A treaty is an agreement under international law entered into by actors in international law, namely sovereign states and international organizations. A treaty may also be known as an (international) agreement, protocol, covenant, convention, pact, or exchange of letters, among other terms. Regardless of terminology, all of these forms of agreements are, under international law, equally considered treaties and the rules are the same.

Treaties can be loosely compared to contracts: both are means of willing parties assuming obligations among themselves, and a party to either that fails to live up to their obligations can be held liable under international law.

Modern usage

A treaty is an official, express written agreement that states use to legally bind themselves. A treaty is the official document which expresses that agreement in words; and it is also the objective outcome of a ceremonial occasion which acknowledges the parties and their defined relationships.

Modern form

Since the late 19th century, most treaties have followed a fairly consistent format. A treaty typically begins with a preamble describing the contracting parties and their joint objectives in executing the treaty, as well as summarizing any underlying events (such as a war). Modern preambles are sometimes structured as a single very long sentence formatted into multiple paragraphs for readability, in which each of the paragraphs begins with a verb (desiring, recognizing, having, and so on).

"Treaty" is a song by Australian indigenous music band Yothu Yindi, which is made up of Aboriginal and balanda (non-Aboriginal) members. Released in June 1991, "Treaty" peaked at No. 11 on the ARIA Singles Chart in September. "Treaty" was the first song by a predominately-Aboriginal band to chart in Australia and was the first song in any Aboriginal Australian language (Yolngu-Matha) to gain extensive international recognition, peaking at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play singles charts.

In May 2001 "Treaty" was selected by Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) as one of the Top 30 Australian songs of all time.

In 2009 'Treaty' was added to the National Film and Sound Archive's Sounds of Australia registry.

Background

In 1988, as part of Bicentennial celebrations, Prime Minister of Australia, Bob Hawke, visited the Northern Territory for the Barunga festival where he was presented with a statement of Aboriginal political objectives by Galarrwuy Yunupingu and Wenten Rubuntja. Hawke responded to the Barunga Statement with a promise that a treaty would be concluded with Indigenous Australians by 1990. In 1991, Yothu Yindi were Hughie Benjamin on drums, Sophie Garrkali and Julie Gungunbuy as dancers, Stuart Kellaway on bass guitar, Witiyana Marika on manikay (traditional vocals), bilma (ironwood clapsticks) and dance, Milkayngu Mununggurr on yidaki (didgeridoo), Gurrumul Yunupingu on keyboards, guitar and percussion, Makuma Yunupingu on yidaki, vocals, bilma, Dr Yunupingu on vocals and guitar, Mangatjay Yunupingu as a dancer. Dr Yunupingu, with his older brother Galarrwuy, wanted a song to highlight the lack of progress on the treaty between Aboriginal peoples and the federal government. Dr Yunupingu recalls:

The Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany, German: Vertrag über die abschließende Regelung in Bezug auf Deutschland (or the Two Plus Four Agreement, German: Zwei-plus-Vier-Vertrag; short: German Treaty) was negotiated in 1990 between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic (the eponymous "Two"), and the Four Powers which occupied Germany at the end of World War II in Europe: France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In the treaty the Four Powers renounced all rights they held in Germany, allowing a united Germany to become fully sovereign the following year.

Background

On 2 August 1945, the Potsdam Agreement, promulgated at the end of the Potsdam Conference, among other things agreed on the initial terms under which the Allies of World War II would govern Germany. A provisional German–Polish border known as the Oder–Neisse line awarded, in theory within the context of that "provisional border", most of Germany's eastern provinces to Poland and the Soviet Union. Those agreements reached were provisional and the agreement stipulated that the situation would be finalised by "a peace settlement for Germany to be accepted by the Government of Germany when a government adequate for the purpose is established" (Potsdam Agreement 1.3.1). Parts of those above mentioned agreements were burdened with controversy from several sources e.g., Churchill's comment about stuffing the Polish goose too full (of German lands). The overall "German Question" became one of the salient and crucial issues of the long-running Cold War, and until it ended in the late 1980s, little progress had been made in the establishment of a single government of Germany adequate for the purpose of agreeing to a final settlement. This meant that in some respects (largely, but not only, technical), Germany did not have full national sovereignty.