Denunciation of International Conventions and Tacit Acceptance of their Amendments in the Iranian legal System

In recent decades the procedure of tacit acceptance has became prevalent in adopting amendments to the technical part of international conventions. The new formula was known as "tacit acceptance procedure", whereby amendments would come into force on a specific date contained in the amendments unless a certain specified number of states objected to the provisions. In other words, silence would be required if a state approved the new measures. The amendments do not enter into force with respect to a party who has objected to the amendment. In recent years Iran has acceded to a number of international treaties in which the tacit acceptance procedure has been accepted.Provided that being entered into force, their subsequent amendments have major legal consequences for Iranian legal system.Therefore in this essay the legal implications of tacit acceptance procedure by the constitutional law approach has been discussed and analyzed. After considering different aspects of the issue, the author concluded that using tacit acceptance procedure in approving the subsequent amendment to the treaties is contradicted to article 77 of constitution of Islamic Republic of Iran and in order to prevent the probable implications, it is necessary to adopt a special legal regime for using tacit acceptance procedure in Iranian legal system. According to Article 77 of the Iranian Constitutional; "All international conventions, protocols, treaties and pacts, shall receive approval by the parliament". While in many international treaties the right of denunciation has been provided for state parties, apparently the above article is silent on denunciation of treaties. In Iran there exists no specific study about the above mentioned issue from the Iran's constitution point of view.Therefore in this essay, legal aspect of the subject, especially in regard to determination of legal authority competent for deciding on denunciation of approved treaties from the Iranian public law viewpoint, has been considered and analyzed. Having considered different aspects of the issue, the author has reached the conclusion that since denunciation has a legislative nature, therefore it should be adopted by the Iranian Parliament.