ICRW (International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling) was signed by the following 15 nations on December 2nd 1946, however only 9 nations ratified it by July 1st 1948 when the Convention came into force.

Australia, Canada, France, Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, United Kingdom, United States, U.S.S.R., Brazil*, Denmark*, New Zealand*, Argentina*, Chile*, Peru* (* : did not ratified ICRW)

Although Iceland, Panama and Sweden did not sign the Convention in 1946, they notified the membership to the U.S. government by the 1st Annual meeting in 1949. Thus IWC started by 12 member nations.

*1 In the 2001 meeting, voting was carried out about membership of Iceland and it was decided to keep status of Iceland as observer nation. However, from the point of view of international law, legality of this decision was dubious. In October 2002, IWC special meeting was held to discuss some items and Iceland's full membership was 'officially' approved by vote.

• According to the Convention, withdrawal becomes effective as of 30th June.

• Also, since IWC annual meeting is held in middle of the year, a new member nation of the year may not have started to attend the annual meeting in the year of membership. It depends on in which month of the year it joined the IWC. The similar remark is applicable to nations withdrew.

• To obtain 3/4 majority in vote on the moratorium (adopted in 1982), anti-whaling bloc recruited many new member nations from 1979 to early 1980s (among new members in this period, only Peru, Chile, Spain, and Korea were coastal whaling nations, who joined the IWC upon the request from the Commission). In case of some of these new anti-whaling countries, foreign anti-whaling activists, who did not have the nationality of these countries, attended the IWC meeting as the commissioner or members of delegations, and even more there was a case that a new member nation paid IWC membership fee using a check given by an anti-whaling organization.

_