Content of final provisions
  1. Denunciation is the act whereby a Member may terminate its obligations under a Convention it has ratified, as well as its constitutional obligations with respect to that Convention. In the absence of a provision in the Constitution of the ILO on the possibility of denouncing a ratified Convention, any provision allowing for denunciation must therefore be included in each Convention along with any time limit within which denunciation can take place.[123] There are broadly two types of denunciation: those that follow automatically from the ratification of a Convention revising an earlier Convention (see revision); and "pure" denunciations effected by an act of denunciation communicated to the Director-General of the International Labour Office. The relevant provision is as follows:
Article C
  • A Member which has ratified this Convention may denounce it after the expiration of [ten] years from the date on which the Convention first comes into force, by an act communicated to the Director-General of the International Labour Office for registration. Such denunciation shall not take effect until [one year] after the date on which it is registered.
  • Each Member which has ratified this Convention and which does not, within the year following the expiration of the period of [ten] years mentioned in the preceding paragraph, exercise the right of denunciation provided for in this Article, will be bound for another period of [ten] years and, thereafter, may denounce this Convention at the expiration of each period of [ten] years under the terms provided for in this Article.
  1. This provision, adopted in its present wording with the Underground Work (Women) Convention, 1935 (No. 45), provides for a number of different time limits: (i) an initial period of validity of the Convention, reckoned from the date of its initial entry into force; (ii) the period during which denunciation is permissible; (iii) a third period during which the Convention remains in force if it has not been denounced, at the end of which period the denunciation-validity cycle is repeated, resulting in a system of "windows" for denunciation; and lastly (iv) a period of notice between registration of denunciation and the denunciation taking effect.
  1. In the ILO's practice, the first period of validity has normally been ten years, or five years in exceptional cases;[124] reckoned from the date of the Convention's initial entry into force. After that period, Conventions adopted between 1919 and 1927 can be denounced at any time. In 1928, considering that offering States this possibility introduced an element of precariousness in the system of mutual obligations established by Conventions, the Conference established the principle of the denunciation-validity cycle, leaving open the question of the duration of the initial and subsequent periods of validity. Barring exceptions, the duration of the period during which denunciation is possible has been one year, while the subsequent period during which the Convention remains in force was fixed at ten years in most cases from 1933 onwards. Before that date, some Conventions fixed it at five years. A study of practice in the area of denunciations has shown, however, that the period within which denunciation is admissible coincides with the first year of the new period of validity which starts from the end of the previous period of validity. Lastly, the period of notice is invariably one year, and has been since 1919.
  1. Between 1938, the year of the first denunciation, and December 2004, there were 118 "pure" denunciations (for 7,245 registered ratifications as of 13 December 2004). Of these, 21 were for the Night Work (Women) Convention (Revised), 1948 (No. 89), making it the Convention with the most denunciations.
[123] Under the terms of Article 56 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, a Convention which does not provide for denunciation is not in principle subject to denunciation.
[124] See, for example, C42, C48 and C115.