General Information

After a treaty has been concluded, the written instruments, which provide formal evidence of consent to be bound, and also reservations and declarations, are placed in the custody of a depositary. Unless the treaty provides otherwise, the deposit of the instruments of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession establishes the consent of a state to be bound by the treaty. For treaties with a small number of parties, the depositary will usually be the government of the state on whose territory the treaty was signed. Sometimes various states are chosen as depositaries. Multilateral treaties usually designate an international organization or the Secretary-General of the United Nations as depositaries. The depositary must accept all notifications and documents related to the treaty, examine whether all formal requirements are met, deposit them, register the treaty and notify all relevant acts to the parties concerned.

EUCLID specific Information

Both EUCLID conventions designate the EUCLID Secretary-General as depositary. It shall be noticed that the initial convention used the spelling “depository” rather than “depositary” which is not an uncommon (albeit technically incorrect) variant. Most spell-checkers (such as the one used by Worpress to create this page) do not recognize the word “depositary” and will replace it with the more common form “depositary.”

The Updated Framework Agreement used “depositary.” The United Nations Treaty Section