The Interplay Between the Moon Agreement and the Artemis Accords: Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties to the Rescue
摘要
When Sputnik and Explorer 1 Satellites were successfully launched to orbit the Earth, the Soviet Union and the U.S. set their sights on the Moon. The Soviet Union performed the first hard landing with the Luna 2 Spacecraft in 1959, and Neil Armstrong from the U.S. became the first man to set foot on the Moon. Since these unimaginable feats, two other States joined the elite club, i.e., China and India. But none of these States have attempted to exploit the Moon’s resources. The Moon Agreement, 1979 tries to balance exploration and exploitation; however, Article 11 proscribes the individual commercialisation and appropriation of the Moon and its natural resources. The U.S., under the Trump administration, drafted the Artemis Accord in 2020, purportedly in line with The Outer Space Treaty 1967. The Accord is a series of bilateral arrangements between the U.S. and other governments to regulate commercial activities in Space, including the Moon. Hence, there is a discernible tension between the Moon Agreement and the Artemis Accords, the latter being pro-commercialization and the former prohibiting commercialisation for individual benefit. These developments affect the State’s simultaneous signatories to these instruments. States also appear to have taken a chequered position; Australia considered the Artemis Accords to be in sync with the Moon Agreement, while Saudi withdrew from the Moon Agreement as it is incompatible with the Artemis Accords. In this chapter, the author applies the rules of the Vienna Convention on Law of Treaties (VCLT), 1969, and attempts to decipher and interpret these instruments. Although several scholars have written on the interplay between them, there is a dearth of literature specific to VCLT.