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parties, also are respected, as to the object and purpose, by other parties.
Furthermore, it is essential that these states are prepared to undertake the
legislative changes necessary to comply with such a treaty.
166
If correctly understood by the present writer, the new approach by the Nordic
countries is not a suggested solution, but a method to give more energy to the
debate about the Vienna reservation regime. It may be acceptable that a reserving
state benefits from its reservations with regards to multilateral treaties based on
reciprocity, but such desirability is decidedly less obvious when it concerns human
rights treaties or other normative treaties. How to prevent the reserving state in
such a situation from benefiting from its reservation is a yet unanswered question,
if one wants to avoid breaches of the international law as it reads today. It is not
acceptable to unilaterally invent new solutions to be applicable in international law,
i.e. applicable to the Vienna regime on reservations, and it is surprising that other
states, as well as other scholars, have not reacted more strongly. On the other
hand, this might be a hasty statement, considering that the Nordic states initiated
this new approach as late as 1997. In an international law perspective, this is a
relatively short period of time, and more reactions are perhaps to be expected in
the future.
5.7 Examples of Treaties “Suffering” with
Numerous Reservations
In the following, a brief presentation is made of the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights, ICCPR, and of the Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination Against Women, CEDAW. Both of these treaties have
numerous reservations lodged to them, and in the present presentation, one
particular reservation to each treaty has been chosen to demonstrate the
phenomenon of reservations. The choices are made since the two examples very
165
Magnusson, L., 
Elements of Nordic Practice, 1997: Sweden
, NJIL, Vol. 67, No. 3, 1998, p.
350.
166
Magnusson, L., 
Elements of Nordic Practice, 1996
: Sweden, NJIL, Vol. 66, No. 2-3, 1997,
p. 359.

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clearly show what sorts of reservations are being lodged by the states willing to
become state parties.
5.7.1 Reservations to ICCPR and the Example of
the US’s Reservations
As of 1 November 1994, there were a total of 150 reservations made by 46 out
of the Covenant’s 127 state parties, which means that 36 % of the state parties to
the Covenant had made some sort of reservation.
167
Both the Covenant and the
First Optional Protocol are silent in respect of reservations, and therefore give no
guidance on the making of and relating to the numerous reservations to the treaty.
This is notwithstanding the General Assembly’s “express demand in 1952 that
concrete provisions on the permissibility and legal effect of reservations be
adopted in the two Covenants, as well as various [UK] initiatives in this
direction”.
168
Imbert attributes this reticence in part to the desire of the majority to
ensure that the general rules of treaty law, as reflected in the then recently
adopted ILC’s Draft Articles on the Law of Treaties (which were adopted in
1966), would apply to the Covenant.
169
As a consequence of the lack of any
guidance in the Covenant, the “compatibility with the object and purpose” test of
the validity of reservations applies as a matter of general international law, as it is
stipulated in article 19(c) VCLT and enunciated earlier by the ICJ in the
Genocide Convention Case of 1951, regarding reservations.
The Human Rights Committee considers that 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 that ratify; and to provide an efficacious
supervisory machinery for the obligations undertaken”.
170
The reservations that have been made to the Covenant vary significantly. The
Committee has in the G.C. No.24(52) divided the reservations into three
categories, all likely to impair an effective implementation of the Covenant. These
are:
1)
reservations excluding the duty to provide and guarantee