 Secret treaties have existed all along in the history of mankind. Many of them have provided for alliances, mutual defence and assistance in case one of the contracting states is in a state of war against a third state. Because of their secrecy, those treaties have been considered to be dangerous and undesirable for the unforeseeable consequences they trigger. Secret treaties were blamed for helping spark the First World War. And as a result, in his opening statement for the 14 points that he presented in January 1918 as the basis for a future peace treaty, President Wilson straightforwardly condemned I quote, secret understandings of any kind. He solemnly declared, I quote again, the day of conquest and aggrandizement is gone by, so is also the day of secret covenants entered into in the interest of particular governments and likely at some unlooked for moment to upset the peace of the world, end of quote. Since the very first of the 14 points called for, I quote, open covenants of peace, openly arrived at after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always, frankly, and in the public view, end of quote. This idea that secret treaties were to be banned was translated in article 18 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which provided that League members must register their treaties with the League Secretariat in order for them to be published. The last sentence of article 18 stated that I quote, no such treaty or international engagement shall be binding until so registered. Under that system, non-registered treaties, whether deprived of any binding force, which is quite a rather radical outcome, the Covenant of the League of Nations has been terminated after the entry into force of the United Nations Charter. And under article 102 of the United Nations Charter, member states have also a similar obligation to register with the UN Secretariat every treaty and every international agreement they have entered into. Such obligation only exists for new treaties in the future, that is, once the Charter is in force and the state concern has become a member of the UN. Article 102 says that the registration of treaties must be done, I quote, as soon as possible, but there is no time limit for such process. Once the treaty is registered, the UN Secretariat must publish it, which is done through what is called the United Nations Treaty Series, a very large collection of volumes and now an online database, which is freely accessible on the UN website. The drafters of the United Nations Charter probably thought that the sanction provided for under article 18 of the League of Nations was too radical. It was therefore replaced under article 102, whose paragraph 2 provides that, I quote, no party to any such treaty or international agreement which has not been registered may invoke that treaty or agreement before any organ of the United Nations. Thus, instead of being deprived of their binding force, non-registered treaties may simply not be invoked before any organ of the UN, most notably before the Security Council or the International Court of Justice. UN organs will just ignore non-registered treaties and will not be able to consider or protect any right stemming from them. However, because there is no time limit for the registration of treaties, a party which intends to avail itself of a non-registered treaty before a UN organ may suddenly rush to the Secretariat and present it for registration. When a depository is designated in a multilateral treaty, it will usually register the treaty with the UN Secretariat so that the other contracting parties will not have to do it themselves. Does this all mean that there are no secret treaties anymore? Well, it would be quite naive to think so and it is by definition also quite impossible to know precisely because those treaties are what they are. They are not made public and they are kept within some closed governmental circles. They remain secret, but this does not mean that the evolution resulting from the registration requirement is meaningless. On the contrary, the obligation to make treaties public somehow induced a change in the diplomatic culture. The contracting parties will have to decide whether they want to depart from the registration obligation instead of deciding that they want to publicize their treaty. And even if they agree to keep the treaty secret, any of the parties could at any time decide to present the treaty for registration without being susceptible of being blamed from a legal point of view for having breached any secrecy obligation that may exist between the parties. This is because the obligation to register treaties is contained in the UN Charter, article 102, and that as we shall see later in this course when addressing article 103 of the Charter, obligations under the UN Charter always prevail over other treaty commitments.