Forthcoming in the Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law (27) studies on the subject. This was in part due to the work of the then Commission on Human Rights and the Third Committee, leading to the adoption of the 1967 Declaration on Territorial Asylum.46 The right of asylum was at last removed from the Commission’s programme of work in 1977 as the UN prepared the stillborn Conference on Territorial Asylum.47 D. Diagnosing the ‘Failure’ to Codify the Law of Asylum There are various reasons that may explain the Commission’s reluctance to embark on the codification of the law of asylum. For one, the right of asylum was a topic of high political charge. This is well illustrated by the profound disagreements as to the legal nature and proper scope of asylum. Similarly, part of the hesitancy in engaging with the subject could also be attributed to the existing geopolitical power dynamics in both the Commission and the Sixth Committee, especially when deciding on what topics should be prioritized. In fact, while the codification of the law of asylum was of particular interest to (some) Latin American countries, as it reflected the idiosyncrasies of the region, Western members preferred the codification of the law on ‘less controversial’ areas, such as the law of treaties, the law of diplomatic and consular relations, the law of the high seas, and the – no less controversial – law of responsibility. Finally, external factors and contingencies also exerted some influence on the Commission’s decision to discontinue the topic. If the decision of the ICJ in the Asylum and Haya de la Torre cases put into question the existence of any customary law on diplomatic asylum, the work of the Third Committee and the Commission on Human Rights made any codification efforts virtually redundant. See generally G.S. Goodwin-Gill, ‘The 1967 Declaration on Territorial Asylum, Introductory Note’ (2012) UN Audiovisual Library of International Law; A. Grahl-Madsen, Territorial Asylum (Oceana Publication 1980), at 44 –60. 47 See generally UN ILC, ‘Official Records of the General Assembly, Thirty-Second Session’ in Yearbook of the International Law Commission 1977, vol. II (Part Two) UN Doc. A/CN.4/SER.A/1977/Add.l, at 129–130. 46 12 Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4816199