Somalia Ratifies Convention on the Rights of the Child

A standard trope when teaching multilateral human rights treaties has been to point to the Convention on the Rights of the Child as having achieved near-universal ratification, with only the United States and Somalia not having ratified it (at least among those entities generally recognized to be states under international law). Well, that trope now has to come to an end – on 1 October Somalia officially deposited its instrument of ratification with the UN Secretary-General, having completed domestic ratification processes earlier in the year. That leaves the US as the only state in the world not to have joined this treaty, a somewhat more unenviable position than before, one could say.

Unfortunately, upon ratification Somalia also made the following reservation: “The Federal Republic of Somalia does not consider itself bound by Articles 14, 20, 21 of the above stated Convention and any other provisions of the Convention contrary to the General Principles of Islamic Sharia.” The three enumerated articles deal with the freedom of thought, conscience and religion, and the protection of children deprived of their family environment, but the reservation extends to the Convention as a whole. Human rights bodies generally regard Sharia reservations to be incompatible with the object and purpose of human rights treaties (as do a number of other states parties), while in its work on reservations to treaties the International Law Commission objected to such reservations on the grounds of their impermissible generality and vagueness (see guideline 3.1.5.2 and commentary; see more the EJIL symposium on the ILC’s guide to practice on reservations).

In any event, the CRC is now just one step removed from becoming the only treaty to achieve universal ratification in modern times, other than the 1949 Geneva Conventions – but bearing in mind the internal politics in the US Senate and the 2/3 majority required there, that last ratification probably won’t come anytime soon.