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THE PRESENT LEGAL POSITION 87
In this category, he says, ‘may be placed the Native Indian States’ and the
‘Federated and the unfcdcratcd Malay States, Tonga’ . . . etc.1
As regards British practice in respect of the registration of treaties
with the League of Nations, he says: Agreements ‘entered into between
the different self-governing members of the British Empire’ were not
registered under Article 18 of the League’s Covenant.2 Further, it
was pointed out by the British Foreign Office in a dispatch of 27 Nov­
ember 1924 to the Secretariat of the League of Nations that agree­
ments entered into with the following countries were not registered
under Article 18 of the Covenant of the League of Nations:
1. Agreements between various parts of the Empire.
2. Agreements between the United Kingdom and protected States.
On the other hand, it was stated in that dispatch that Agreements
made between the United Kingdom and ‘states standing in close
friendship to one of His Majesty’s Government’, like Nepal and
Muscat, ‘have been registered under this Article’.3 The consequence
of the non-registration of a treaty or an international agreement under
Article 102 of the Charter is that ‘no party to any such treaty or inter­
national agreement which has not been registered may invoke that
treaty or agreement before any organ of the United Nations’.4
Moreover, statements by British Ministers in the House of Com­
mons, in connection with the United Kingdom’s treaties with the
former Somaliland Protectorate, may also be cited as evidence of the
fact that the United Kingdom does not regard such treaties as inter­
national instruments. Thus, when the Secretary of State for Colonial
Affairs was asked in the House of Commons on 25 February 1955
about the distinction in the legal status between the Protectorate
treaties of 1886, concluded with the Somali tribes, and the treaty of
1897, entered into between the United Kingdom and Ethiopia, he
stated:4... the Treaty of 1897 is an international instrument, whereas
the other Agreements ... were not... .’5 When he was asked whether,
since the Treaty with Ethiopia of 1897 transferred some of Somaliland
territories to the latter in violation of the United Kingdom’s treaties

fished in British treaty scries. For a Civil Air Agreement on 5 April 1947, signed
between the United Kingdom and Muscat, see United Nations, Treaty Series,
No. 412, vol. 27, p. 287.
But see Agreement for Air-services, 24 May 1960, between United Kingdom and
Kuwait, published in Treaty Series, No. 6 (1960), Cnmd. 1168.
1 McNair, Treaties, p. 156. 2 Ibid., p. 155. 3 Ibid., pp. 155-6.
4 Oppenhcim, p. 922. For the question whether a non-registered treaty can be
invoked before an international tribunal or an organ of the United Nations, see
Brandon, M., ‘The Validity of Non-Registered Treaties’, B.Y.I.L., 29 (1952),
pp. 156-204.
6 House of Commons Debates, vol. 537, col. 1686, 25 February 1955.