The ICTY has interpreted its Statute as a ‘treaty’. This was not the intention of the UN Secretariat and the Security Council, and is not consistent with other treatments of the Statute. While the Statute literally satisfies the definition of ‘treaty’ in the 1969 Vienna Convention, this shows only the generality of that definition. The adoption of more precise labels for the Statute and other multi-state instruments adopted by international organizations through representational mechanisms would avoid confusion and promote better understanding of the rules that govern them.