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72 Am. J. Int'l L. 542 (1978)
Applicability of Multilateral Conventions to Occupied Territories

handle is hein.journals/ajil72 and id is 548 raw text is: APPLICABILITY OF MULTILATERAL CONVENTIONS TO OCCUPIED TERRITORIES By Theodor Meron * I. INTRODUCrION The failure at the 63rd International Labor Conference (Geneva, 1977) to adopt the Report of the Committee on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations was regarded by many delegates as yet another example of denial of due process by that organization and may have in- fluenced the United States in its decision to withdraw from ILO.1 The decision of the Conference, although primarily political, had certain legal implications in so far as it suggested that an occupying power, such as Israel, may not apply international labor conventions to which it is a party to territories that it occupies. This was not the first time that such a question had been presented in an international organization. In 1974 and in 1975 the International Civil Aviation Organization had decided that Jordan and not Israel controlled the application of the Chicago Convention 2 to the airport of Jerusalem. The object of this article is to consider whether an occupying power has the right or the duty under international law to apply multilateral treaties to which it is a party in the territories which it occupies, focusing on the case of the territory west of the Jordan River, which prior to the Six Days' War was under the jurisdiction of Jordan and which is commonly known as the West Bank or under its biblical names of Judea and Samaria (hereinafter the territory). For the purposes of this article, it will be assumed that that territory has the status of an area under belligerent occupation, a proposition which is strongly contested by the Government of Israel. It is only on such an assumption that a legal analysis of the questions raised can be carried out. This study will deal with the relevant ILO conventions, the Chicago Convention, the law of belligerent occupation, and the interaction between these bodies of law. We shall not consider, except in passing, conventions expressly designed to apply, in whole or in part, to occupied territories, such as the Hague Convention No. IV of 1907 respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, particularly Articles 42-56 of the Regulations * Professor of Law, New York University. This article was written in 1977, when the author was Visiting Professor of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. ' See in general, Gupte, U.S. Quits I.L.O. and Touches Off a Furor in U.N., N.Y. Times, Nov. 2, 1977, §A at 13, col. 1; Raskin, Struggle over I.L.O. Pullout, N.Y. Times, Nov. 3, 1977, §A at 10, col. 1. See also press briefing by the Secretary of Labor, F. Ray Marshall, Nov. 1, 1977. 72 AJIL 375 (1978), 16 ILM 1561 (1977). 2 Convention on International Civil Aviation, done Dec. 7, 1944, 61 Stat. 1180, TIAS No. 1591, 15 UNTS 295.

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