Mr. Council Chair,
Mr. Secretary General,
Ambassadors,
Delegates,
Members of the Inter-American Juridical Committee,

The Inter-American Juridical Committee of Rio de Janeiro is now 100 years old.

The Brazilian Government, which has had the honor of hosting the Committee since its inception, is gratified to participate in the celebration of this important date and to note the importance it attaches to the Committee’s noble and historic task of correctly representing and continually improving international law in the Americas.

The Committee, originally created at the Third International Conference of American States, in Rio de Janeiro, under a treaty dated August 23, 1906, and named the International Commission of Jurists, was entrusted with drafting a code of private international law and a code of public international law, which were to govern relations between countries of the American Hemisphere.

The Commission first went to work at two large meetings in Rio de Janeiro. At the first, on January 26, 1912, it received draft codes from two Brazilian jurists: from Epitácio Pessoa, later a judge at the Permanent Court of International Justice in The Hague, a code of public international law; and from Lafayette Rodrigues Pereira, former imperial counselor, a code of private international law.
The Commission’s work at that meeting and at the second, held on April 18, 1927, together with the work of its special subcommissions in Washington, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago (Chile), Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Lima, produced important draft documents that became groundbreaking multilateral conventions signed at the Havana conference, in 1928. All were ratified and are still in effect. The conventions on public international law are entitled “Status of Aliens,” “Treaties,” “Diplomatic Officers,” “Consular Agents,” “Maritime Neutrality,” “Asylum,” “Duties and Rights of States in the Event of Civil Strife,” and (this last at the Montevideo conference, in 1933) “Extradition.” On private international law, their work produced an entire code, named the Bustamante Code.

The International Commission of Jurists underwent subsequent modifications at the International Conferences of American States in Havana (1928), Montevideo (1933), and Lima (1938). Many years later, it was ultimately replaced by today’s Inter-American Juridical Committee, its effective successor. The Inter-American Juridical Committee was initially created at the Panama City meeting in 1942 as a parallel and complement to the old Commission. It remained in operation when the 1948 OAS Charter created the Inter-American Council of Jurists to advise the Organization on juridical proposals. In 1945, the Mexico City conference had recommended that the Committee be designated the "central agency for the codification of public international law." Ultimately, the Inter-American Juridical Committee became the only such body, when, in the amendment to the OAS Charter brought about by the 1967 Protocol of Buenos Aires, the aforementioned Inter-American Council of Jurists was abolished.

From its inception to the present day, the Inter-American Juridical Committee has continued to provide legal advisory services to the OAS, especially by organizing draft treaties and conventions on international law, both public and private. Several of these are signed, ratified, and in effect, from the 1954 Caracas Conventions on Territorial Asylum and Diplomatic Asylum to the more recent agreements on specialized fields of private international law.

It is important to note that, when the United Nations created the International Law Commission, on December 21, 1947, the Inter-American Juridical Committee was already 40 years old and there were already in effect in the Americas multilateral conventions prepared by its member jurists: eight on special fields of public international law and one pertaining to all of private international law.

Today, the comprehensive aim of the Inter-American Juridical Committee should be emphasized. In addition to its task of promoting the progressive development of international law and its codification, it acts as advisory body to the OAS, studying, for example, issues of integration among the countries of the Hemisphere and the possibility of standardizing their bodies of law. And in the field of international law in general it considers any matter, without distinction or restriction, whether public or private.

The Brazilian Government therefore thanks all the jurists who, over these 100 years, have given the best of themselves to the noble mission of advising the Organization of American States and contributing to the progress and codification of international law in the Hemisphere.