inquiry for fact-finding, conciliation, and arbitration (Permanent Court of Arbitration, 1998).
The PCA was established at The Hague by intergovernmental agreement in 1899 and is the oldest institution in the world dedicated to resolving international disputes. It was the result of the Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes, concluded at The Hague during the First Hague Peace Conference. This Conference had been convened at the initiative of Tsar Nicolas II of Russia with the object of seeking the most objective means of ensuring to all peoples the benefits of a lasting peace and limiting the progressive development of armaments (Permanent Court of Arbitration, 1999).
The most concrete and important achievement of the 1899 Conference was the establishment of the PCA as the first global mechanism for the settlement of inter-state disputes. It was signed into law by such world leaders as the German and Austrian emperors, the kings of Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, and Italy, and the presidents of the United States, France, and Mexico. England, Japan, China, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Persia, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Siam, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire were also signatories to the Convention that formed the PCA (Convention for the Pacifica, 2001)
Central to the mission of the PCA was to serve as a mechanism through which conflicts with the potential to lead to armed warfare could be resolved. However, the Signatory Powers reserved to themselves the right to prepare for war and actually commence hostilities even in the event that a dispute had been referred to the PCA for arbitration. This reservation ultimately must be understood as having limited the power of the PCA while affirming the sovereign right of a nation-state to wage war or prepare for war when and where it chose. Nevertheless, by creating an International Commission of Inquiry and defi...