Liability of international organizations

1988 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry G. Schermers
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
International Organization ◽  
Theoretical Point ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Legal Questions ◽  
Legal Literature ◽  
Financial Obligations

When in 1985 the International Tin Council was unable to meet its financial obligations, various legal questions arose. It appears that the question of liability of international organizations has, up till now, not been adequately addressed. The article written by Professor Henry G. Schemers is a first attempt in legal literature to examine the liability of international organizations from a theoretical point of view. The author concludes that the principle that everybody is liable for his debts does not apply to international governmental organizations. The liability of governments is, in the eyes of the author, not limited when they perform some of their tasks through an international organization, unless there is an express provision to this effect. However, in general international law is insufficiently developed with respect to the payment of debts of international organizations.

International Organizations and the Creation of Customary International Law

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 201-233
Author(s):  
Kristina Daugirdas
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
International Organization ◽  
Direct Role ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
Legal Personality ◽  
Legal Questions ◽  
International Legal System ◽  
The Creation ◽  
International Legal Personality

Abstract This article argues that international organizations ‘as such’ can contribute directly to the creation of customary international law for three independent reasons. First, the states establishing an international organization may subjectively intend for that organization to be able to contribute to the creation of at least some kinds of customary international law. Second, that capacity may be an implied power of the organization. Third, that capacity may be a byproduct of other features or authorities of the international organization – specifically, the combination of international legal personality and the capacity to operate on the international plane. Affirming international organizations’ direct role in making customary international law will not dramatically change the content of customary international law or the processes by which rules of customary international law are ascertained. But recognizing that role is significant because it will reinforce other conclusions about how international organizations fit into the international legal system, including that customary international law binds international organizations. Such recognition may also shift the way lawyers within international organizations carry out their work by affecting the sources they consult when answering legal questions, the materials they make publicly available and the kinds of expertise that are understood to be necessary to discharge their responsibilities. Finally, affirming international organizations’ role in creating customary international law may make international organizations more willing to comply with those rules.

International Organizations and Their Officials: to Tax or not to Tax?

1993 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Muixer
Keyword(s):  
International Organizations ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
National Level ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
International Organization ◽  
Theoretical Point ◽  
International Level ◽  
Host State ◽  
The Status

Taking the United Nations, its specialized agencies and the EC as a focal point, this article looks at the fiscal position of international organizations and their officials vis-à-vis their host state. Firstly, the fiscal privileges are examined from a theoretical point of view, after which a number of cases are analyzed in which international organizations and their host state differed in their views on the application of the aforementioned privileges.From a broader perspective, this study explores the watercourse of standards which have sprung on the international level down to their application in daily life. A particular type of provision -concerning the fiscal immunities of an international organization and its officialscontained in a particular type of multilateral convention, dealing with the status, privileges and immunities of international organizations and their officials, is followed down to its application on the national level.

A Venture into Legal Theory

2021 ◽  
pp. 93-107
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Gasbarri
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Legal Pluralism ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
International Organization ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Novel Theory ◽  
Fragmentation Of International Law

This chapter presents a novel theory on the concept of an international organization. It discusses the meaning of legal systems in legal pluralism, against the background of the fragmentation of international law and interlegality. It relies on the analytical theory of Hart and the institutionalism of Santi Romano. Two notions are applied to international organizations: relative/absolute legality and original/derived legal systems. The absolute legality of the rules of international organizations is a combination of the derivative nature of the legal system that produces them and the point of view of the legal system in which the rules are implemented. The conclusion is that international organizations are dual entities: ‘international organization means an institution established by a treaty or other instrument governed by international law and capable of creating a legal system which derives from international law and that produces law which is at the same time internal and international’.

scholarly journals Designing for international law: The architecture of international organizations 1922–1952

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Miriam Bak McKenna
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
International Organization ◽  
International Labour Organization ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Physical Manifestation ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Do So

Abstract Situating itself in current debates over the international legal archive, this article delves into the material and conceptual implications of architecture for international law. To do so I trace the architectural developments of international law’s organizational and administrative spaces during the early to mid twentieth century. These architectural endeavours unfolded in three main stages: the years 1922–1926, during which the International Labour Organization (ILO) building, the first building exclusively designed for an international organization was constructed; the years 1927–1937 which saw the great polemic between modernist and classical architects over the building of the Palace of Nations; and the years 1947–1952, with the triumph of modernism, represented by the UN Headquarters in New York. These events provide an illuminating allegorical insight into the physical manifestation, modes of self-expression, and transformation of international law during this era, particularly the relationship between international law and the function and role of international organizations.

Piercing the Corporate Veil: The Responsibility of Member states of an International Organization

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Odette Murray
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Member State ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Good Faith ◽  
International Organization ◽  
Member States ◽  
Draft Article ◽  
Legal Limit ◽  
Primary Rule

AbstractThis paper applies two manifestations of the principle of good faith – pacta sunt servanda and the doctrine of abuse of rights – to the complex relationship between member states and international organizations. The paper argues that these existing doctrines operate as a legal limit on the conduct of states when creating, controlling and functioning within international organizations. The paper begins by exploring an innovative provision in the International Law Commission's recently finalised Draft Articles on the Responsibility of International Organisations – Draft Article 61 – according to which a member state will bear international responsibility for the act of an international organization where the member state uses the organization to circumvent its own international obligations. Examining the development of Draft Article 61 and the jurisprudence upon which it is based, this paper argues that the principle which the Commission in fact seeks to articulate in Draft Article 61 is that of good faith in the performance of treaties. As such, being based on a primary rule of international law, this paper queries whether Draft Article 61 belongs in a set of secondary rules. The paper then considers the role of states in the decision-making organs of international organizations and argues that the widely held presumption against member state responsibility for participation in decision-making organs can and should be displaced in certain cases, in recognition of the various voting mechanisms in international organizations and the varied power which certain states may wield. The paper argues that the doctrine of abuse of rights operates as a fundamental legal limit on the exercise of a member state's voting discretion, and thereby forms a complementary primary obligation placed on states in the context of their participation in international organizations.

