Good Offices

Good Offices 

in international law, a means of peacefully resolving disputes between states. By good offices is meant the assistance of a state or international body in establishing contact or beginning direct negotiations between the disputing parties, with the aim of the peaceful settlement of the conflict. Good offices are in the nature of advice that is not binding on the disputing parties. A state rendering its good offices essentially takes no part in the negotiations themselves or in the examination of the dispute. Good offices are thus distinguished from mediation.

Good offices may be offered in peacetime as well as wartime. An example of the use of good offices—which has had great progressive significance for international relations—is the Soviet Union’s good offices that led to the meeting of Indian and Pakistani representatives and to the signing of the Tashkent Declaration of 1966. The basic procedures for offering good offices are set forth in the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. Under the UN Charter, the UN Security Council in particular may offer its good offices to disputing parties (arts. 33, 36, and 38 of the UN Charter).

REFERENCE

Kurs mezhdunarodnogo prava, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1966.

M. I. LAZAREV