Building Anew 411bornly unpaid. An advisory opinion in 1950, holding South Africa’s League
of Nations mandate over South- West Africa (present- day Namibia) to be still
in force, similarly had no practical eff ect. An advisory opinion in 1962, on
the validity of assessments of UN expenses, failed to induce countries that
had been withholding assessed contributions to pay them. In 1971, the Brit-
ish government announced that it was “rejecting” an advisory opinion given
by the Court on the question of Namibia. Specifi cally, the British govern-
ment pronounced the Court to have been wrong on two counts: fi rst, in
holding that the UN General Assembly had validly terminated the Republic
of South Africa’s mandate over the area; and, second, in ruling that the Se-
curity Council had the power to issue mandatory orders to states on non-
security- related matters.
It is hardly surprising, then, to fi nd that, by the mid- 1970s, the Court was
fl atly being pronounced a failure by prominent observers. On other judi-
cial fronts as well, there were embarrassing silences. Mixed- claims commis-
sions and arbitrations, for example, were very little in evidence. Th ere was
nothing like the rich array of international litigation that there had been in
the interwar era.
At the same time, modest changes were achieved, even if they fell well
short of initial hopes. Th e economic fi eld provides an illustration. Th e pro-
posed International Trade Or ga ni za tion failed to come into existence, largely
because po liti cal pressures within the United States prevented that country
from ratifying its charter. A portion of the project was salvaged, though, in
the form of the General Agreement on Tariff s and Trade (GATT), which had
been concluded in 1947 as a sort of advance installment on the ITO. So the
GATT simply continued in existence on its own. It fi xed basic norms on
trade, oriented toward reducing (or eliminating) quota systems, subsidizing
of goods, and other forms of unfair or manipulative trade practices. In addi-
tion, several rounds of tariff reductions were successfully negotiated, with
the result that trade volume increased steadily in the postwar era.
In the human- rights fi eld, too, there was some movement. Th e interna-
tional convention was fi nally completed in 1966— although by then it had
become two companion treaties. One was an International Covenant on
Civil and Po liti cal Rights, with the other on Economic, Social, and Cultural
Rights. Even so, it was a further ten years before these conventions at-
tracted enough ratifi cations to enter into force. Th e Covenant on Civil and
Po liti cal Rights did, however, contain two features that would make a major