A secret treaty is an international treaty by which States parties have agreed to conceal the existence or substance of the Treaty from other states and the public. [1] Such an obligation to secrecy of the agreement may be included in the legal act itself or in a separate agreement. [1] According to the commentary of Dr. Schmalenbach on the Vienna Convention on Treaty Law, “the fact that secret treaties do not play an essential role today is less the result of [Article 102 of the United Nations Charter] than a general change in the behaviour of international relations.” [33] The Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) is becoming a theme for many people in Europe. For nearly two years in Geneva, secretly negotiated by more than 50 countries, including the European Union, Japan, Canada, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Australia and South Korea, it took months of work for global researchers and a spectacular leak of Julian Assange`s Wikileaks to reveal anything about its contents. There are powerful reasons why secret contracts are rare today. The first and most fundamental is the rise of democratic states, with principles of public responsibility and certain powers of legislative control. Secret treaties are difficult to reconcile with these democratic procedures. The second reason is that, since the entry of the United States into World War I, the United States has rejected the principle of secret agreements and has anchored its position in the peace colonies of the two world wars. The decline of centralized foreign policy institutions, which have worked closely with a handful of political leaders, severely limits the use of secret treaties. Foreign ministries no longer have the same powers to force states to form alliances, to move that alliance, to divide the conquered territory and to conceal such critical obligations from public opinion.
The discretionary powers of a Bismark or a Metternich have no equivalent in modern Western countries. [15] Wilson repeated his fourteen points at the Versailles Peace Conference, where he pledged to “open alliances … and the elimination of “private international agreements of any kind, so that diplomacy is always open and public.” [18] The Wilsonian position has been codified in Article 18 of the League of Nations, which stipulates that all states of the League of Nations register any international treaty or agreement with the League secretariat and that no treaty is binding unless it is registered. [18] [12] [20] This led to an increase in the contract registration system “although not all contracts that would have been submitted for registration were properly registered.” [12] According to a compilation of secret contracts published in 2004, 110 independent countries and political entities have negotiated secret contracts since 1521. [2] Secret treaties were of great importance in the power balance diplomacy of the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe, but they are rare today. [3] Analysis of the financial services text leaked by Wikileaks (wikileaks.org/tisa-financial/) shows that the following organizations also support TISA: US Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, US Chamber of Commerce, American Insurance Association, VISA, Bloomberg Financial Information Services.
