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Air Law Group

The Hague Convention on Hijacking of Aircraft 1970 : The legal aspects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2016

Bin Cheng
Bin Cheng*
Affiliation:
University College, London
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Extract

The Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft—to give the treaty its official title—was drafted by a subcommittee of the Legal Committee of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) in September/October 1969, considered by the Legal Committee itself in February/March 1970, signed at a diplomatic conference meeting at The Hague on 16th December 1970, and came into force on 14th October 1971 amongst those States that had ratified it. While the coming into being of the Hague Convention has been fairly expeditious, so far only 15 States (Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Gabon, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Mali, Niger, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, USA, USSR) have accepted it. It is to be hoped that the United Kingdom, which took a leading part in developing this Convention, will do so before long, especially as the necessary legis-lation has already been passed—the Hijacking-Act which received the Royal Assent on 5th August 1971.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Aeronautical Journal , Volume 76 , Issue 741 , September 1972 , pp. 529 - 535
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Aeronautical Society 1972 

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References

1.ICAO Doc. 8838-LC/157.Google Scholar
2.Montreal Draft, ICAO Doc. 8877-LC/161.Google Scholar
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4.Federal Aviation Act 1958, as amended, P.L.S7-197, 75 Stat 466 (1961); 49 U.S.C. § 1472 (i); see further Alona E. Evans, Aircraft hijacking; its cause and cure, 63 American Journal of International Law (1969), p. 695. The United States delegate to the 1963 Tokyo Conference recognised: “The legislation of his country provided for acts of piracy on the high seas, but these acts to which he was referring (hijacking of aircraft) did not come under the Convention on the High Seas and, consequently, did not constitute piracy within the meaning given to that expression by the law at the present time” (ICAO Doc 8302-LC/150-1, p. 149).Google Scholar
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