Talk:Concessions and leases in international relations

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Confusion[edit]

This entry appears to confuse a number of different concepts. First, the title is misleading. The content of the entry generally concerns what is ordinarily classified in international legal terms as 'leased territory' or 'territorial lease'. This means the granting of rights to States (or other international legal personalities) over specific territory, usually with the right to exercise sovereign-like powers. This is distinguished from the granting of commercial rights to private law entities, which are proper 'concession'. The entry concerns the international legal phenomenon and should therefore be titled accordingly. For the same reason, sentences such as '…the concessions in China were leased' is actually meaningless.

  • No, it explicitly refers to both territorial leases AND non-leased territorial concessions.

Along the same line, there is no such thing as 'territorial concession'. What the entry refers to is ‘cession of territory’. And indeed an important doctrinal question was in the past whether a territorial lease amounted to cession of territory or not (the answer usually being that it did not). In addition there are specific inaccuracies: the validity of ‘unequal treaties’ was contested because of the political coercion involved in their conclusion. This has nothing to do with force majeure.

  • The reasoning to contest is precisely that irresistible political/military coercion by a far stronger force cnstitutes he equiavlent of force majeure in private law, where it can be invoked as an invalidating circumstance

It would be helpful to add to the entry that post-2000 there are very few cases of territorial lease still in existence. The most famous and controversial is that of Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.

  • True, and thus stated in Guantanamo's section (to be corrected if there are any other left), but feel free to repeat it in the general text, I nearly did in the first place.

In the list of leases (and they are 'lease', not 'concession holders'), leases in Africa should be included, as well as the now-terminated Panama Canal Zone Lease.

  • Now that should make some welcome contributions, please go ahead Arcarius 15:45, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yael 09:31, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

A few comments: 1. Force Majeure (in private and public law) is the intervention of an element outside the contracting parties. Not the power relations between the parties. 2. My argument is that territorial leases and private concessions should be totally separated. There is an existing entry on concession in private law, which could be expanded. The present entry appears to concern (as it should) only international inter-state leases, so I would change the title rather than expand to include private concessions. I would suggest relying on the encyclopedia of international law but I expect copyright issues would preclude this. 3. There is in fact another existing lease - Diego Garcia and adjoining islands in the Chagos Archipelago. Yael 15:40, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, Arcarius, for the editing. I am too new to this to be doing any editing myself. A few more additions on existing leases: In the 1990s Russia concluded a number of lease agreements to maintain the use and control over communications installations, harbor facilities and military bases, left over from the Soviet era. Of those, the following are still in effect: Baikanor Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan - signed in 1994 for 20 years. According to reports, in 2004 russia and Kazakhstan signed an agreement extending the lease until 2050 [1] . In 2005 the Russian Duma ratified the extension agreement.[2] Baranovichi-Vileika in Belarus - signed in 1995 for 25 years Mukachevo/Sevastopol in Ukraine (early warning radar) - signed in 1997 for an unknown period of time. Sevastopol in Ukraine (Harbor facilities)- signed in 1997 for 20 years All the agreements acknowledge the sovereignty of the lessor state over the relevant territory. Yael 06:22, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Removal of text[edit]

I removed the claim that Guantanimo Bay is the last concession in the world, since the same section lists two other concessions to the U.S. that still exist. Granted, both are memorials, but the statement still amounted to an unsourced self-contradiction. Robert A.West (Talk) 21:14, 2 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]


Possible Addition[edit]

There is a very small piece of British soil on Ocracoke Island, North Carolina, USA see this article: [[3]] William.Richards (talk) 20:40, 7 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This personal essay should be deleted[edit]

I just came across this article by chance. What utter nonsense from beginning to end. I quite agree with the comment above written ages ago that the article confuses a number of different concepts that the author has found expedient to group under the term “concession”.

It is said in the entry that “In international law, a concession is a territory within a country that is administered by an entity other than the state which holds sovereignty over it”. Is it so in international law? Who says? Where is the source? In fact, this articles which deals with a host of complex disparate concepts does not contain one single online source.

The author of this personal essay lists the colonies of Hong Kong and Macau as “concessions” (!?) but if those are indeed “concessions”, what about other colonies such as Gibraltar, Aden, Singapore, etc. etc. Are they “concessions” too?

This article has been rated as Top-importance on the importance scale. Hmm.. This incoherent, barely readable private essay is unsalvageable and would best be deleted.--Lubiesque (talk) 15:57, 23 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

WP:SOFIXIT. It appears much of the text was drawn from 1911 edition of Britannica, though it certainly needs work. Nominating it for deletion will likely not work as the subject is notable. Chris Troutman (talk) 17:02, 23 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
According to the Parry and Grant Encyclopaedic Dictionary of International Law (2009), "the term ‘concession’ is one rather of municipal administrative than of international law." In the Aramco Arbitration (1958), it was found that a concession was a "synallagmatic act by which a State transfers the exercise of rights or functions proper to itself to a foreign private person which, in turn, participates in the performance of public functions (Verwaltungszwecke) and thus gains a privileged position vis-a-vis other private law subjects within the jurisdiction of the State concerned." I can find nothing about a concession as a type of territory. The definition just given does not cover interstate contracts, and so there could be no ‘concession’ from one state to another under this definition. Srnec (talk) 01:02, 4 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
For concessions as a type of territory, you can find a good legal description of such territorial concessions in China administered by foreign states in William C. Johnstone, "International Relations: The Status of Foreign Concessions and Settlements in the Treaty Ports of China", The American Political Science Review, no 5, Oct. 1937.

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