3 the said Constitution. However, by virtue of the principle set out in Article 26 of the Vienna Convention, this does not exempt the State from its duty under international law; to the extent that such a provision purports so to do, it constitutes a clear breach of the relevant international obligations. Countries that enter voluntarily and sovereignly into treaties cannot pick and choose which treaty obligations to obey and which to flout. Even where reservations are entered, it is clearly settled international law and practice that such reservations must not be “incompatible with the object and purpose of the treaty”. (Vienna Convention: Article 19). Trinidad and Tobago has exercised its sovereign right to denounce and withdraw from the Convention. No State, however, having committed itself to an international agreement, can in good faith refuse to abide by those obligations which it unambiguously undertook to honour during the period of the treaty’s validity. This would make a mockery of international law and, in the particular case of human rights treaties, would undermine a regime of international concern for the individual human being that dates back at least to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That there is emerging a clear tendency on the part of Commonwealth Caribbean states in this dismal direction, with its implications for the integrity and inclusiveness of the Inter-American system, is a matter of the very gravest concern. Oliver Jackman Judge Pablo Saavedra Alessandri Secretary