26 - The UN and the Haiti Cholera Case: Articulating the Rule of Law, Immunities and Responsibility of International Organizations in International Law

Author(s):  
Peters Anne

This chapter provides an overview of the state of the art of legal thought about the international organizations (IOs) as legal entities in a legal environment. IOs are legal communities in a threefold sense: they are created by law, they use law as a means of governance, and they should be governed by the rule of law. Accordingly, international law constitutes, enables, and constrains IOs. The chapter shows that legal scholarship until the 1990s was primarily concerned with the constituting and enabling function of the law (thus securing the effectiveness of IOs), while the more recent legal concern is the constraining function of the law (thus improving the accountability of IOs). In the procedural law of organizations, a tryptichon of accountability procedures has been built: transparency, participation, and access to information.


2005 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 699-729
Author(s):  
Jacques Zylberberg

This essay undertakes a review of national and international law to demonstrate that law is mainly an ideological and variable instrument of the State and of the United Nations, which is a by-product of the states. In this perspective, the author opposes the pragmatical ideology of resistance against the sovereign state to the juridical legitimation and the behaviour of the States who reluctantly have conceded some civil and political rights. Those rights are endangered by the growing bureaucratization of the state, the inflation of the juridical norms and rules, in addition to the permanent repressive characters of the State. The criticism of the contradiction and the variation of the rule of law when it relates to "human rights" is also extended to international law as well as to the international organizations.


1997 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 421-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernst-Ulrick Petersmann

The UN system requires far-reaching changes so as to achieve the objectives of the UN Charter (e.g. with regard to human rights and maintenance of peace) more effectively. European integration law suggests that ‘international constitutionalism’ offers the most effective approach for strengthening the rule of law and peaceful cooperation among democracies. Section 2 outlines basic principles for a constitutional theory of international law. Section 3 discusses the difficulties of ‘constitutionalizing’ the state-centered and power-oriented concepts of the UN Charter. Section 4 explains why the successful Uruguay Round strategy for replacing the old GATT 1947 by the new World Trade Organization (WTO) – notably the ‘package deal negotiations’, the incorporation of other worldwide treaties into WTO law and the mandatory WTO dispute settlement and enforcement systems – offer important lessons for the needed reforms of the UN Charter.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 79-91
Author(s):  
Diallo Boubacar Sidi

Soft law facilitates cooperation between international actors. Already, the elaboration of international law is a matter of shared competence between States, traditionally recognized as the only subjects of international law, international organizations and the typical actors. International organizations have initiated a movement towards the adoption of flexible forms of regulation of international relations. They will profoundly change the way in which international law will be created and presented to the recipients of the rule of law. From the very beginning of their activities, organizations preferred a method other than hierarchical command to encourage international cooperation. They will develop a consistent legal technique, aimed at persuading and not compelling their Member States to adopt conduct consistent with the legally binding standard. This article proposes a reflection on soft law and the results of its increasing use in international practices.


2021 ◽  
Vol 93 (4) ◽  
pp. 994-1006
Author(s):  
Stefan Dugajlić

The subject of this article is to point out that the rule of law, often characterized as a national concept, crosses the national borders of sovereign states, and that the field of the rule of law has a direct impact on international law, relations between states, individuals and states, and between individuals. The increasing and more frequent interaction of the above subjects in international relations has led to the need to constitute certain rules - regulations, more precisely international law, and to ensure its enforcement, and to protect the subjects from possible violations of it. The rule of law becomes even more represented at the international level, with the establishment and later with the activities of international organizations such as: the United Nations, Council of Europe, European Union. By acceding to those organisations, by actively participating in instituting regulations and applying them, directly or through ratification, states renounce the acts of their sovereignty in a certain manner, accepting and enforcing those regulations, thus giving them a higher place in the hierarchy of regulations than national law. This article describes the path of the rule of law from the Grand Charter of Freedoms (Magna Carta Libertatum), as a national concept, to the present, where the rule of law has a strong and indispensable influence in creation, enforcement and protection of international regulations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 112 ◽  
pp. 253-255
Author(s):  
Frauke Lachenmann ◽  
Astrid Wiik

The theme of the 2018 ASIL Annual Meeting was “International Law in Practice,” and nowhere does international law become more practical than in the attempt to rebuild and/or stabilize fragile and post-conflict states through the means of law. Over the last two decades, the rule of law has become a veritable panacea for the international community. As the World Justice Project claimed in 2014, “[w]here the rule of law is weak, medicines fail to reach health facilities, criminal violence goes unchecked, laws are applied unequally across societies, and foreign investments are held back.” The rule of law is no longer just a political ideal of checking power, it is also increasingly “a transnational industry worth multiple billions of dollars.” Multiple state donors, international organizations and nongovernmental organizations are involved in the business of building the rule of law.


Author(s):  
Anthony Carty

The view that no form of international law existed in seventeenth-century France, and that this time was a part of ‘prehistory’, and thus irrelevant for international legal thought today is challenged. In addition, the traditional claim of Richelieu to be an admirer of Machiavelli and his Ragion di Stato doctrine to the detriment of the aim of concluding treaties and keeping them (as sacred), is refuted by careful historical research. In Richelieu’s thinking, there is a role for law to play but it is law as justice, law in the classical natural law tradition. Those who rule are subject to the rule of law as justice, the rule of God, or the rule of reason. In Richelieu’s world, kings and ministers are rational instruments of the practical implementation of God’s will on earth.


1992 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry Nardin

In this paper I am going to argue a familiar but still controversial thesis about the relation between international ethics and international law, which I would sum up in the following list of propositions:First, international law is a source as well as an object of ethical judgements. The idea of legality or the rule of law is an ethical one, and international law has ethical significance because it gives institutional expression to the rule of law in international relations.Secondly, international law—or, more precisely, the idea of the rule of law in international relations—reflects a rule-oriented rather than outcome-oriented ethic of international affairs. By insisting on the priority of rules over outcomes, this ethic rejects consequentialism in all its forms.


Author(s):  
Kainat Kamal

The United Nations (UN) peacekeeping missions are mandated to help nations torn by conflict and create conditions for sustainable peace. These peacekeeping operations hold legitimacy under international law and the ability to deploy troops to advance multidimensional domains. Peacekeeping operations are called upon to maintain peace and security, promote human rights, assist in restoring the rule of law, and help conflict-prone areas create conditions for sustainable peace ("What is Peacekeeping", n.d.). These missions are formed and mandated according to individual cases. The evolution of the global security environment and developing situations in conflictridden areas requires these missions to transform from 'traditional' to 'robust' to 'hybrid', accordingly (e.g., Ishaque, 2021). So why is it that no such model can be seen in restoring peace and protection of Palestinian civilians in one of the most protracted and deadly conflicts in history?


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document