Iceland is not the first state to make a reservation at the same time as signing the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling. It has been done three times before … and without anyone demanding a vote by the IWC on the validity of the reservation.

When Peru deposited its instrument of ratification in 1979, it was accompanied by the statement that "this cannot be interpreted as detrimental to or restrictive of the sovereignty and jurisdiction which Peru exercises up to a limit of two hundred miles off its coast."

Not until 1983 did Germany place on record a formal objection to the Peruvian statement. The UK followed suit in 1984, stating that it "considers that the claim made by the Government of Peru that Peru exercises unrestricted sovereignty and jurisdiction to a limit of two hundred miles off its coasts has no validity under international law." But there was no vote.

Likewise, when Chile ratified the ICRW in 1979, it included "the reservation that none of the provisions of the Convention could affect or restrict the sovereign rights of Chile in its Maritime Zone of 200 miles."
In the Chilean case, not only was there no vote, but it seems that no formal objection was ever made either.

Equador also had a reservation when joining the IWC, similar to that of Chile.

Past IWC responses to reservations lodged at the time new members ratified the Convention do not in themselves establish legal precedents, comments international law professor William Burke to the Harpoon, as "the Commission has probably not thought of the problem at all."

Source: The International Harpoon - The Paper With a Point, High North Alliance, 23 July, 2001 (In press).