Search

In 1945, the United States Congress enacted the International Organizations Immunities Act (IOIA). Section 288a(b) of the act grants international organizations "the same immunity from suit and every form of judicial process as is enjoyed by foreign governments." The ensuing issue has been whether "the same immunity" means the immunity enjoyed in 1945, or whether it has evolved together with the body of law on sovereign immunity. In Jam v. Int'l Finance Corp, 586 U.S. (2019), the U.S. Supreme Court was finally asked to decide this issue, resolving a split in the federal circuits. The Court held that the immunity enjoyed by international organizations is that immunity which is enjoyed by foreign governments pursuant to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA). This article reaches two conclusions: first, a static interpretation more accurately reflects the context, purpose, consequences, and history of the IOIA. Second, if the reference to the same immunity is taken to mean a reference to the body of law on sovereign immunity, it is nonetheless a reference to the general rule of absolute immunity, which is now codified as a presumptive (or default) rule in § 1604 of the FSIA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author shares his observations about the evolution of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as an international organization. Topics discussed include the significance of the law of international organizations to NATO, the relations of NATO with third countries and other international organizations including the United Nations (UN), and the responsibility, immunity and accountability of NATO and other international organizations.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) enjoys a specific legal status and specific privileges and immunities under both international and domestic law. They enable the ICRC to effectively carry out its mandate, and to do so in full conformity with its Fundamental Principles and standard working modalities. This article clarifies the ICRC's particular legal status and explains the rationale, scope and legal sources of its privileges and immunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National courts have long understood the UN to have absolute immunity from their jurisdiction, based upon provisions in the UN Charter and the Convention on Privileges and Immunities of the UN. While state immunity has evolved over recent decades, allowing restrictive immunity that distinguishes between acts jure imperii and those jure gestionis, questions have arisen as to whether that doctrine applies to international organizations and, specifically, the UN. The counterbalance to the UN’s absolute immunity is the requirement that it provide alternative mechanisms for resolving disputes. This raises concerns about accountability and internal review. Case law from various courts demonstrates an increasing willingness to attempt to challenge absolute immunity on the basis that the bar to jurisdiction violates claimants’ rights to access a court and to a remedy. In all of those cases, individuals’ ability to access alternative mechanisms for dispute resolution has been used to show that their rights have been realized. Recent events concerning the 2010 cholera outbreak in Haiti may lead to a challenge to the UN’s absolute immunity. The UN has deemed those claims to be ‘not receivable’, which denies the claimants their rights to access a court and to a remedy. In October 2013, lawyers for the Haiti cholera victims filed a class action in the Southern District of New York, seeking to challenge the UN’s immunity by bringing the Organization before a national court. This article explores whether the events in Haiti may provide the first successful, human rights-based challenge to the UN’s absolute immunity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a discussion and review on the privileges and immunities of the United Nations for young lawmakers and practitioners working in international organizations. It cites that it would help answer questions on privileges and immunities and decide on issues from the Organization regarding privileges and immunities. Further discussion on the articles covering the privileges and immunities are provided and the criticism at the UN due to its lack of transparency is also noted.

International organizations regularly enjoy immunity from suit in employment-related cases. Instead of litigation before various national courts, staff members are supposed to bring their complaints before internal grievance mechanisms and ultimately before administrative tribunals set up by the organizations. The scope of jurisdiction of such administrative tribunals largely covers the kind of staff disputes insulated from national court scrutiny as a result of the immunity from legal process enjoyed by international organizations. Inspired by the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, in particular its 1999 Waite and Kennedy judgment according to which the jurisdictional immunity of international organizations may depend upon the availability of "reasonable alternative means" to protect effectively the rights of staff members, more and more national courts are equally looking at the availability and adequacy of alternative dispute settlement mechanisms. Some of them have even concluded that the non-availability of legal protection through an administrative tribunal or the inadequacy of the level of protection afforded by internal mechanisms justifies a withdrawal of immunity in order to avoid a denial of justice contrary to human rights demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International civil servants (ICS) are largely excluded from the analysis of International Organizations (IOs) because states are assumed to be the determining force in shaping their behaviour. Even principal-agent and constructivist analyses often treat an IO’s staff as a unit and are concerned primarily with states’ capacities to control IOs. Examining the opportunities of ICS, rather than the choices of states, provides a better means of understanding the capacities of ICS to contribute to the operation of IOs, and especially when they participate in multilateral negotiations. We suggest that structure, competence, legitimacy and culture provide a framework for analysing ICS variable capacity. We use the Secretariat of the WTO, known as a ‘member-driven organization’, to illustrate how ICS can play a critical role in achieving the IO’s objectives. A word on our title. It comes from Esse, non videri in the original, as quoted by a director at the WTO in an interview in April 2003. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The legal status of diplomats underwent a dramatic change between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries as a consequence of a transformed European states-system. Its transformation is linked to ius inter gentes, a 'law between nations' whose emergence not only created a Europe of sovereign states but simultaneously affected the scope, definition and justification of rights and duties held by diplomatic representatives. It is generally acknowledged that diplomacy as an institution exists by virtue of rules that are embodied in the modern system of states and defined as 'international society' or the 'society of states'. What needs to be better understood is that diplomatic rights and duties are made possible by this framework of an international society, which has discernible historical and analytical boundaries, and that the relationship between such a framework and its diplomatic institutions is not contingent but logical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the international law governing state official criminal responsibility for crimes against humanity in Chile. Human rights violations of former president Augusto Pinochet Ugarte; International judicial inquiry on Pinochet; Implication of the arrest of Pinochet and the decision on immunity for international law.