ABSTRACT
One of the reasons for the International Law Commission considering the question of succession to treaties had been concerns arising from the process of decolonisation and this fact is stressed in the preamble to the 1978 Vienna Convention on the Succession of States to Treaties. The document recognises a particular category of state defined in Art 2(1)(f) as the ‘newly independent state’ As a general proposition, the clean slate principle27 is recognised in Art 16 which provides that the ‘newly independent State is not bound to maintain in force, or to become a party to, any treaty by reason only of the fact that at the date of the succession of states the treaty was in force in respect of the territory to which the succession of state relates’.
