Convention. In all, 64 nations helped draft the treaty and most have been working toward adopting it since 2002.
The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 are a series of international treaties and declarations negotiated at two international peace conferences at The Hague in the Netherlands. The First Hague Conference was held in 1899 and the Second Hague Conference in 1907. Along with the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions were among the first formal statements of the laws of war and war crimes in the body of secular international law. A third conference was planned for 1914 and later rescheduled for 1915, but it did not take place due to the start of World War I.
The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 were the first multilateral treaties that addressed the conduct of warfare and were largely based on the Lieber Code, which was signed and issued by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln to the Union Forces of the United States on 24 April 1863, during the American Civil War. The Lieber Code was the first official comprehensive codified law that set out regulations for behaviour in times of martial law; protection of civilians and civilian property and punishment of transgression; deserters, prisoners of war, hostages, and pillaging; partisans; spies; truces and prisoner exchange; parole of former rebel troops; the conditions of any armistice, and respect for human life; assassination and murder of soldiers or citizens in hostile territory; and the status of individuals engaged in a state of civil war against the government. As such, the codes were widely regarded as the best summary of the first customary laws and customs of war in the 19th century and were welcomed and adopted by military establishments of other nations. The 1874 Brussels Declaration (which was never adopted by all major nations) listed 56 articles that drew inspiration from the Lieber Code. Much of the regulations in the Hague Conventions were borrowed heavily from the Lieber Code.
Both conferences included negotiations concerning disarmament, the laws of war and war crimes. A major effort in both conferences was the creation of a binding international court for compulsory arbitration to settle international disputes, which was considered necessary to replace the institution of war. This effort, however, failed at both conferences; instead a voluntary forum for arbitration, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, was established. Most of the countries present, including the United States, Britain, Russia, France, China, and Persia, favored a process for binding international arbitration, but the provision was vetoed by a few countries, led by Germany.
Photo credit: Sander van der Wel via VisualHunt / CC BY-NC-SA
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