Sustainable Tourism Law

THE BINDING FORCE OF LEGISLATIVE INSTRUMENTS 177 mind that the task of achieving absolute consensus among the nations of the world is really arduous and that complying with the solemn formalities of an international treaty is not easy, the Soft Law technique has been adapted to the legislative demands of society. IV. GOALS IMPLEMENTATION THROUGH SOFT LAW Are these goals formulated since the 1980s being achieved through Soft Law? Which degree of implementation has been achieved in the States? Despite the lack of binding force of most legal instruments on Sustainable Tourism, the goals are beginning to be felt in policy, business practices and consumer behaviour. There has been an evolution in the legislative technique in the matter of sustainable tourism: In the 1980s, it was based on Declarations; Charters; Global Codes (Manila Declaration on World Tourism (1980); Charter for Sustainable Tourism (Lanzarote, Spain, 1995); Agenda 21 for the Travel and Tourism Industry (1996); Global Code of Ethics for Tourism (1999); World Charter for Sustainable Tourism+ 20 (2015). Currently, there is a tendency to use conventions: UNWTO Convention on Tourism Ethics (2017) and Draft UNWTO Convention for the Protection of Tourists and the Rights and Obligations of Service Providers (2017). In the words of the World Travel Organization, the approvals of these Conventions are “historical decisions”. The Convention on Tourism Ethics is “the first Convention in the life of the Organization”. On the other hand, we can observe that many of the Sustainable Development Goals have been invoked in different normative texts of the States. Soft Law covers most of the resolutions and declarations of the UN general assembly, for example: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights 7 ; the statements, principles, codes of practice etc. often found as part of framework treaties; and action plans and other non-treaty obligations. Many such international agreements may prove useful or serve as the basis for future legally 7 Y. BERMÚDEZ ABREU; A. AGUIRRE ANDRADE; N. MANASÍA FERNÁNDEZ, El Soft Law y su aplicación en la Declaración Universal de los Derechos Humanos y en la Declaración Americana de los Deberes y Derechos del Hombre , Caracas, 2010.