Facts:

In a situation wherein a State ratifies the Convention on the Prevention and

Punishment of the Crime of Genocide subject to a reservation made either on
ratification or on accession, or on signature followed by ratification, the U.N.
General Assembly requested the ICJ to answer whether the reserving State may be
regarded as being a party to the Convention while still maintaining its reservation,
if the reservation is objected to by one or more of the parties to the Convention but
not by others. If the answer is in the affirmative, the General Assembly asked the
question of what is the effect of the reservation as between the reserving State and
both the parties which object to the reservation and the parties which accept it.

Held:

The Court considered that a State could not be bound by a reservation to which it
had not consented. Every State was therefore free to decide for itself whether the
State which formulated the reservation was or was not a party to the convention.
The situation presented real disadvantages, but they could only be remedied by the
insertion in the convention of an article on the use of reservations.

As to the question regarding the effects of the reservation to the reserving state, the
Court was of the opinion that it would be inconceivable that a State which had not
signed the convention should be able to exclude another State from it. With regard
to the state that objected, the objection was valid, but it would not produce an
immediate legal effect ; it would merely express and proclaim the attitude which a
signatory State would assume when it had become a party to the convention.