General international law in the relations between international organizations and their members

Abstract

To what extent do rules of general international law apply between international organizations and their members? The article tackles this question by distinguishing between two categories of relations: those that take place on the international plane and those that are, rather, situated on the institutional plane constituted by the organization’s internal law. I argue that general international law applies by default to relations belonging to the first category, only being displaced when the internal law of an organization contains applicable lex specialis, but that it cannot claim a similar role at the level of internal institutional relations. The question there becomes one concerning the dialogue between relatively autonomous international legal orders, so that it is the internal law of each organization that defines the terms on which rules of international law are allowed in. At the same time, a normative argument can be made for a ‘monistic presumption’ for the application of general international law in cases where the rules of the organization are silent. By delving into such questions of applicable law and identifying the relevant analytical frameworks, the article aims to help international lawyers dealing with complex disputes opposing international organizations and their members to structure the legal analysis.

Could banning virtual assets be a breach of the doctrine of legitimate expectation?

“…He argued that the basic idea behind the 1986 “Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties between States and International Organizations or between International Organizations” and the International Law Commission’s draft “Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations for Internationally Wrongful Acts” of 2011 was that most rules of the customary international law on treaties that applied on states could also apply to international organisations. These rules may apply when an international organisation maintains relations with external third parties and when they interact with each other and their members (Bordin, 2019, pp. 653–654).…”

“…Besides, on the interpretation of the agreement of 25 March 1951 between the World Health Organization and Egypt, the International Court of Justice took the view that “[w]hen an organization and a member express their consent to be bound by [an] […] agreement, they do not do so in their “institutional capacity” but rather as autonomous legal persons operating on the international plane” (Bordin, 2019, p. 655). The Court described such agreement as a “contractual legal regime” reached by the parties by “mutual understandings” which “entails certain mutual obligations of co-operation and good faith incumbent upon” the parties (ICJ, 1980, pp.…”

Examining the complexities of binding international law on international organisations

“…These include instances of breaches of international law by the United Nation (UN) Security Council (Reinisch, 2001a), UN Peacekeeping forces (Glick, 1995), the World Health Organisation (WHO) (Onzivu, 2011) and other international intuitions leading scholars to debate how far the rules of international law apply to IOs. Scholars differ in opinions as to which rules of international law and to what extent they apply to IOs (Bordin, 2019). The lack of binding international obligations on IOs is one of the key concerns of modern-day international law.…”