International Law (Public)

Article 2(1)(a) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties 1969 defines "treaty" as:

"an international agreement concluded between States in written form and governed by international law, whether embodied in a single instrument or in two or more related instruments and whatever its particular designation."

Treaties are the most crucial source of the international law. Fundamentally, treaties can be divided into three categories: 1. Bilateral (between only two States), 2. Multilateral (between three or more States), and 3. Plurilateral (between a limited number of States with a particular subject matter).

Treaties have a veriety of different names such as a protocol, international agreement, covenant, convention, procès-verbal, accord, exchange of notes, exchange of letters, pact, joint communiqué, final act, charter, statute, constitution for international organizations, and more.  

The Treaty Section of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade maintains Canada Treaty Information, an internet database of all treaties that apply to Canada. Texts of bilateral treaties will be available as soon as possible after their entry into force and multilateral treaties if possible when the certified copy is received from the depositary of the treaty.

The World Treaty Library brings together works identified from Oceana’s Consolidated Treaty Series, Hein’s U.S. Treaty Index, Rohn’s World Treaty Index, Dumont, Wiktor, Martens, the League of Nations, and the United Nations Treaty Series, covering the time period from 1648 to the present. All together more than 160,000 treaty records have been identified. Also included are hundreds of treaty related publications, a bibliography of select titles of importance to world treaty research, and hundreds of the best, and most-cited law review articles related to treaty research.

Full text of all bilateral and multilateral treaties and international agreements. Also details the status of treaties, including signatories, ratifications, and lodged declarations, reservations or objections, etc.