ABSTRACT
Questions concerning the implementation of international agreements have traditionally been kept separate from the study of compliance problems. Implementation refers to the activities of the members of an international organization (IO) or regime, and the measures by which international agreements are brought into effect in their domestic law. Compliance, meanwhile, refers to the issue of whether countries – by means of these implementation activities – do actually adhere to international agreements (cf. Jacobson and Brown Weiss 1998: 4-5). However, how do individual states know whether they are in compliance or not when implementing an agreement? And how do other members determine whether an individual country is implementing properly? The single most important mechanism which provides information on such questions is that of state reporting. While implementation itself remains the responsibility of individual members, state reporting procedures provide a crucial feedback loop between domestic implementation and rules at the global level. They are therefore a prerequisite for any attempt at improving implementation records.
