International agreement | Definition, Types & Examples (2024)

international agreement, instrument by which states and other subjects of international law, such as certain international organizations, regulate matters of concern to them. The agreements assume a variety of form and style, but they are all governed by the law of treaties, which is part of customary international law.

A treaty, the typical instrument of international relations, is defined by the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties as an “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. Contractual treaties are treaties by which the parties agree to exchange pieces of territory or settle a dispute or claims—that is, by which they deal with a particular kind of business. Lawmaking treaties, which have grown tremendously in number and significance since World War II, are instruments in which the parties formulate principles or detailed rules for their future conduct.”

Some multilateral agreements set up an international organization for a specific purpose or a variety of purposes. They may therefore be referred to as constituent agreements. The United Nations Charter (1945) is both a multilateral treaty and the constituent instrument of the United Nations. An example of a regional agreement that operates as a constituent agreement is the charter of the Organization of American States (Charter of Bogotá), which established the organization in 1948. The constitution of an international organization may be part of a wider multilateral treaty. The Treaty of Versailles (1919), for example, contained in Part I the Covenant of the League of Nations and in Part XIII the constitution of the International Labour Organisation.

The term supranational is of recent origin and is used to describe the type of treaty structure developed originally by six western European states: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. The first treaty was that of Paris, signed in 1951, establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC); the second, the Rome treaty, signed in 1957, establishing the European Economic Community (EEC); the third, the Rome treaty of the same date establishing the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). A clause in the ECSC treaty provides for the complete independence of the members of the executive organ from the governments that appoint them.

Treaties, however, are not the only instruments by which international agreements are concluded. There are single instruments that lack the formality of a treaty called agreed minute, memorandum of agreement, or modus vivendi; there are formal single instruments called convention, agreement, protocol, declaration, charter, covenant, pact, statute, final act, general act, and concordat (the usual designation for accords with the Holy See); finally there are less formal agreements consisting of two or more instruments, such as “exchange of notes” or “exchange of letters.”

In the absence of an international legislature, the multilateral treaty is the chosen instrument for adapting international law to changing circ*mstances brought about by rapid technological developments and the ever-growing interdependence of nations.

Despite the extreme diversity of international agreements, it is possible to classify them according to the functions that they serve in international society. Three such broad functions may be discerned; namely, the development and codification of international law, the establishment of new levels of cooperation and integration between states, and the resolution of actual and potential international conflict.

The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties contains a compromissory clause (whereby participants agree to submit disputes to arbitration or the International Court of Justice) for certain types of disputes and a procedure of conciliation for others. The resistance of states to compulsory arbitration or adjudication is indicative of their limited commitment to universal integration through the rule of law. In this respect the European Economic Community is an exception, providing as it does for the compulsory settlement of disputes arising under the three constituent treaties by the Court of Justice, which is open even to individuals. It may be noted that western Europe was the cradle of nationalism and the doctrine of the sovereignty of states. Now it may have become the cradle of supranational integration.