Office of International Law

19/07/2025

On 19 July 2025, I sent the following legal notice regarding Australia’s violations of the Vienna Convention and ongoing international treaty breaches. The email was sent to the Office of International Law and Attorney-General’s Department officials responsible for treaty compliance and international legal advice.

oil@ag.gov.au, enquiries@ag.gov.au

michael.johnson@ag.gov.au, james.mason@ag.gov.au, nathan.kensey@ag.gov.au, nina.harvey@ag.gov.au, stephanie.ierino@ag.gov.au, jesse.clarke@ag.gov.au, anne.sheehan@ag.gov.au

Subject: Legal Clarification Required: Vienna Convention Obligations & State Accountability

Dear Office of International Law and Attorney-General’s Department,

As a citizen of Australia and the named complainant in an active submission before the International Criminal Court under Article 15 of the Rome Statute, I am writing to formally remind your offices of Australia’s legal obligations under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969), to which Australia is a signatory and ratifying party.

Let’s be clear:

Article 26 – Pacta Sunt Servanda

“Every treaty in force is binding upon the parties to it and must be performed by them in good faith.”

Article 27 – Internal Law and Observance of Treaties

“A party may not invoke the provisions of its internal law as justification for its failure to perform a treaty.”

This means:

• Australia cannot hide behind domestic “policy gaps” to excuse breaches of international treaties, including the Stockholm Convention, CRPD, CRC, and others.

• Continued failure to implement and honour these treaties, particularly in relation to harm caused by known Persistent Organic Pollutants (e.g. TCDD), constitutes a deliberate, systemic, and coordinated legal failure.

• Your office has a legal duty to advise departments accurately on these obligations.

Failure to do so is not simply an oversight — it may amount to state-enabled complicity in crimes under international law.

The “we don’t have a policy for that” excuse has no standing under the Vienna Convention.

You signed it. You ratified it. You are bound by it.

This is not a theoretical debate. It is now on the record — with the ICC, with the OECD, with the EU Commission, and with multiple United Nations treaty bodies.

If your departments have a legal justification for ignoring or bypassing these binding obligations, I invite you to provide it in writing.

Otherwise, your silence and inaction will be included in the next annex submission under “Institutional Knowledge and Legal Obstruction.”

Danielle Stevens