Legal
The Sixth Committee is the primary forum for the consideration of legal questions in the General Assembly. All of the U.N. Member States are entitled to representation on the Sixth Committee as one of the main committees of the General Assembly. The UN General Assembly has an express mandate to promote the progressive development of public international law. Article 13 of the UN Charter establishes, in particular, that the “General Assembly shall initiate studies and make recommendations for the purpose of:…encouraging the progressive development of international law and its codification." Subsequent practice has interpreted this provision as a broad authorization to elaborate new treaties on the widest range of issues, to adopt them, and to recommend them to states for their subsequent signature, ratification, and accession. While international law-making negotiations take place in a variety of specialized bodies of the United Nations, depending on their actual subject-matter, those negotiations related to general international law are usually held at the Sixth Committee.
Chair email: alivas1@jhu.edu
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