The Institutionalization of a Process

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 308-340
Author(s):  
Gloria Fernández Arribas
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
International Organization ◽  
Soft Law ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Main Task ◽  
Kimberley Process ◽  
Law Making

The Kimberley Process represents a new method of international cooperation between subjects of international law. It was named by its creators as a process, setting it apart from international organizations, and leading too to its consideration as informal international law-making or soft law. In this study we shall analyze the extent to which the Kimberley Process falls into these categories. Our main task, however, is to compare it to formal international organizations, with a view to establishing whether what really has been created is an institutionalization process that is like an international organization, but with a different name. To do this, we will analyze with reference to the Kimberley Process the various respective fields of international organizations, such as founding agreement, membership, structure, decision-making process and legal order.

International Responsibility

2021 ◽  
pp. 176-207
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Gasbarri
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
International Organization ◽  
Member States ◽  
Legal Nature ◽  
International Responsibility ◽  
International Law Commission ◽  
Final Consequence ◽  
Law Commission

The final consequence of the dual legal nature discussed in the book concerns the international responsibility of international organizations. In particular, this chapter describes how the absence of a common conceptualization affected the work of the International Law Commission, the International Law Institute, and the International Law Association. Afterwards, the chapter focuses on the dual attribution of conduct to an international organization and to its member states. It contends that dual attribution is extremely important in practice and it reviews the cases in which it was at issue. After providing a set of principles on how to apply the dual attribution, it distinguishes between three sets of circumstances: dual attribution via institutional links, dual attribution via factual links, and exclusion of dual attribution when the conduct is attributable to only the organization or its member states. Finally, it discusses the effects of dual attribution in terms of joint responsibility.

Part III The Current International Law of State Immunity, 14 Immunity from Adjudication: The Employment Exception in respect of (1) A Foreign State and (2) An International Organization

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fox Hazel ◽  
Webb Philippa
Keyword(s):  
Collective Bargaining ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
International Organization ◽  
Labour Law ◽  
National Courts ◽  
State Immunity ◽  
Foreign State ◽  
Standard Terms ◽  
Sick Pay

This chapter examines the exception for employment as it pertains to States and international organizations. Whilst the employment — its terms for performance, remuneration, including sick pay, overtime, and other benefits, notice and procedures for dismissal or termination — may be provided in an individual contract or imported from standard terms of employment or collective bargaining agreements, there may also be a considerable overlay of statutory or mandatory provisions that the national labour law imposes or in respect of which increasingly the forum State has assumed regional or international law obligations. There are also certain generally accepted practices relating to employment to be taken into account in considering the scope of the immunity of a foreign State and international organization as regards employment claims brought before the national courts of another State.

Emergency, War and International Law – Another Perspective

2001 ◽  
Vol 70 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 29-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Theoretical Point ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Internal Armed Conflict ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
State Behaviour ◽  
Emergency Responses ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
State Experience

AbstractThis article evaluates a spectrum of emergency responses by states. We are interested in exploring the variety of contexts in which states respond to internal and external crisis, and the manner in which international law contextualises and responds to the use of extreme measures by states. While international lawyers have become attuned to the prerogatives of states in derogating from their international human rights treaty obligations, we contend that this constitutes only one aspect of state emergency responses. We explore the extent to which states resort to extra-ordinary measures in multiple ways. In particular, we explore the relationship between war and emergency, from a theoretical point of view. Both classic inter-state conflicts are examined, as are the multiple situations of internal armed conflict, that frequently escape precise legal definition under international law. We take the view that international law has taken a limited and unrepresentative view of the scope and breadth of the emergency phenomena in state practice. From this general position some general observations follow. First, we identify the tendency of legal scholars to assert that clear dichotomies exist between normal and extreme conditions, when such clear-cut distinctions are not present. From this, we argue that `war' and `emergency', are not unique and entirely distinct phenomena. In short, we submit that emergency and its associated practices is a far more wide-spread and pervasive aspect of state experience and action than has generally been accepted by legal scholars and political thinkers. The consequence of this rethinking is a need to redefine the resort to the extraordinary in our perception of state behaviour and to modify our theoretical perspectives accordingly.

19. International Organizations in Global Politics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Lawson
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
International Organization ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations

This chapter examines the nature of international organizations and their role in global politics. It first explains what an international organization is before discussing the rise of international organizations from a historical perspective, focusing on developments from the nineteenth century onwards. It then considers the major intergovernmental institutions that emerged in the twentieth century and which have made significant contributions in shaping the global order, including the League of Nations and its successor, the United Nations. It also looks at non-governmental organizations and concludes with an analysis of ideas about social movements and global civil society, along with their relationship to the contemporary world of international organizations.

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